Best Let 'Em Have It post... ever...
The art of irony is alive and well in Venice as a Gondo reader spoofs the Gondo in fake praise of publisher Bob Vedder
-- John Patten, 06/01/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Comedy gold... BRILLIANT!!!
For those of you who have never seen the print edition of the Venice Gondolier Sun, there is a regular column called Let 'Em Have It. It's contents are remarkably similar to the message board on this web site at times -- folks call or write in anonymously to the Gondo with whatever rant is on their stream-of-consciousness minds at the time. Sometimes the column is hilarious, other times it degrades into utter stupidity, and then there are those comedy gold moments when the stupidity itself is hilarious. Just like a message board.

To the Gondo's credit, they almost always print everything submitted, although sometimes the delay can be up to two weeks.

Unfortunately, the Gondo does not include the column in its free online web site version, so many web readers may not even know of its existence or longstanding placement in the print edition.

At the tail end of today's Let 'Em Have It comes this gem of hilarious irony that, unfortunately, only a few people will understand. It's a backwards stab at Gondo publisher Bob Vedder disguised as praise for him, one of the best uses of irony that I've seen yet in the column. I was rolling with laughter after reading it:

Three cheers for Bob Vedder's column suggesting Sue Lang leave town. Since she's got here, all she's done is cause trouble and create dissent along with preying on the fears of older residents. What's wrong with her? Doesn't she know that's Herb Levine's job?

I think most folks won't get the joke on first read, but this was brilliant. The scary thing? That some folks will agree with the idea on face value -- that it is OK for a paper to advocate a shunning and a self-imposed exile of a resident from within city limits simply because of views expressed..

Vedder's been a scary guy for a long time -- his idea of First Amendment protections surround his freedom of speech and his freedom of the press and his alone. His First Amendment bubble extends about two inches away from his skin and about a foot away from the Gondo building. Within his First Amendment bubble, he has compared Venice Taxpayers League prez Herb Levine to Osama bin Laden and he applauded the city when Levine was arrested in 2002 for calling then-City Manager George Hunt a liar.

The lawsuit for that colossal act of idiocy is ongoing and is presently in the final deposition stage -- the judgment or settlement is likely to be a whopper of a seven figure municipal payout. I see your point, Bob, that arrest was a great idea -- for Levine's benefit, anyway.

While Vedder's views are often the views of a jerk, I fully defend Vedder's right to be that jerk.

The other side of that two-edged freedom of speech sword is that I get to call him a jerk when he behaves like one, and it would not be any leap at all to say that Vedder would like to see my freedom outlawed -- he made that stance very clear in his applause of former mayor Dean Calamaras when Levine was dragged off in handcuffs.

That said, Vedder's recent bit of journalistic creepiness, which involved telling Sue Lang to move elsewhere because her ideas are not welcome here, was nothing more or less than Vedder's usual myopic view that only his opinion should legally be allowed to have any voice.

Vedder, like Lang, should be free to say whatever he wants (within legal bounds, natch), no matter how offensive his comments may be. But when someone like Vedder, whose very living is dependant on First Amendment protections, advocates the removal of those protections from someone else, a valid question arises: What planet are you from, Bobby Boy?

To this day, I have no idea why Vedder remains in the media biz -- he has clearly never understood or valued the very fundamental protections that allow him to be such a jerk. As such, he is a danger to speakers and writers in this town that would disagree with him. While he does have the right to espouse these views, the very idea that these views come from a leader in The Fifth Estate is unconscionable. He has the right to espouse his views, but he no longer has the right to claim any kinship to ethical journalism.

Dear Bob Vedder: Voltaire lives. Please retire ASAP.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.