The Common Denominator Online: Taking Note

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Taking note . . .
Observations about public affairs in the nation's capital
by the editor of The Common Denominator

WHISKING WILLIAMS AWAY? After reading The Washington Post’s coverage of the mayor’s Feb. 28 town hall meeting at Union Temple Baptist Church in Anacostia, we have to wonder if the Post’s reporters attended the same meeting we did. "Police Whisk Mayor Away After Gathering With Residents, Angry About D.C. General, Turns Raucous," the Post’s Metro section headline said on March 1.

Trouble is, it never happened.

Mayor Anthony Williams, according to the Post’s lead sentence, "was whisked away by a squad of police and security officers at the end of a raucous meeting." The story, carrying the byline of Post reporters Avram Goldstein and Robert E. Pierre, further says: "The security detail prevented more than a dozen angry protesters shouting for the mayor’s recall from advancing toward the altar…during a community forum on the proposed shutdown of inpatient services at the public hospital." The Post story later stated that "Williams was led out of the church in a crowd of police and church security officers."

Two Common Denominator staff members, including yours truly, didn’t see any of that as they stood in the back of the church, watching a standing-room-only crowd file out of the sanctuary in an orderly fashion while the mayor stood at the altar chatting with some of the forum’s other participants. (We also wonder about the Post’s ability to estimate a crowd, given that MPD officers began asking people attempting to enter the packed church sanctuary whether they already had a seat before allowing them to enter. The church holds 1,200 people, according to church officials, while the Post estimated the crowd at "more than 500.")

Did we miss something? Not according to a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, which provides the mayor’s security detail, and mayoral press secretary Peggy Armstrong, who said she stayed until the forum’s conclusion.

"They would have given us a report about something like that. We didn’t hear anything. Nothing," said Officer Quintin Peterson of MPD’s Office of Public Affairs when asked about the mayor’s reportedly abrupt departure amid tight security.

Armstrong said the mayor left the church through the Rev. Willie Wilson’s study "in much the same way he arrived" at the church earlier that evening. "The mayor walked out through the side door he came in….There was nobody outside, his car was waiting and they drove away," she said.

Unfortunately, the Post and news radio station WTOP – which throughout the day on March 1 repeated the same account of the mayor’s departure – gave metropolitan area residents a distorted impression of what actually transpired at the mayor’s town hall meeting.

Was the crowd angry? Undeniably. Not one person who stood and asked a question during the two-hour session, emceed by WOL radio talk show host Joe Madison, expressed an ounce of support for the mayor’s plan to privatize the city’s public health care system.

Many people expressed anger at the mayor’s failure to give direct answers to several questions and his absolute failure to respond in any way to a few questions – including a challenge from Ward 7 Councilman Kevin P. Chavous. Chavous asked the mayor to vow "here and now" that he would ask the control board to step aside and let the District’s elected officials resolve the functional and financial problems with the city’s health care system. During a March 6 council meeting, Chavous described the mayor’s response to his challenge as a "blank stare."

The mayor’s responses, or lack thereof, prompted periodic chants of "Recall! Recall!" and sometimes even nastier verbal attacks. At one point, the mayor even "took exception" to a member of the New Black Panther Party comparing his administration’s actions to the Nazis of World War II.

Pastor Wilson welcomed the mayor and residents to his church by describing the night’s agenda as the public’s opportunity to get their questions answered by the mayor, health director Dr. Ivan Walks and other administration representatives seated at the altar-turned-dias. Given that introduction and Mayor Williams’ performance, the mayor should not have felt "ambushed" by the reverend – as he told the Post – when Wilson ended the evening by expressing his grave disappointment in the mayor’s answers before launching into an impassioned call for residents to fight the mayor’s plan.

"We know what we got – we don’t know what we’ll have," Wilson declared about the murky presentation of what the mayor’s administration is proposing as an overhaul of the city’s troubled health care system for the poor and uninsured. "This has gone on long enough. Tonight, it’s time for this to stop," Wilson said.

MPD officers, who stood in the back of the church throughout the evening, quickly fanned out among the crowd as an overwhelming majority of the attendees stood, some spilling into the aisles, and cheered on Wilson’s tirade against the mayor. Wilson said he believed Tony Williams to be a "sensitive man" when he supported the former chief financial officer in the 1998 mayoral campaign.

"The mayor made a commitment to me – he didn’t keep it," Wilson declared.

Mayor Williams, seated next to Wilson, looked down throughout much of the pastor’s attack.

Police officers retreated as Wilson, in true preacher form, soon calmed the frenzied crowd.

"Was the mayor a little rattled? Yes," said press secretary Armstrong, speaking about a week after the event. But she called the news coverage of the meeting’s aftermath "a little exaggerated."

HIS DRIVER PRESUMABLY KNOWS BETTER: We hope Mayor Williams simply missed part of the conversation Feb. 27 when he seemed to be agreeing with WTOP correspondents Bruce Alan and Derrick Ward as they erroneously located the former Camp Simms site "right across the street" from Ballou Senior High School in Ward 8. A caller to the news radio station’s monthly "Ask the Mayor" show had expressed his concerns about the administration’s development plans for the 25-acre former D.C. National Guard site. Then the following brief exchange was heard on the live broadcast.

ALAN: "Where is the Camp Simms site?"

WARD: "It’s near Ballou – right across the street."

WILLIAMS: "Right."

Ballou is actually quite a hike from Camp Simms. It’s 1½ miles away. However, there is a school located directly across the street from Camp Simms at 15th Street and Mississippi Avenue SE. But it’s Green Elementary, not Ballou.

FAMILY MATTERS AT WTOP? We were a bit surprised that WTOP continued to assign reporter Derrick Ward to cover Mayor Williams after his betrothal to the mayor’s top spinmeister, Communications Director Lydia Sermons, was unexpectedly announced on the air last Oct. 26 by the mayor during a live broadcast. Ward’s work has been highly respected by the local press corps during his 20 years on the air here with Pacifica, WAMU and his current employer. But his continued coverage of his wife-to-be’s boss – especially when her job is to make the city’s top politician look good – seemed to raise questions about a conflict of interest. WTOP News Director Mike McMearty deferred an inquiry to Jim Farley, WTOP’s vice president of news and programming. "We’ll have to reevaluate that after he’s married," Farley said.

Well, Ward and Sermons were married March 3, and Ward continues to cover the mayor. Ward told The Common Denominator he’s conscious of the situation but believes he can continue to cover Mayor Williams without a problem. "I’ve always considered myself fair," he said. Ward said he and his new wife "laid some ground rules when we first started dating," including that he would "treat as privileged information" any of his wife’s work-related conversations that he might inadvertently overhear due to his proximity. Ward said he "wouldn’t let up at all," as a result of his wife being in charge of the mayor’s public relations, when it comes to asking the mayor tough questions. Not even if his work jeopardizes his wife’s political job and, along with it, part of his household income? "That’s the risk that we realize goes with the relationship," he said.

ANOTHER DCPS EMBARRASSMENT: We thought the nationwide bad publicity the D.C. public school system received following the grammatical error on its anti-truancy Metrobus ads a few months ago might have put everyone on their toes when it came to proofreading. Superintendent Paul Vance said he thought he had gotten the message across to his troops, too. So imagine Vance’s chagrin to learn March 6 that DC28, the cable television channel that airs D.C. school news and information, was running a help wanted ad for Vance’s chief of staff that was riddled with errors. The ad said the job requires someone "artcultate," possibly with a degree in "educational administation," with proven ability "to develop procedures that promotes organizational development." The successful candidate also needs to have "superior human related skills," the ad said.

"I can’t begin to tell you and the universe how absolutely distressing that is to me," Vance said. "That is apparently an old advertisement and goodness knows how long it’s been on there. It’s almost as if it’s being purposely done, given my insistence on syntax and spelling."

At press time, Vance was expected to announce new members of his executive staff during a March 12 press conference. A media advisory referred to them as "Dr. Vance’s A-Team."

"Hopefully, very shortly, when our new folk come on board we can have a well-articulated campaign in the school system at all levels to eliminate this sort of embarrassment to us," Vance said.