Today we find on the pages of the Dallas Morning News that Mayor Tom Leppert is a bastion of ethics reform, and the soon-to-be-voted on rules were all his idea.
Let's be clear: Angela Hunt proposed it first. The mayor came in later, acted as if it was his idea, and then tried very hard to ram a watered-down version designed to placate voters through the machinery at City Hall.
So to praise Leppert for this nearly toothless bit of spun sugar is as believable as praising the Pope for the Bible. To rail against Hunt and say she was trying to stop the vote - when it's already been reported in your own paper that it was a) her idea and b) she merely wanted more teeth in the thing - is disingenuous at best and patently misleading.
But it's not a secret anymore that sometimes you guys don't get a say in what goes on the opinion page, that the edict is sent down from another floor. I'm going to give you a benefit of the doubt and pretend that this one - like the Huckabee endorsement - was one of those times.
But this is the part where I tell you all collectively to grow a pair. Yes, I know the employment climate for journalists is frigid and unwelcoming, but seriously - is it going to be any more welcoming if you say, lost your job and had to try to replace it by going to another newspaper, but with only a clippings folder of sycophantic obsolescence?
Your smart readers know what this is, and it doesn't jibe with the board that chose the illegal immigrant as the Texan of the Year, or the one that is against the death penalty.
I know your mothers always said that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Well, I'm imploring you - if you have to say something nice about a situation that isn't, just don't say anything.