Virginia Beach Councilman Bill DeSteph sent a letter to the mayor and council members of New York, protesting the location of a proposed community center. The letter was wrong on so many levels, including the fact that he used official city letterhead and failed to discuss it with fellow council members.
But that wasn’t the part that got me. After all, I don’t live in Virginia Beach. No, what got me was that he made it sound as if he were not only representing Virginia Beach but all of Virginia:
We, the citizens of the City of Virginia Beach and the Commonwealth of Virginia – birthplace of our great nation – are strongly opposed to the plan to build a mosque at the very site where Islamist jihadists destroyed the World Trade Center and took the lives of nearly 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001.
Um, Bill – I don’t recall anyone casting a vote for you to represent the Commonwealth. Your name wasn’t on the ballot last November. Don’t we have at least three spokesmen for the Commonwealth whose names were on that ballot? Did you consult any of them before penning this missive?
For that matter, did you consult anyone other than yourself? Who, exactly, is this “we” you refer to throughout your letter? Got a mouse in your pocket?
I’m offended, Mr. DeSteph, that you would purport to represent anyone other than yourself. I believe the term is “puffery.” Another that would apply is hubris.
And it would help if, even when speaking for yourself, you’d at least get the facts straight. It’s not a mosque, Mr. DeSteph, it’s a community center. And it’s not at Ground Zero, but on property two blocks north that the group already owns.
UPDATE: After sending the letter, DeSteph was going to pursue a council resolution on the matter. Seems he couldn’t even get that, because he’s dropped that effort.
I guess Bill DeSteph figured out who he speaks for: only himself.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
What an ignorant twit. And from the linked poll, it seems like he’s got a solid constituency of ignorant twits.
He makes all of us look bad. Don’t we already have someone doing that?
I was livid when I read that. About the only reasons I haven’t written to the man? (1) The likelihood that it won’t make a difference, and (2) the fact that by a mere technicality he doesn’t claim to speak for me (on the assumption that I can’t claim to be a citizen of Virginia Beach or the Commonwealth until I become a citizen of the United States).
I’ll forgo expressing my growing frustration with the use of the word “citizen” where “resident” might be more appropriate; maybe I’ll return to it some time when that issue isn’t so completely dwarfed by the main issue.
The letter was so rife with “We this” and “We that” that the only thing the Councilman accomplished was wee-weeing all over himself.
As a representative of the Commonwealth, I just sent a letter to the Mayor and Council of Oklahoma City asking them to place a 5 mile protection ring around the Murrah Federal Building and no Christian churches be allowed in that ring since the christofascist attacked it.
I can’t decide whether I think it’s more arrogant that he presumes to speak for all Virginians, or if it’s that he thinks that anyone on the New York City Council has ever even heard of Virginia Beach or knows precisely where to look for it on a map, let alone cares about the opinions of any one of its residents (much the same way that I couldn’t give less of a damn about what any of New York’s city councilmen think about how we live our lives down here).
And yet perhaps both of these are still eclipsed by what apparently is his patronizing belief that we are all too f*cking stupid to realize that he’s just a grandstanding jackass writing letters to people who in all likelihood will never, ever read them. Seriously, Bill DeSteph might as well be writing open anti-Muslim letters to Santa Claus.
I will give him this, though. His narcissism’s layered like an onion. Peel back one and there’s a whole ‘nother strata that seems to believe that buying yourself a seat on the city council actually does make you some kind of public opinion leader.
The scary thing, though, is that there are probably more people around here than we’d like to believe giving DeSteph quiet “Atta boys!”