Rurik, If you wish to make comments on a topic, on a blog that allows anonymity, please do comment on the topic. Every posting you comment on shouldn’t become your quarrel with anonymity. Feel free to start a blog for Ridgewood where anonymity is not permitted, and so how many people post on it. It will be more effective to have those 3 people meet you for a discussion over coffee at Raymond’s.
P.S. I remember your comments on the Valley Renewal wanting to know why people opposing it were not blogging under their own names. It didn’t take a lot of courage for you to blog in favor of it, when your wife Cynthia Halaby was a Trustee of the Valley Hospital. Perhaps there are people with opposite opinions to your whose position/relationship to Valley or Village Hall or elsewhere make them feel uncomfortable expressing their opposing opinions very publicly.
We do live in America, and there is a secret ballot. An opinion (as long as non-libelous) is a form of freedom of speech. Prior to about 1890, when people voted, it was a public matter and the community, including factory bosses, knew exactly how their employees voted. I don’t mind an anonymous blog – why are you so opposed to it? Why do you need to identify those who disagree with you?
Rurik, where have you been? Many MANY people are not hiding behind their mothers’ aprons. The ones who go to the meetings and speak up, actually recently they were lined up to speak out against the Mayor’s outrageous behavior. They are not anonymous. And there have been numerous letters bashing the Mayor’s actions, and the letters are singed by citizens. The fact that you choose to post with your name on this BLOG, where most post anonymously, does not make you more bold and does not make your opinion more worthy. And those who post anonymously are not less worthy. This is the 21st century Rurik. This is how BLOGS work.
All politics is local, and this blog, among other essential functions, supports free and open exchanges of information and opinions bearing on the politics of the VOR. Mr. Halaby is willing to put his name behind his opinions. Good for him. But in Ridgewood we suffer from a particularly bad case of the malady some refer to as “the politics of personal destruction”. In most important areas in which Mr. Halaby offers his opinion, it just so happens that the POPD malady typically operates to the detriment of people who hold considered opinions opposite to his. So to rephrase the salient point of an earlier commenter, those who are motivated to express (non-libelous) opinions opposite to that held by Mr. Halaby are to be forgiven for taking advantage of a means of publicly expressing themselves that Mr. Halaby and his like-minded friends, frustrated in their seeming inability to make headway, are determined to brand as the last refuge of the damnably timid.
Long Live The Blog! It is phenomenal how upset it makes some people that postings are anonymous. Tough luck. This is 2015. And what is really hilarious is that some of those who speak out the loudest against the Blog are going to great lengths to post anonymously from remote IP addresses so they can’t be detected.
10:37–do they include mayor and deputy dawg?
Who knows, it might even include Rurik.
Rurik, good for you… gee, having the guts to post your name and calling out those who take cheap shots while hiding? How dare you…
Paul Smith – I guess you don’t attend meetings or read any of the newspapers. Scores of people speak out against the behavior of the Mayor and his two cronies at meetings and their names and faces are plain to see and their names are in print in letters in the paper. Rurik has no more guts than them, and Rurik makes no sense. Does he actually think the Mayor should be allowed to attack people the way he does and get away with it. Do you actually think the Mayor should behave this way? Is this any way to run a village?
Whether I agree with Rurik or not (and it’s usually not), he is not afraid to put a name behind the post or a letter…. and kudos to those who stand their ground face to face… I agree there are a lot of issues with the goings on and I commend those who stand up and are counted…
Paul Smith – So you applaud Rurik for putting his name on the blog. But….do you applaud the Mayor for conducting Village business with so much acrimony and nastiness? It seems that Rurik feels that the Mayor should be allowed to do whatever he wants in terms of unbecoming conduct and no one should object.
I don’t agree with a lot of the goings on. Rurik backs the village govt and is not afraid to say so.