By Marko ShreevoOn Thursday last, the Standard-Examiner published this indignant Standard-Examiner editorial, complaining about the mayor of Salt Lake City. Once again, the Std-Ex editors are piling-on Ogden home-boy Rocky Anderson. This is apparently what they like to do on a "slow news day."
The latest beef? He wined and dined some out-of town businessmen who were interested in Salt Lake City, and then billed the tab to the city. He did the same thing corporate executives and city mayors do all across the country, except, apparently, in places like Denver, San Jose and Las Vegas, says the Std-Ex editorial board. I say "big deal," and "so what?"
I don't know what's happening in "happening" places like those; but I'll tell you Mayor Anderson has a special burden. He's dealing with out-of-town people who perceive we L.D.S. people as something close to Mennonites or Amish; so he has a special obstacle to overcome. This is something that the mayors of cities like Denver, San Jose and Las Vegas don't have to deal with. What Mayor Anderson has to do is convince newcomers and business prospects to our culture that we're not a nineteenth-century backwater, with a population who ride around town in horse-drawn buggies. And that's not an easy thing to do.
So I say we all ought to cut him a little slack on this. It's not as if he took his prospects to some downtown club and picked up the tab for tequila shots and lap-dances. He wined them and dined them. That's it.
And if you believe the Mayor of Las Vegas doesn't wine and dine visitors to Las Vegas in a roundabout and more robust way to attract business, you probably are the provincial buffoons the Std-Ex editors suggest you aren't.
I don't agree with everything Mayor Anderson does; and I believe he sometimes tends to "showboat" a little bit for his liberal constituency. Nevertheless, everyone ought to appreciate the impediment he faces in a place where a vocal minority of the population thinks it's mandatory that the "Word of Wisdom" be aggressively enforced for everybody who visits this place.
It's time to abandon our xenophobic cultural "escaping from Nauvoo" mentality and get involved in the 21st century. Outsiders consider us insular, cultish and out-of touch; and they're probably right -- at least from the perspective of the rest of America.
There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Mayor Anderson.
This ain't one of them.
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Editorial Note: This is a reader-submitted article from one of our long-time board regulars. I think it has an interesting slant. Is it possible that Rocky Anderson may actually be serving his city's economic interests positively, notwithstanding the criticism he's received? This story has been discussed all over the Utah blogosphere. You can read a couple of other Utah blogger "takes" here and here.
I've been working back and forth with him on this via email over the past two days to set up his html and links; and the above is now the final draft.
Once again, gentle readers, I'm always open to reader-submitted articles. I thank Marko for this one.
Comments, anyone?
