Editor:
In response to Sylvia De Rooy’s letter (Mailbox, March 29) beginning “Shame on you Richard Salzman” for doing what he promised her he wouldn’t do on “a question of ethics,” it strikes me, sadly, that Ms. De Rooy’s outrage is unfortunately misplaced. As all the higher attributes of human decency are founded upon being truthful, decent people — like Sylvia — who are lied to rightfully feel a sense of ethical betrayal. The problem with Sylvia’s having “expected better of you, Richard,” is that we are absolutely not dealing with either an ethical or a decent person here.
The NCJ’s own Ryan Burns recently wrote an article describing the man as “the disgraced Richard Salzman.” While certainly accurate, “surly cur” would be a far more apt description. Those who have dealt with him know his form of politics is attack-dog blood sport, forcefully engaging not merely in lying but badgering, beleaguering and bullying anyone opposed to that which he advances.
This is a man who has introduced into Humboldt County politics crafty push polling, professional out-of-area consultants, and advanced forms of character assassination. The creeping consequence of this has been a metropolitan-style guttering of electioneering rhetoric, the slick obfuscation of issues, and ever-spiraling campaign costs. Our county’s once-decent, rural style of electoral democracy increasingly resembles a knife fight in a phone booth, to everyone’s detriment (except, doubtless gleefully, his own).
Lest anyone think my position is one of sour grapes (which will be the inevitable canine spin to come), let me point out that this is a man who once wrote a letter to a Humboldt County newspaper, praising himself and his work, and dishonestly signing it with the name of his dog. I do not apologize for my disgust at his degrading behavior, clearly neither would Ms. De Rooy, nor should anyone.
The true insult and betrayal of his pernicious conduct is that all of us are now stuck with what the son of a bitch has done to our county and, as Ms. De Rooy’s letter so well demonstrates, will shamelessly continue to do.
Paul Hagen, Arcata
This article appears in The Yurok Grift.
I am extremely disturbed that Paul Hagen has used my letter as a jumping off point for his vicious, disturbing, ad hominem rant. In my letter I expressed my distress at one action taken by Richard Salzmann. Hagen, on the other hand, chooses to smear and totally besmirch the character of Salzmann in an ugly and very personal manner and uses my name to back his smear up.
Hagens description of Humboldt as a haven of decent politics till Salzmann came along and turned everything into a “knife fight” is, of course, utter nonsense. Politics in Humboldt have never been anything like idyllic, the good old boy, back room dealings were the standard and to some extent still are.
Hagens last paragraph is so far over the hill, so far removed from any reality, that I have to wonder at the Journals decision to publish his letter.
Hagen comes across as a seriously disturbed person with a huge ax to grind and I want no part of it.
In other words, Sylvia – it only matters when it affects YOU.
I like the fact that Paul doesn’t play gentle with things which are disturbing myself. And Paul has been in positions to have more indepth dealings with the fall-out from campaigns than others. Thank you Paul. Perhaps Mr. Salzman would care to defend himself, in print, with the appropriate name. That would be the reasonable way to proceed.
I agree that Salzman disgraced himself by submitting letters to the editor under false names. I don’t know what he did to Paul Hagen so I don’t have a position in what seems to now to have been deflected to a quarrel between Sylvia & Paul.
But to attribute the entire decline of local political dialog to Salzman is just too much — not that I’m so worried about Salzman — but it leaves out the Arkley/Hum CPR/HELP/HAR/big timber/big landowner hit team, not to mention the Humboldt Mirror (or are they the same?). C’mon now! Let’s give credit where credit is due.
Thank you Sylvia DeRooy for doing the right thing here.
To his credit, Mr. Salzman immediately offered you a public apology.
We can add Hagen’s bitter and vague “he said, she said” accusations to those of Durham, Hoover, and others.
Anyone with Hagen’s local tenure claiming:
“Our county’s once-decent, rural style of electoral democracy”
Is a liar.
That “decent” legacy has needlessly and greedily contributed to making our rural area among the worst per-capita in affordable housing, poverty, crime, health, drug abuse, road fatalities, and homelessness in California and the nation.
God forbid that the victims of that legacy can have a “bulldog” of our own to put an occasional liberal-democrat into office for every 2-3 dozen right-wingers the development community has funded, and won, forever.
Richard, is that you writing about yourself again?
Whew! This is exhausting! It’s always amazing to me how nasty people can get when the stakes are really small!
It saddened me to read my friend Paul Hagen’s comments about Richard Salzman. I know and respect both Paul and Richard, and I must correct one serious error in Paul’s letter. While it is true that several recent local political campaigns have hired outside-of-Humboldt political consultants, Richard Salzman had nothing to do with that. In fact, he advised against it. I have worked as a paid Advertising Consultant on dozens of local political campaigns over the past three decades, so I have some insight into who is working for whom. I’m proud to say that outside consultants do not understand Humboldt County politics and my personal dealings with several of them have only reinforced my belief. The voters in Humboldt don’t buy the Big City sales pitch.
“surly cur” indeed.
With all due respect, Mr. Graves, if you do indeed “respect” Richard, then it’s a damn good thing you let us know. If that’s the kind of “politicking” you practice, you probably should not be practicing either.
Meanwhile, on Rose’s blog, she has a post headlined, “Kiss your neighborhood watch programs goodbye.” This of course is her reaction to the charges against Mr. Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin killing. In that post, a commenter calls our President a “black supremacist.” And it’s worth noting that Rose don’t allow comments to be posted without her review and approval. Apparently this one made the cut.
Roses tend to thrive when buried under shit and toxic chemicals.
Rose and her blog are self-generating in that respect.
And in case you think that the 9:40 commenter is exaggerating, check it out.
Check out her follow up comment, accusing Obama of attempting to blame whitey in the court of public opinion.
Holy shit, is the woman ever a racist!!!
“The voters in Humboldt don’t buy the Big City sales pitch.”
The voters in Humboldt represent less than half the eligible, unregistered residents, according to the U.S. Census….for over a generation.
As tens of millions more Americans are poised to join today’s 48 million working in full-time poverty, all that nonsense about “being nice”, compromising with our adversaries and always remaining “positive”, (making the 2 parties indistinguishable and irrelevant), we can expect to need an army of “General Patton’s” to take this nation back from a recalcitrant minority of greedheads from Wall Street to Main Street.
“Bulldogs” like Salzman will be seen as mere puppies in the inevitable class wars spreading throughout the world.
The apologists for Richard Salzman and his sleazy tactics basically argue that the ends justify the means. There is no ethical line that can’t be crossed when attacking your opponents.That’s lame.
This isn’t about class warfare. Richard doesn’t just attack those who are on the other side of the political spectrum. Many of his victims are fellow progressives.
And so far, all of your unbridled bitterness is based upon one “he-said, she-said” accusation that soon morphed into “examples” in the week-long bitter-fest you indulged yourself on DeRooy’s previous NCJ editorial.
There’s no honor in exaggerating your personal accusation. And, in accordance with your “high moral standards” your ends do not justify the means!
At least Salzman apologized immediately for his offense.
Hagen’s “example” is equally vague and relies on ancient history of the most pitiful of “ethical violations”.
As an admitted person of questionable character you should be more mindful of the human scale of ethical violations, less you become the monster you abhor….(see Sylvia Derooy’s articulate response above).
You, Hagen, Hoover, and others are perfect illustrations of the insurmountable pettiness that keeps liberal democrats from advancing in local politics.
As a “journalist” the amount of energy you publicly feed your personal and petty hatred is astounding.
I am retired, and have the time to observe and comment on the seemingly boundless, malevolent, and petty hypocrisy paralyzing liberals.
It really doesn’t take much energy to post a comment on a blog. Also, I don’t hate Salzman, I just don’t like his tactics.
I think it’s wrong to anonymously smear people with false and/or misleading information. Richard himself even knows this is wrong, which is why he does so anonymously. He doesn’t want his name connected to the smears.
Anonymous blog posts aside, the lesson should be fairly obvious for future HumCo candidates: if you’d like your campaign to be about Richard Salzman instead of you and your policies, hire Richard Salzman.
Several dozen comments in on this site, nobody’s bothered to mention the candidate he’s working for, Susan Adams. That should be frustrating for Susan Adams. He’s an employee. She’s trailing deep third in the polls.
All the phone bank skills in the world wont make up for that. What’s more, nobody answers their home phone anymore.
Sorry for the interruption. Please return to anonymously blog posting about ethics.
“It really doesn’t take much energy to post a comment on a blog. Also, I don’t hate Salzman, I just don’t like his tactics.” (Jack Durham).
What a relief that Jack Durham of the McKinleyville Press doesn’t hate the person he just spent days-on-end calling a “Douche-bag, asshole, scumbag” because he’s pretty sure Salzman “said bad things about me anonymously”?
How wonderfully “ethical” of Durham! Maybe he can construct his own “Pulitzer Float” to ride in this year’s Rhododendron parade?
Since “ethical tactics” are obviously his specialty, surely Durham is anxious to explain how his singular “suspected personal experience” with Salzman expanded into “experiences”?
Or, how the obvious hours he spent reading comments and authoring detailed responses on DeRooy’s NCJ editorial “don’t take much energy”.
The close relationship between time and energy have been known long before Einstein.
So far, the nature of continuing personal attacks against Salzman take pettiness to unfathomable levels.
As DeRooy pointed out, it’s a disgraceful indulgence by those who would call themselves journalists or attorneys.
Wow, this thread is Deja Vu all over again.
In fairness, I don’t think the emergence of ideological machine politics in Humboldt can be laid at Salzman’t feet. That process got underway in the early 90s. Salzman did take it to a whole new level.
Actually, my criticisms of Salzman are not based on an attack on me personally. It was an attack on someone else. At the time it happened, I made numerous phone calls to Salzman asking him to explain himself. I wanted to hear his justification for his own actions. He never returned my calls. I’d still like to talk to him about it, but he won’t talk to me. (This is my unfathomable, petty, disgracefully indulgent blog comment of the day.)
Alas,
I’ll cut you some slack. You don’t actually know the things that Salzman has done, therefore all these criticisms must seem baffling.
“Salzman did take (local ideological politics) it to a whole new level.”
With what?
Writing letters to the editor under others names?
Making insulting comments?
Failure to reveal his affiliations?
So far, he sounds like a visionary for the blogs, an environment that his detractors are right at home in.
Despite being controversial, his ability to raise funds made liberal candidates competitive against a corrupt, small town cabal…people Ive known for 40 years…they make Salzman look like a pussycat, and they protect their own while the liberals with wounded egos take public butcher knives to each other over petty, personal BS.
Thanks Durham, but I don’t need my “slack cut”. All anyone can determine for certain from you, Hoover and Hagen are painfully few “criticisms” that are identically petty, he-said, she said innuendo, peppered with enough bile to tell readers far more about you three, than about Salzman!
“Vicious, disturbing, ad hominem rants from seriously disturbed individual(s) with a huge ax to grind”. (Sylvia DeRooy).
My sentiments exactly.
Alas, taking some disjointed segments of what I wrote and pasting them together by throwing in a word or two of your own and then joining them by placing them in quotes is a dishonest and inaccurate portrayal of what I said and intended. You and Durham and others are grinding your personal axes and I do not appreciate my words being misquoted for your own purposes.
As for Rose, it should be, by this time, quite unnecessary to comment on her posts.
I’d take Sylvia De Rooy more serious if she didn’t support companies that are well known for employee abuse, low wages and rule through fear.
If she can not do enough research to make sure that the companies she buys from are fair, how can we trust her judgement on anything else?
Since when is the Anon-r-Mouse concerned about “employee abuse, low wages and rule through fear”?
What has become most apparent from this thread is the lack of journalistic integrity among the the alleged ‘journalists” that have posted.
Yes, Mr McNally, in between your sophomoric contributions to local cage lining and fish wrapping material YOU seem quite intent on beating an eight year old non-issue into the floor.
Mr Durham’s complete lack of contributions through his postings in “the weekly wipe” speak for themselves as does his image as a self-made victim. He and and Mr. Hoover make a wonderful set of matching bookmarks in that respect.
Mr. Mielke’s self-indulgent weekly postings in the NJC have done much to squander what little respect NJC hadn’t flushed away before his ascendance in it’s ranks. Jumping on board here to slam
a public poster is a new low, even for him.
Can NJC readers now look forward to a rehash of the absurd over reaction that “nuked” one of the few talented contributors at your weekly, Bob Doran, for failing to mention that his wife was involved in a tea party he covered?
You “journalists” are absolutely pathetic.
I think you’re right Sylvia.
It was inappropriate, to borrow your exact quotes, combined out of context, to other identical (if not far more hateful) examples than Hagen provided you, for whom your quotes were singularly intended.
I should have used your lively, apt wording without quotes and without your name attached, as I had referred to in my earlier post above.
I apologize.
However, I include your long NCJ editorial to be equally petty, certainly unworthy of the public attention you hoped to draw from it. Salzman made it clear that he was perfectly willing to apologize. Had you contacted him personally for an apology?
Thus, your NCJ editorial read like more vindictive payback between a paralyzed liberal community…so beaten down and demoralized that some “liberals” are even willing to organize committees to put an end to “Occupy Eureka” regardless of their Constitutional right to be there.
Is my indulgence here, in begging you folks to leave the personal attacks to our opponents, equally petty and harmful?
Maybe, maybe not.
This is the gift that keeps on giving and giving.
Thank you, random, strongly opinionated, anonymous blog posters for your thinkings about all the stuff you know but can’t quite stick a name to. And the ethics. That, too.
Anywho… local candidates… hire Richard Salzman. He knows about stuff, too. Frequently anonymously, as well. We’re well over a 100 comments deep talking about him instead of the nice lady from Marin who’s paying him money to meet people in Humboldt. As whatever-the-hell-whoever-the-hell-couldn’t-bother-to-put-a-name-to-his-or-her-analysis-sophomoric-writers-he-or-she-would-do-a-better-job-than alludes to… we’ll be talking about Richard Salzman’s integrity eight years from now, as well.
If anyone wonders why folks in the news industry care… it’s because they spend their careers attempting to relay truths to society. And when political folks like Richard Salzman lie to affect public opinion, news folks get mad about people like Richard Salzman using fake names and email addresses to lie to their readership. And they’ll remember when that happens and point out to local – in this case – progressives, that to hire a Richard Salzman who already been busted for lying and breaking that social contract, runs counter to the stated political mission of the progressive movement. About the truth and the making of a more open, honest society. You don’t get there by dropping a dime that your boss’s opponent is a drunk, all surreptitiously, like. It’s a fucked up way to get your guy elected.
It’s, like, opposite, man. And there’s no ancient history. It’s baggage. Dick earned it. He’ll carry it around and around. Much like how this thread spins… around and around.
Please… carry on anonymous blog posters about your deeper knowledge of ethics. Don’t forget to add a cute fake name.
And local candidates… when Richard Salzman shows up on your roster… these issues will come up again. And again. And again. Even if it makes anonymous blog posters mad at people who put their name on their stuff.
And publishers wonder why they have to keep soliciting new “partners” to shore up diminishing interest in their product and inject capital in their floundering enterprises.
Your one-trick pony ihas become a tired, toothless old nag, Terrence.
Rose posts under her own name. The anonymous shitbird (9:25, above) lacks Rose’s courage and conviction. It’s as simple as that.
That’s because I’m not the one pretending to be a conscientious and credible journalist, Joel.
You and Rose are.
Anonymous blogs provide petty complainers with endless supplies of anonymity to bemoan.
Good on you!
Thank you Durham, McNally, and Hoover for helping explain why our community newspapers are shrinking. You indulge yourselves in unbelievably hostile pettiness while readers must search for Ellen Taylor’s periodic editorials just to discover how many of our local neighbors were foreclosed on last year.
Impressive solidarity by the fake-name cringers. Salzman is their Elvis!
Impressive solidarity by real-named “journalists” over-indulging in unbelievably hostile pettiness while Rome burns.
Vicious, disturbing, ad hominem rants, based upon the most trivial of “human ethics violations”, come across as seriously disturbed people with a huge ax to grind.
That Hoover now needs to squeeze some solace out of characterizing his critics as “Salzman lovers”, sounds exactly like the dishonest tactics he accuses Salzman of maliciously perpetrating!
I won’t expect an apology….your real name is at stake!
All I know is that Salzman has been a good fundraiser for liberal candidates against an old entrenched political machine, he used others names to author biting editorials before blogs caught-on, and he broke his promise to Sylvia. I sat with him at a dinner table with many others in 2008. He’s entertaining like most people can be.
He can also be a jerk, and say bad things about others?….God forbid! Using your real names does not magically transform that into insidious violations of human ethics!
Altogether, your team’s 2-3 additional criticisms of unsubstantiated pettiness goes far beyond reason.
Just checked out Rose Welsh’s blog. It appears she has dedicated a large portion of it to Salzman?
Someone obviously has WAY too much free time on their hands, jeesh!
What you’re really saying is that you have no idea what Salzman actually did, but whatever it was it was trivial, so it doesn’t really matter. So, based on what you don’t know, the ethics violations are not a problem.
I just hope Salzman doesn’t get elected to congress. Wait a minute…. Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s not the candidate. My mistake. I got confused.
You got “confused” before, or after you turned the issue into a “Scumbag, asshole, sleazebag hate-fest”?
Nevertheless, I must agree with Jack Durham.
Jack Durham, Hagen, McNally and Hoover have revealed far more about themselves than their unsubstantiated, petty Salzman-trivia that they have chronically failed to expose.
I know even less about what’s happening to my neighbors and community in the largely unreported New Gilded Age.
It must be awful to be ambulance chasers AND so bitter while glued to this blog.
thus spaketh the anonymous blog poster glued to this blog.
unrevealed… but who really cares, anyway?
Terrence with nothing nice to say once again…so goes his policy of refusing to respond to “anons” because they never seem to have anything nice to say.
““Bulldogs” like Salzman will be seen as mere puppies in the inevitable class wars spreading throughout the world.”
Yep! These confused haters are only demonstrating that they’re stuck in petty drama land, or that the wool is already pulled over their eyes so thick they have no clue what the big picture looks like. Forever chumps.
“thus spaketh the anonymous blog poster glued to this blog. unrevealed… but who really cares, anyway?”
Vee care! Und vee must verk togetha Terrance to stop zee anonymous persistipants!
Zeig Heil!
No, No Hern Hemmler, it is my communist patriots who must know who’s posting anonymously!
I think Paul Hagen’s honesty is commendable…and…since this person did sign his letters with his dog’s name…I guess one could literally see the “Son of a Bitch” statement…I feel that all this has been given too much space…politics is always dirty….given that…let the games begin!
I’m just glad that after nearly 10 years of mismanagement, the DA finally admitted that there was mismanagement, recanted his Grand Jury testimony denying the mismanagement, and hired an outside consultant to properly manage grant funding in the office. It’s a huge, albeit expensive, step forward. Even Salzman must be happy about this. Right? Our DA may finally be on the right track when it comes to managing his funding sources. (I assume everyone read the story I’m referring to and knows what this is about.)
I hate to interrupt your obsession Jack Durham, but I didn’t want you to miss more comeuppance in today’s NCJ letters that further expose the lunacy of your Salzman hate-fest.