Oops! He Did It Again!

Blair Brooks went to Harvard -- strike one. He's a physician -- strike two. And he lives in Norwich -- strike three.

Sorry for belaboring the baseball metaphor, but it seems appropriate given the gratuitous reference to David Ortiz in the latest mean-spirited, eat-the-rich diatribe the Local Daily Newspaper (LDN) has published under the byline of our Notorious Norwich Neighbor (NNN).

Actually, we loyal LDN readers have been eagerly anticipating this particular dispatch, weary as we are about column after column villifying Norwich as a town full of self-absorbed, nitwit aristocrats. Reading the daily coverage of the controversy in Hanover over whether the high school's crew team should get to build a new boat dock at Wilson's Landing, it seemed high time for an NNN column likewise villifying our sibling municipality across the Connecticut as a town full of self-absorbed, nitwit aristocrats.

Our friend the NNN did not disappoint, but neither could he avoid a few snide asides about Norwich in its capacity as the town that shares Hanover High School, and thus the Hanover High School crew team, with our companions in the bistate Dresden School District. And who better to personify Norwich's contribution to this latest chapter in the NNN rich-get-richer saga than Blair Brooks, in his capacity as president of Friends of Hanover Crew. In this instance, the misdeed involves presiding over an organization that accomplished the remarkable feat of raising $500,000 in just a few weeks, earning the NNN nickname of "Friends of Donald Trump."

The NNN column quotes lots of folks, for and against the dock project, but the only person identified by profession and alma mater is Dr. Brooks. In fact, as the column reports, this lanky DHMC doc was once on the Harvard crew team -- which, the column goes on to imply, just makes him part of a multigenerational effort to perpetuate notions of Ivy League privilege and elitism through athletes getting up before dawn to row their arms off in really narrow (but expensive, and privately donated) boats. [Full disclosure: I know Blair is lanky because I am one of his patients. I didn't know he went to Harvard.]

I know nothing about crew (beyond hearing stories from my next-door neighbor about how early his high school son has to rise to make his crew practices). I've never been to Wilson's landing, although the complaints about the crew team's dock-building plans seem a bit overblown. But I do know questionable journalism ethics when I see them, as in this snippet from the NNN column: "No doubt rowing is a wholesome activity. But knowing a thing or two about Hanover and its Dresden School District partner, Norwich, I suspect that parents and teenagers in those communities also have figured out that when the time comes for college, rowing looks good on a student's application."

Well, knowing a thing or two about the LDN columnist's history with Hanover High School, it is surprising, to say the least, that the LDN sees nothing wrong with allowing our NNN to perpetuate his well-documented grudge against this particular institution of secondary education. Those who don't know what I am talking about are advised to consult the relevant back issues of the LDN. Hanover High is entitled to be covered by journalists who are sufficiently objective to treat the school, and its record of student achievement, fairly -- anything else ought to be characterized, in journalistic terms, as cheating.

Except it isn't cheating, because the basic ethical principle that journalist apply to themselves is this: They reserve the right to write anything, about anyone, at any time, as long as they reach the subjective conclusion that what they are doing is okay. If anyone questions their judgments, they raise the bloody flag of the First Amendment and/or whine about how the internet is driving them out of business. That's not ethics -- it's omphaloskepsis.

The recent offer of a $1,000 reward to the LDN in exchange for firing the NNN has gone unanswered. But it prompted a delightful conversation at Dan & Whit's the other day. A former local elected official (I will let this person decide whether to disclose her or his identity) mentioned an even better idea than a reward: auctioning off a promise by the LDN not to mention a particular municipality in an NNN column for an entire year, with proceeds to the virtuous charity of the LDN's choosing.

It's a great idea, though one is hard-pressed to come up with a charity that would meet the LDN standard for virtuousness. Even the admittedly noble nonprofits that NNN columns sometimes promote don't meet the standard because, should a student happen to volunteer for one of them, that fact would likely be disclosed on college admissions applications.

So the reward still stands -- divorced, as it is, from Harvard, its lvy League counterparts, or anyone's aspirations to pursue higher education at any of those institutions.