I hate partisanship and have no problem calling it out. This week, Danville City C0uncilman Fred Shanks got ambushed with a biased comment/question that’s so bad that I’ve got to feature it here.
As you know, Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan came to Danville on Monday and some loyal Democrats took the time to stage their own demonstration. My friend Sheila Baynes was one of the people involved on it and posted about it on her Facebook page. Fred Shanks attended the Ryan rally and asked Sheila about how her protest went. Sheila answered and proved that Republicans & Democrats can get along. This was a happy story until Dale Jordan waltzed into the message thread and dumped this load of crap question at Fred…
Fred, if I remember correctly you and David Luther were against the homeless shelter downtown… are you still anti-compassion for the less fortunate?
Stay Classy, Dale Jordan. I couldn’t believe that somebody from Danville was capable of doing DC-like political spin like that out of nowhere. Fred’s opposition to the downtown homeless shelter was based solely on location. I gave him hell about that in a HalifaxCentral article and history has shown that the House of Hope homeless shelter has been a perfect neighbor to the downtown area. That being said, there’s no way that you can pull “anti-compassion for the less fortunate” out of that. I immediately called horsecrap on Dale Jordan’s question but she never responded to me regarding her ridiculous question, only saying that she had tried to contact Fred about his opposition but never got a reply. Fred took the high road on this with his reply…
Good evening folks. Sorry I missed this exchange. I wish I could respond individually to some of the the (sic) comments. In respect to all, I will respond only to one, but there are inaccuracies in several. There was a comment above that I was contacted about something and never responded. I have no recollection of any correspondence to which i did not respond. And I have no recollection of any correspondence from the accuser, who I don’t think I have met. I do try to respond to all issues I take a public position on. Finally, I appreciate those who tried to represent the facts on my behalf. Peace.
Fred Shanks “gets it”.
I’ve got good Danville friends who are staunch Danville Democrats and they’d never stoop so low to try something like this. Dale Jordan is a partisan hack who should apologize for her question.
Oh come on! You know this kind of thing happens all the time. Don’t you ever look at remarks on the Danville Register & Bee! They get way off track, I know because I have tried to put comments back on track. You just picked out one to take offense to. I paid no attention to the comment and I bet, based on his comments, Fred did not either. She did not call him stupid, the village idiot, or some of the other names we see on-line all the time. *Of note, I was just in a group picture in which we were informing citizens about the funding for Robertson Bridge and someone posted a commented that were the “village idiots”. * Which is worse? I may be a lot of things but idiot is not one of them.
That being said, I do prefer when comments stay on the subject at hand. Dale is a wonderful, very enthusiastic and compassionate woman. My guess is that she saw Fred’s comment and it made her think of the homeless shelter. Fred’s a politician and he can handle himself-as shown by his comments.
I am one that likes to get a good discussion going and I try to make my point while remaining cordial. Would be great if everyone did that but it doesn’t happen. With the comments I have heard or read about me I can only imagine the things said about me that I know nothing about. I was taught to respect people and it is just in me. I try to respect everyone and treat people the way I want to be treated. These days, people can hide behind false names and say anything without being accountable.
So, Bruce, if you are hunting for nastiness on FB I am sure you can find them!