Thursday, August 24, 2006

Lamont, Swan, Slime & Evil

This is now old news, but I'm going to comment anyway. Would have commented sooner, only I was away when most of it happened. In reading through online articles about the incident, I noticed that a lot of newspapers in other states and countries referred to Waterbury as a gritty industrial city. It's been decades since that was an accurate description.

Shortly after Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to Lamont, Lamont's campaign manager, Tom Swan, was quoted as describing Waterbury as the place where "the forces of slime meet the forces of evil." Waterbury has proven to be a Lieberman stronghold, which adds a greater sense of pettiness to Swan's comment. Swan claims that he was referring to ex-Mayor Giordano as the slime and ex-Governor Rowland as the evil. All other things aside, I think that's a terrible analogy. Giordano is both slime and evil. Compared to Giordano, Rowland is a bastion of goodness.

Swan's derogatory comment is a slam to all of Waterbury. He may claim that he was referring to specific individuals, but it seems pretty obvious that he was putting down the entire city and everyone who lives in it.

Swan initially apologized to Mayor Jarjura with a comment about how he usually doesn't associate Jarjura with corruption. Okay.... interesting use of "usually".... interesting that his apology only applied to Jarjura, not to the rest of us living in this city.

Lamont has since done some apologizing of his own, but hasn't gone further than to say that the comments were "unfortunate." It certainly gives the impression that Lamont doesn't care much about the people who live in Waterbury.

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