Is it wrong to admire a scoundrel, er, “W. Howard”?
In Everett, Washington, traffic enforcement cameras — so-called “red-light cameras” — have stirred up a lot of people, many airing their ideas or just venting on HeraldNet, the local paper’s website. Among the most persistent contributors to the comments/letters section has been “W. Howard.”
Readers got suspicious. Once he said he was from Lynnwood; in another post he implied he lived in Everett. But no matter what town he was from, he was always for the cameras, which he claimed would prevent pedestrian deaths and save the children.
He thus bucked the stream in the growing controversy over the cameras, which seem so big-brotherish, so totalitarian. Even when one is caught red, er, lighted.
But, hey, learn your lesson. That’s what “W. Howard” said, anyway. Get over your paranoia.
The “paranoid” turned out to be right about W.H., though. The newspaper traced his posts to American Traffic Solutions, Inc., far from the Evergreen State in Scottsdale, Arizona — which just happened to make and sell the cameras under question — all the way back to Bill Kroske, vice president of business development.
That makes Kroske a Saul Alinsky of marketing.
But a scoundrel nonetheless, mimicking a Music Man-style pretense of being “part of the community” just to stir up business.
Thankfully, the scoundrel was revealed as such by a free press and in public debate. The First Amendment rides to the rescue!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.