Mister Tredyffrin and Friends

Some comments from January 22nd library board meeting about the Ross/McCollum letter and paid political ad—

Rod Ross: “The letter came about as a result from something that preceeded it…. We thought that the assertions which came out by an anonymous blogger deserved a response and a quick one.”…
Paul Olson: “Mr. Tredyffrin, the blogger,…”
Rod Ross: “…That’s how we had the knowledge to respond and refute these false assertions.”
Warren Kampf: “…things being said by bloggers on the Democratic website that just weren’t true.”

You have in a nutshell the Republican defense for publishing an attack letter and paid political advertisement outing Democrats for not contributing to the Tredyffrin Library capital campaign fund: “Mr. T made me do it.”

Like school kids, they say they were provoked to respond to scurrilous “untruths” about the library from the anonymous Democratic blogger, Mr. Tredyffrin.

Turns out that Mr. T carries more credibility.

The irony is both the timeline and the truth are readily accessible. (Search Mr. T for “library.”) Any of our librarians—true information professionals—could have uncovered the following sequence of events with a few mouse clicks. It’s a shame no one asked them for research help.

Timeline
Mr T’s first posting to mention the library was on Monday, Oct. 22—a long truth-in-advertising piece that poked fun at Republican yellow lawn signs claiming the “real results” of Republican rule. The library is mentioned only briefly in a short paragraph at the end of the posting.

However, already on that Monday morning of October 22 Rod Ross and Anne McCollum, library capital campaign co-chairs, were having breakfast with a local newspaper reporter, hoping to sell their in-hand “story” about Democratic supervisors to him. Since he declined to write their piece for them, they offered their letter to the editor of Main Line Life. Their letter was posted on-line at MLL on Oct. 23 and printed in the Oct. 24 edition.

In case you missed: That letter uses their confidential knowledge of the library campaign donor base, including anonymous contributions, to smear the 2 Democratic members of Tredyffrin Board of Supervisors with the charge that they did not contribute to the library’s charitable effort and were thus bad citizens. This letter clearly says “as two of the Co-chairs of the Tredyffrin Public Library Capital Campaign Committee.” They made no effort to distinguish that they are writing as private citizens.

In fact, the letter lists a series of statistical bullet points about the source of campaign donations that display very much as an official report, claiming to present the “facts.” (This same letter with McCollum and Ross’s name printed at the bottom appeared in abbreviated form as a paid political advertisement in the November 1 issue of the Suburban and Wayne Times.)

One can only conclude that McCollum and Ross must be fortune tellers, having divined and been provoked by a “false assertion” in the future.

Ground Truth
Mr. T’s next discussion of the library was on Oct. 31 (a week after the Ross/McCollum letter). This was a mere twelve innocuous sentences, serving simply to call attention to a one-page flyer, “Ground Truth on ‘Saving’ the Tredyffrin Library” just posted on the Tredyffrin Democrats website.

Using publicly-available information from the minutes of township supervisor meetings, that flyer presents the actual history of the all-Republican board’s plans to close the Tredyffrin Library in favor of a new location in Chesterbrook. The flyer ends with the astonishing claim that “In reality the Tredyffrin library was ‘saved’ by citizens, not politicians. In fact, our library has been saved twice by citizens—once in blocking the Republican supervisors’ scheme for relocating to Chesterbrook, and a second time in their very generous donations to the library’s capital campaign.” When Democrats tell the truth, why do the Tredyffrin GOP leaders find it inflammatory?

On November 4, two days before election day, Mr. Tredyffrin does get fired up. In this post he takes after candidate Paul Olson for sending out a last-minute attack post card against opponent Ellen Brotman-Austin. Olson’s card again uses the theme that a failure to contribute to the charity of Mr. Olson’s choice disqualifies one from public service. While Mr. T’s column expresses outrage, it is not uncivil. And of course, it is 2 weeks after the Ross/McCollum letter.

Planned Political Initiative
That is the true timeline and content for the Mr. Tredyffrin-blogger’s commentary on the library, its capital campaign, and Mr. Olson. The capital campaign co-chairs are like school kids caught in their own misbehavior, wanting to point fingers elsewhere.

Okay, that’s a lot of he-said-she-said for you dear readers. Point is, Mr. T is innocent. What about the letter writers and ad sponsors?

Their letter was a planned political initiative. They weren’t defending the honor of the library charitable effort. They intended smearing the honor of political opponents, including one who was not even a candidate. Along the way, they subverted all the good work of a committee of 18 citizen fund-raisers and hundreds of generous donors, and fractured the unity of a community around a beloved institution.