Will Rogers
I don't have a problem when readers dispute something I've written. I
encourage it. I've made mistakes, and on matters of opinion, I've even
had my mind changed a time or two. But it is annoying to contend with
demands I defend something I did not write. It comes up much more often
than one might expect.
A recent example has been publicized so much, it's only fair I
acknowledge it. It stems from a column about the latest ballot measure
from the oft-confused folk on a committee called Restore Our Airport
Rights. My list of episodes demonstrating ROAR's lack of credibility has
been challenged by the mouths of ROAR. Ironically, in the process they
provide more evidence of their proclivities.
It apparently began when one of the people ROAR lists among its top
donors addressed the City Council to rail against something she said I
wrote. Peggy Nudo introduced herself as a mortgage broker, an expert in
property valuations. She assured everyone watching that she has 200 real
estate agents backing her, and lambasted me for supposedly having written
that proximity to an airport does not affect home values.
Later, there were similar mentions, and last week another ROARer went
even further. In his time before the council and cameras, he demanded
"the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Excerpting my
list of ROAR's goofs, he appeared to read from a column. He said I wrote
that the goofs included ROAR's "discredited claims about area property
values plunging with an expanded airport."
That didn't meet the speaker's claimed standard for truth. To words I
did write he added others I didn't write, making the quote fit the charge
he was leveling.
*
Nudo and the others may have forgotten or blocked out that she and
companion Bill Orr, another ROAR donor, visited several public meetings
to announce property values near the airport were plunging, a panic
supposedly driven by the community's opposition to City Hall's proposals.
Other ROARers, who were gathering signatures door-to-door for ROAR's
petition, then testified to seeing record numbers of "For Sale" signs and
abandoned homes. They said angry residents kept telling them of desires
to flee neighborhoods doomed by City Hall, dreams supposedly crushed by
tumbling prices. Who could blame ROARers for trying to forget all that?
Touting their expertise, they even gave figures "proving" prices in
the airport's zip code had crashed. Par for ROAR's course, they used the
