Political Incorrectness Charged, Chuckled About in Lockport

Lend me your tongue?

 

It’s not always easy being a public information officer. And for Niagara County Public Information Officer Christian Peck, last week’s calls for his dismissal by the Legislature’s Democratic minority were simply the culmination of a campaign waged against him since his appointment by the majority Republicans in 2008.

And now the ugly specter of “political incorrectness” has been raised against him, always a comical concern in a county plagued with so many real life problems.

Peck issued a news release that said the county would be flagged by the state for “six minor ‘performance violations’” in connection with the state Labor Department’s investigation of a May asbestos abatement project at the Shaw Building in Lockport.

When the actual state report came out two weeks later, the county was charged with eight violations, all of which the state deemed “serious.”

Virtuoso charged Peck with misleading the public.

At the Legislature’s meeting last week, County Executive Jeffrey Glatz said the county spent up to $100,000 in investigation and compliance with state orders regarding the asbestos incident, where asbestos was removed from the basement by welfare workers wearing no protective equipment.

Legislature Chairman William L. Ross cut Peck off when he tried to respond to criticism of what Virtuoso called “misleading” news releases about the incident. Peck gave Virtuoso a Latin phrase, “Ne nuntium necare,” which he said meant “Don’t shoot the messenger,” and told Virtuoso that it came “from your people, the Romans.”

“Get this guy out of here,” Virtuoso shot back.

Politically incorrect? Insensitive? Or simply a somewhat erudite stab at humor gone awry?

Some ethnic groups are notoriously more sensitive than others, of course. You can pretty much get away with painting any stereotype you want of the Irish, Germans, British or Norwegians, for example, and not get a rise out of anyone.

Had Vituoso’s forbears come from, say, Sweden, it is unlikely that Peck referencing the old Norse proverb, “The slumbering wolf does not get the ham,” followed by, “That came from your people, the Vikings,” would have caused much of a ruckus.

More to the point, perhaps, in Niagara County anyway, the political affiliation of the wronged party in any case where charges of incorrect speech surface must be taken into account.

Niagara Falls City Councilwoman Kristen Grandinetti was once so famously outraged when Councilman Bob Anderson asked Dominic Colucci for a bottle of “dago red” at the Como, she made a formal complaint about it to the city’s Human Rights Commission.

Her victimization, of course, had more to do with the fact that Anderson is an unusually effective foe of her mentor, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster, and the chance to paint him the scarlet letter of political incorrectness was just too good to pass us.

As for Peck, he might just as well let the controversy roll off him like water off a duck’s back, a phrase that dates to Old English which came, of course, from Peck’s own people.