February 11, 2010
To the Union Leader
To The Editor:
Your reporter Tom Fahey, who years ago physically assaulted me in the State House (it’s actually on video and is out there on the web somewhere) is wrong when he reports that I refused to discuss my campaign to defend free speech in the New Hampshire House with the Union Leader.
I did no such thing. In fact, I have been writing about this abuse of power by Speaker Terie Norelli and Local and Regulated Revenues Committee Chair Mary Beth Walz for the past two weeks. Publisher Joe W. McQuaid and editorial page director Drew Cline are among the first to get everything I write or say about it, and it’s been posted on redhampshire. I simply refuse to talk with someone who has a history of assault and who never apologized for it (he actually drew blood; and the only reason I didn’t press charges at the time is that I’m such a nice person). The fact that he approached me as I was leaving the State House yesterday with the sarcastic jibe,”Hey, Senator” is further evidence of his malignant intent.
Maybe it’s time Union Leader hires a reporter who doesn’t assault elected officials and then go out of his way to malign them at every opportunity.
Should you choose to run the whole truth behind the crusade to force Speaker Norelli to stop censoring people (totally new ground for a New Hampshire Speaker), you are welcome to print this as an op-ed piece, but then while I’ve had numerous op-ed pieces printed in papers throughout the state in recent years, Mssrs. McQauid and Cline have ignored everything I’ve written for citizens of my own home city. (While censorship is never acceptable from a House Speaker, it’s something we’ve sadly come to expect from your newspaper).
I didn’t enter into this crusade to defend basic liberties for my own benefit. The bill in question wasn’t mine but rather was that of a former Speaker, the current Republican leader, a Salem Rep elected in a 40,000 person district, and a State Senator who served two terms in the United State Congress). I stepped forward not only for them and the people who elected them but also for every member of any minority ever denied a voice, and I might add for Democrats who are sure to attain minority status (and thus risk being censored) next year. Rest assured, I will be just as passionate in defending their rights should a Republican Speaker be unwise enough to attempt to do what Norelli and Walz did.
Newspaper malice is often represented by the pictures used. That certainly is the case with the photo you chose to use of me on page one. It was obviously a file photo, sitting around for use when you wished to make me look bad. How do I know? Because I wasn’t wearing a white tie yesterday; in honor of Speaker Norelli’s tactics, I was wearing a specially purchased Mickey Mouse tie. My portrait is available on the House web site, but then that wouldn’t suit your malignant purposes.
Seldom have so many trees given their lives for such an inside baseball story, especially one so ineptly reported. The tactic of pulling things from consent calendar was something I learned 15 years ago at the feet of former leaders, not Republicans but Democrat masters Rick Trombley and Ray Buckley, so let’s not hear of Democratic complaints. I simply stored it in the back of my head to employ when an injustice was so great that the only option was to “go all in” in protest.
You won’t get away with blaming me for delaying the lyme vote. That could have been special ordered to the start of the calendar at any time. In fact, bill proponent Claudia Chase told me the reason such an attempt was not made is that since it involved an was an attempt to overturn a committee, she needed all the support she could get and didn’t want to alienate Democratic leadership by moving it up (more inside baseball). A good reporter would have known that, but Fahey is probably the most incompetent scribe ever to draw breath in the Don Tibbetts press room (he’s no Norma Love–Love that Norma!).
It was when I pointed out on the House floor that this all could have been settled at 10 a.m.that Democrats booed (the truth hurts!), not as your caption states, when I declared victory.
In fact, it was a victory for people who cherish free speech everywhere. After visiting Bebelplatz for a re-enactment of Josef Goebbels presiding over the burning of 2500 books in Berlin on May 20, 1933, I vowed never idly sit by while freedom of thought is trampled on. I will fight for free speech to my last breath, despite the slings and errors from a thug reporter like Fahey.
The German phrase I quoted on the House floor (from German philosopher Heinrich Heine) translates as, “Where books are burned, so too shall people burn.” Indeed, I have visited numerous sites in and around Berlin where people were literally burned. Another German phrase should serve as a cautionary tale for our times, “Nie Wieder!” Never again should decent people sit back and watch freedoms be trampled.
The Norellis, Faheys, would be petty despots, and newspaper thugs of the world may not heed the caution, but your readers are smart enough to. The good people of New Hampshire are smart enough to.
Sincerely,
Rep. Steve Vaillancourt
Today’s edition of the Manchester Union Leader (“MUL”) reports that starting this Thursday the Distaso, Fahey and Brooks columns will once again be free on-line.