Jack Moore is mostly a good town supervisor.
He works hard, he organizes things well, he gets stuff done.
Further, the Democrat running against him in Tuesday’s election is inarticulate, and sometimes seems simultaneously arrogant and scatterbrained.
That should make endorsing Jack Moore easy.
But, in fact, it’s impossible.
Jack Moore has fatal personal flaws that disqualify him from elected office in a society like ours. He is not the sort of person a Henrietta child should see sitting in a position of leadership and power.
It’s taken me a long time to come to that conclusion, but I end up deciding it is unavoidable.
And that’s hard for me, because I like the Jack Moore that I know. I am a customer of his, and believe – like most people – that I am his friend. Further, I think his blue-collar approach to being town supervisor is good and useful.
But there are deal breakers.
And, for me, Jack Moore has one.
It came out when he was moving the desk.
In a situation memorialized in a complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Jack Moore was helping move a desk in a town office when he said, “this desk is heavier than ten dead niggers.”
That’s what did it for me.
It is a phrase from the lynching culture, though I doubt Jack Moore knew that. But in any culture, the use of the word “niggers” is not right, and the modifier “dead” is callous and haunting. There is a dehumanizing aspect of the phrase that eats at you. Jesus said that our words come from the treasures of our heart, and that phrase speaks chillingly about what’s in someone’s heart.
At first, I did not believe he said it, and even now I can’t be certain that he did.
But the EEOC – which has a “finder of fact” responsibility – concluded, after taking testimony from several town employees and officials, that he did.
Further, I have made my own inquiry of people around Jack Moore. None doubt that he said it, and I have gathered accounts in which people claim to have been witnesses to him saying “nigger” in both his governmental and commercial life.
That inquiry also turned up people who say Jack Moore is a bully, and that he says off-color or inappropriate things that have cost him customers and political allies.
Some of that is just his personality. Jack Moore can be brusque and demanding of loyalty – traits not uncommon among politicians. But there is also a cruelty. The EEOC ruling and town coworkers I had contact with said Jack Moore routinely referred to one town employee as “the lesbian.” He also mocked her appearance as being manly. He also assigned nicknames to two female town employees with the same first name based upon the relative size of their breasts.
None of that is acceptable.
Neither was it acceptable, when a female political associate complimented him on the color of his tie, that he said to her, “Do you know what my favorite color is? Skin. And I’d like to see more of it.” One account of that incident says Jack Moore then dramatically glanced at the woman’s bosom.
All of this leads to polarized views on Jack Moore within the town government and Henrietta Republican Party. Some like him. Some can’t stand him. Part of that is the factional nature of town and Republican politics, with various groups trying to backstab one another.
But there is fire as well as smoke.
And for me that came out of his mouth when he was moving the desk.
I believe he said it. I believe it is consistent with his conduct.
And I agree with this quote from someone who serves on the town board with Jack Moore:
“I am embarrassed for our community. This issue has certainly damaged us.
“It is disgusting that some have come out and said it’s okay if some of those words were spoken.
“If bigoted, prejudicial or discriminatory words are spoken by any of us who are charged with representing the public, we no longer deserve the honor of doing so.”
I agree.
I am not politically correct. I don’t believe in lists of forbidden words. I don’t care about snowflakes or race activists who walk around with a chip on their shoulder waiting to be offended. I believe in free speech, even when it’s offensive.
But there is a line.
And “dead niggers” crosses it.
I couldn’t vote for anyone who uses those words.