Lately, while the critical, independent thinkers of the world are feeling an energy with new momentum for empowerment, I have been performing what functional illiterates do in lieu of thinking about one-sided stories in Asheville news. I do not attempt to compete with all the second graders in North Carolina’s advanced public schools who are already writing doctorate dissertations. Yet, to my little mind, I acknowledge that historians pick winners and losers all the time; and I acknowledge that proper application of Baconian scientific method is scarce, and sensationalism sells.
One of the big issues that has bothered me since it started was the CTS scare. The people who may have been negatively impacted have reason to be afraid. From the onset, the press has decided there was a problem. Wells were contaminated, and as time progressed, the concentration of carcinogens increased. I never heard how the contamination was conclusively connected to the CTS plant. For all I know, somebody could have been poisoning their well water in order to get free municipal taps. We were told citizens had cancer, but nobody said how cancer rates in the affected neighborhoods compared to those in Anywhere, USA. The EPA and CTS remained silent while citizens, and politicians who couldn’t risk not appearing concerned, created history. I’m not saying anybody is being deceitful, but in a purely academic setting, more assumption testing would have been required.
Another case is the demands for the release of findings from the audit of the Asheville Police Department evidence room. News outlets want a big story, or maybe they just want a new DA. There were all types of hype about a cover-up, but the DA and the Asheville Police Department didn’t talk to the press that appeared to be out to make them look bad. But then, for all I know, the whole incident is a huge fiction concocted for a quadruple reverse sting operation.
