Member-only story
More of the Same
Aaron Ochs is the author of “Defamers: How Fake News Terrorized a Community & Those Who Dared to Fight It,” a nonfiction uncovering the defamatory, deceptive and criminal practices of online tabloid CalCoastNews. Click here to subscribe to his Patreon, check out exclusive news features and more.
Recently, I published a column that touched on District 3 Supervisor Adam Hill’s alleged, vulgar emails to radio show host Dave Congalton. The gist of the column was that I found the moral outrage over them to be a moot point when everyone involved had unclean hands. No perfect victims.
This column turned out to be surprisingly divisive. Since then, I’ve received substantial feedback over it. Supporters of Supervisor Hill felt I didn’t give him a fair shake, unnecessarily legitimizing the bombardment of coverage of him by CalCoastNews, and not taking into account that these developments were part of a carefully coordinated political attack. And some people felt like I was overly dismissive of emails that, by every objective standard, would get the sender fired if they weren’t an elected official. The good news is that I didn’t please either side of the divide. Bad news is I’m completely jaded about the politics in this county. Nothing seems to happen.
I touched on this previously, but perhaps didn’t elaborate on my political nihilism as much as I could have.
