Yesterday I took issue with Ben Ferguson’s work. He does the morning show on WBAP. I really didn’t want to write anything more about him, but this morning, against my better judgment, I listened to a segment and feel the need to comment on a couple things he said about D Magazine.
His guest this morning, a little after 9, was the mayor of Rockwall, David Sweet. I spent about 15 minutes on the phone with Sweet yesterday. He’s a reasonable fellow who is really proud of his city. We agreed that in a week or so, I’ll join him for a mayoral tour of the town. He promised to take me to the new Londoner, off the historic courthouse square. He joked that we’d need police protection on this tour. I’m looking forward to it.
So I tuned in to hear Mayor Sweet. He made his points about Rockwall and about what I wrote, and he made them fairly. Ferguson did something else entirely. I am paraphrasing from memory here. I wish I’d recorded the segment; I didn’t. Ferguson said that D Magazine says everyone in Rockwall is an “arsehole” because a Tea Partier had unseated Ralph Hall. Not even close to the truth.
I did write that a Tea Partier had unseated Hall. It has been brought to my attention that I got that wrong. Let this serve as a correction. While John Ratcliffe received backing from the Tea Party, and while he has said he’s still undecided about whether he’ll join the House’s Tea Party Caucus, he does not technically belong to the Tea Party. We could argue about what a “Tea Partier” is, whether one who parties with the Tea Party could be considered a Tea Partier, but for now let’s not do that.
So I wrote that Hall lost the election. I wrote that the Harbor development had empty storefronts and a broken fountain (which it does and did). I wrote that there’s more action to be found in Rockwall’s historic square, which is where I got a haircut. The barber happened to have cut Hall’s hair for many years. He let it be known that he liked Hall more than Ratcliffe, whom he called an asshole. He also said the chief of police was an asshole. I quoted the barber because I thought he was a gas. He wasn’t angry or combative, like so many of the people who have called and emailed in the last 24 hours (one woman said that I ought to shoot myself). That is what I wrote.
This morning on his show, after claiming that D Magazine says everyone in Rockwall is an “arsehole,” Ferguson said that D Magazine does not support “men and women in uniform,” a group that presumably includes the U.S. Army, firefighters, and the Coast Guard. He eventually wrapped up the segment by saying, “If you wear a badge, you know what D Magazine thinks of you.”
I feel sympathy for Ferguson. It must be exhausting for him to gin himself up over nothing every morning.
