For eleven years, I lived in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Hampton Roads is the collective name for the Norfolk/ Virginia Beach area. I follow the television and radio stations, and the local paper, the Virginian-Pilot, on Twitter and Facebook. I have been gone from there eleven years now, but stuff that happens there still interests me.
So today, I was on Facebook, and read this article from the Virginian-Pilot. A Virginia Beach city councilman named Bill DeSteph wrote a letter to the mayor of New York City, saying "the citizens of Virginia Beach and the Commonwealth of Virginia"(1) are opposed to a plan to build an Islamic community center close to Ground Zero, to be opened on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (view the article--and the actual letter-- here).
Even the mayor of Virginia Beach, Will Sessioms, opposed the action that DeSteph took soley on his own.
Then DeSteph, having taken quite a bit of flak for this, is going to introduce a motion for the entire City Council to oppose the community center's contruction.
DeSteph says in the article that he emailed the letter to about 4000 people and didn't get any negative feedback. Four thousand people in a city that has thousands more than that who live there full time is not a "majority", in my opinion.
First of all, why does some city official in another state care what they do in NYC? Isn't the contruction issue a New York City issue? Yes, it makes national headlines, and people can comment on whether it's the right thing to do or not, but ultimately, it's up to Mayor Bloomberg and/or the planning council to say yay or nay about the project.
It is NOT up to Bill DeSteph in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to say yay or nay. That this man overstepped his bounds is an understatement.
Oh, did I happen to mention that DeSteph is up for re-election in November?
I don't know what this man was thinking, or what he was smoking, or what he was high on when he got this great idea, but do the people of Virginia Beach really need someone like him representing them?
I'm all for thinking outside the box... I do it all the time. But when you write a letter to a public official in another state in such a way that implies that everyone agrees with your view is just plain irresponsible!
That would be like an Oklahoma City city councilperson writing to Arnold Schwarzenegger inferring that all of OKC thinks California was wrong to approve medical marijuana.
And I sit here in my living room in Edmond, America, thinking that Bill DeSteph has lost his rabbit ass mind!
Because it sure reads like he has!
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(1)"Beach official objects to mosque plan, takes heat", Virginian-Pilot, Hampton Roads, VA; June 5, 2010
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/06/beach-official-objects-mosque-plan-takes-heat
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