I can just see the thought-bubble above Eric Kleefeld's head as he submitted his libelous and fictitious column: \This is the big one. I'm gonna cause a scandal so big, I'll take down an elected official. Watergate? Hmph. I've got King-gate! This is the one they'll all be talking about.""
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, Eric. Your rendition of last Friday is a strange hodgepodge of drunken half-memories and outright fabrications. Although, I must admit, you tell the best kind of lie-the one that has just enough truth to make it plausible. In so doing, you accomplished what you set out to do: tarnish me. You know as well as anyone that the retraction never runs on the front page (and similarly, that my response would run on Friday with half the readership of your Thursday accusation).
One always has a hesitation to even respond to outrageous accusations like yours, for fear of dignifying and spreading them. I write today out of concern that, unanswered, your lies will leave you glibly satisfied and these rumors swirling.
So, let's start with the truths on which your lies are founded. I was indeed upset with your blatant and gross mischaracterization of what happened at the Council meeting April 20. When I approached you with my dissatisfaction, you conceded (in a private conversation that I wouldn't have ever used had you not decided that what we discuss in private should become public) that you hadn't even attended the meeting. You admitted not knowing anything close to the whole story and writing a column indicting some and beatifying others based on an account of the meeting you read in a newspaper. Note to all readers: Don't believe everything you read in a newspaper.
And yes, I accused you, rightfully, of terribly sloppy journalism. You called Ald. Mike Verveer a ""hero"" for ""attempt[ing] to pass a sensible substitute amendment that would allow smoking after 10 p.m., when a place ceases to be a restaurant and takes on the culture of a bar."" This, notably, is an amendment that a constituent suggested to me, and that I co-sponsored with Verveer, along with the other two amendments to create sensible exemptions to the smoking ban. As for me, well, I ""sold us out, voting to do away with our personal freedoms."" Eric, you didn't attend the meeting, and so I suppose it was a bit mean to blame you for so grossly mischaracterizing what took place there.
Now to your lies. We both had a few drinks that evening, and so maybe there's more grandiose, drunken daydreaming in them than outright libelous malice. Did I yell at you for writing a sloppy and misrepresentative column? Yes. Did I tell you that sloppy journalism would hurt you in your ambitious journalism goals? Yes. Did I in any way ever threaten to personally interfere with those goals? Absolutely not.
Let's make sure this one's said again for the record: I never, ever made anything resembling a threat to your (or anyone else's) future. As you wrote in your article, any notions I have of interfering in your career would be as arrogant and foolish as your thinking that you could ""take me down"" by fabricating a scandal. Eric, it's no secret that you wanted to run for my seat. That would have been an appropriate way to keep me from elected office. What you've done here is nothing short of libel and nothing short of scandalous. Shame on you, and shame on your editors.
I get criticized every day in this job. I'm not immune to it, sometimes it stings, and I do on occasion get upset when I feel that my position on an issue has been misrepresented. I was called a ""pot-smoking underachiever"" by an opponent during the campaign, and I get called much worse every day on Web sites and on the street. But I deal with it, and I never use my position as an alder or a citizen to threaten others to get what I want, politically or personally. That's not my style.
Eric, there are several big differences between you and Bob Woodward. Not only was he a writer who had evidence, witnesses, talent and decent editors, he documented a scandal instead of fabricating one.
If I really did want to end your career in journalism, I would do two things. First, I would invent a demonstrably false scandal about someone I didn't like. Second, I would submit it to your editors under your name and hope it got printed.
Maybe you should start looking into some creative writing programs.
