Voices From The Readers – January 26, 2018

Voices From The Readers – January 26, 2018

Fake News Award

Editor:

Mr. John Phillips, I am going to give you the January 2018 award for “fake news.” Guess what: I was the only Ocean City cop to work directly with famous drug interdictor Frank Mazone. Guess what I was working on: interdicting the traffic of heroin and cocaine. There are only two local guys that know what I did. One of them, Lt. Lee Ward, my boss at the time, is dead. The other one is now a state cop with an impeccable record, and I am not going to give him up.

So, are you celebrating me as a first responder cop who interdicted heroin and cocaine or are you actually attacking me?

The artwork I did showing Mayor Meehan crashing a car, not a plane, in Ocean City is appropriate to bring up at a time when the Mayor and Council are on the biggest spending spree in Ocean City’s history — for all the wrong reasons. The cartoon correctly showed the mayor tanking our budget and bankrupting the Ocean City economy while our infrastructure rots.

Since the cartoon, the Ocean City debt has gone from $50 million to over $110 million. The $60 million could have been used to repair our roads and storm sewers, which is roughly the amount Mr. Adkins has fought to repair. At the current rate, our OC debt will be over a quarter of a billion dollars in another five years and our needy infrastructure might cost over $100 million.

That $60 million Meehan and his council have spent on “sand castles” was our money and should have gone into infrastructure.

The Meehan cartoon had nothing to do with the tragedy of the two officers. Only a deluded muckraker like you, John, would have spread that falsehood.

Separately, the city employees that descended on my place 10 days after the tragedy with their ticket books were hardly “first responders.” I have a lot of respect for real first responders. I used to be one.

In closing, when I arrived in Ocean City in 1954, my mother used to let me sit on the steps of the old Nordica Hotel on Talbot Street. I met a blind performer named Tex with a seeing eye dog named Rex, and befriended him. Performers are poor, but independent and not on the government dole. They entertain kids on the Boardwalk and are part of the eternal magic of Ocean City.

John, why don’t you work in a cage on the Boardwalk for five hours, like the Mayor and Council have done to the performers, and see how you like it?

Say, John, Phillips is a good name on the Eastern Shore. I have a lot of respect for the Phillips family. There are 30 people named John Phillips on the Eastern Shore. You are the divisive one in our community, spreading your lies and hatred. I am awarding you the title of local “Fake News Purveyor” for the month of January on the Eastern Shore. Contact me to get your reward.

Tony Christ