Let’s assume that Bill Belk can be a boorish bully. Let’s further assume that Lisa Bell has valid concerns about Belk’s performance and his positions on corporate boards. It does not follow that Lisa Bell is fit to be Mecklenburg County’s chief district judge.
For Bell to testify that she cowered on tears when Belk confronted her in February after Bell refused to give Belk time off to attend a Sonic auto group board meeting compounds her original weakness. Bell is clearly playing the victimhood card here and it is woefully out of place. Everyday in workplaces and boardrooms across the nation, women stand up to guys who get in their face and try to intimidate them. They don’t collapse and go all drama queen, then ask for a security escort to their car at the end of the day.
In sum, Bell has just told the world in an open judicial hearing, that she has lived a sheltered life and shrinks from rough-and-tumble encounters with the more irksome members of society. How she is fit to serve as a district judge in these troubled times, in this besieged community escapes me, but probably not the Uptown insiders who prefer a clubby, neat if ineffectual judicial system.
My gut tells me Bill Belk will probably be removed from the bench. My head tells me Lisa Bell should be as well.
Bonus Incompetency: Check out the English of the prim-and-proper Judge Bell from testimony yesterday: “I reported unprofessional conduct and that’s what occurred. Irregardless of whether I felt he was going to hit me or not — which I felt he was quite capable of.”
