Perhaps Gordon and admin deserve a small pass for this debacle. Clearly, this group immediately recognized that the content of Diller's comments was directed toward job performance and expectations and had nothing to do with race or discrimination and thus inherently knew that the best response was to let the matter quietly pass. For if the heart of the issue really did capture the public's attention, PR would have to create a spin (as has now occurred) to deflect the political damage to the Gordon Administration that would also justify the lack of response to a council member's request that to most members of the public seems reasonable. Real Time example number #1: Foxfest and Wilmington Mayor Williams.
It's a shame that the 3rd, 4th, and 5th parties are not as reality-oriented. Or perhaps, they are and this eye-soar is an intentional attack on Diller b/c she is a woman in politics.
In the end, it doesn't really matter what I think. I'm just a constituent who sees a situation in the newspaper that appears rather contrived. Ultimately, the voting public has the power. If we believe Diller to be an ineffective council member, we'll vote her out. That results of this future election will be the only absolute in this tale. Until then, having lived in the glorious (sarcasm) limelight of politics and having had a member of county council cast shadows upon my character, I continue to believe that there is a war on women in politics and power. Every elected seat that a woman earns is one more lost by the good ole' boys. As the presence of women in politics grows, the threat to established political marriages becomes more real with every election. It's time we see the forest for the trees.
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Seldom do I laugh at matters of council. But, this morning's NJ had me rolling!
The Set-Up - Council and the Gorden Administration are at eachother's throats, again. Gorden's designee in reference to the meeting and topic - building houses on the old Pike Creek Golf Course - called in the NAACP after Diller, who is white, female, and an equal opportunity-blaster of incompetence, admonished the job performance of the county executive's designee for failing to brief the county council on the legal side of the land use issue.
The NJ ferreted out the complaint and polled certain council members as to their opinion of Diller's behavior:
Jea Street, the council’s other black member, called Diller’s behavior “outrageous.”“I’ll just leave it at that,” he said. http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20131017/NEWS02/310170052/Councilwoman-Diller-says-Gordon-administration-waging-war-women-
If you know Jea, you know he has a rich history of histrionics during the public meetings of other bodies. He's inflammatory, at best, and a dangerous man with a mic. You can't hate Jea, he keeps folks on their toes. But, come on, he's the poster child for "Outrageous!"
Can you tell, we're on Diller's Team Women! Sorry Tom.
11 comments:
Not much of what you wrote is true. Can you be seriously following a News Journal story verbatim? You of all people should know better.
Ok Nancy, what part of my post is not true?
Sorry, Dillers outburst was out of line and she out of control. She should apologize.
The NAACP acted because Norman Oliver got the word out on Community Crossfire for the last three weeks. He ran her shit fit at the beginning and end of every show and called the community out for not getting mad about her behavior. Gordon is not even friendly with Norman Oliver. Gordon did NOT get the NAACP to do what they did.
And you have the facts wrong about the briefing and why Republican Developer stooge Janet Kilpatrick was kept out of a strategy meeting held for a decision to file a clarification request with the Superior Court with attorney Max Walton - Not the County Attorney who isn't handling the case and couldn't have given the Council a full briefing even if he wanted to. Ad Nauseum.
I don't see how you could get that interpretation based on the NJ article. Cause basically this article says that Diller is being attacked b/c she took a county personnel to task for refusing to do his job to reasonable satisfaction and that as a result she's been accused of being racist by the NAACP b/c the county rep. attributed words to her "you people" that the NJ reporter couldn't find on the audio tape. I can't gauge her tone or volume during the meeting from the article, but the content seems fair.
Actually, the fall-out, the tactics to discredit her, these actions come straight out of the destroy-anything-that-threatens-the-good-old-boy-network playbook. Ironically, allegations similar to these were oft repeated against caucasion, female board members in the Christina School District by none other than Mr. Jea Street himself.
Women in roles of authority are diminished at every turn by men of power. Lord forbid a woman attempts to hold a man accountable. So Diller has a meltdown. One woman. Look at the response? Doesn't it strike you as odd? Where was the outrage when Jea Street went after two Jewish women?
Diller's rant had everything to do with expectations of the job one in a certain position should do and nothing to do with race. And she absolutely nailed it when she boiled the issue down to a war on women. I'm tired of politicians throwing down the race card and hijacking the narrative to create a disproportionate response in an effort to further diminish legitimate concerns.. I've lived this shared reality and I'm glad Diller took the narrative back. She won't get the publicity that the NAACP will. But, she's fighting back for all women in roles of authority whether they agree with her views or have divergent ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG4KvXBXl1E
LISTEN since you haven't bothered.
Diller yelled at me back when she first got elected and I met with her about county issues. Diller screamed and threw her notebooks across the room in front of me and my colleague Chuck Mulholland and her aide, now Newark City Secretary Renee Bensley because she didn't want to hear any more of our - polite but firm - criticism of her BFF Chris Coons then County Exec.
Don't give me this shit about war on women, thank you very much. It is all crap.
Nancy, you and I usually land on the same side of an issue.
I hadn't listened b/c I didn't "bother." I hadn't listened b/c I've been at AI DuPont for much of the last two weeks with my daughter and prior to that wasn't aware of the issue. And I made it clear, my statements were made solely based on the veteran journalism of the News Journal - statements that were directed at Mr. Street who has no cred in calling another elected official's outburst "outrageous." Now, we've moved way beyond that and begun a great debate. And I now have listened to the audio. And I hear something missing in it:
At 1:23, Diller raises her voice and changes her tone. It's audio, not video. But, you can hear something happening in the seconds leading up to the beginning of her angry statement. I would want to know what that something is - I'd want to know what were the actions and expressions of those whom she was addressing during the first part of her comment? I'd want to know this b/c I have made angry statements from the dais, statements that started calm and grew angry when the people I was addressing stopped paying attention, started laughing, were leaning talking to someone else, or were just plain giving me disrespectful looks or staring off in the distance chewing bubblegum.
In the absence of that something, I chalk Diller's very short statement up to being a frustrated human. When George Evans (CSD Board) goes off like that, nobody makes a case against him. When Jea Street screams at the rest of the CSD Board, anyone who attempts to defend him/her self is immediately branded as discriminatory.
We have different perspectives. I lived the double standard to which Diller's being held. I'm sorry that seems like crap to you.
I simply did not ever see what you experienced as an elected representative on my school board, Elizabeth, as having the SLIGHTEST gender factor.
Street was an equal opportunity bully. I still say this is a bullshit premise. And unless Diller has a primary or a general election primary, I am stuck with her do nothing, follow along, ass.
So now you are moderating my comments?
No, Nancy, I am not moderating your personal comments. There is a blogger feature that I utilize to decrease the amount of spam getting through the filter. After a set number days, I think seven, new comments on ANY post convert to requiring approval to publish. You probably didn't notice in the past b/c few of my posts every carry comment conversations back and forth for more than a day or two.
plenty of misogyny on CSD board in the past and some in the present.
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