The Cameron Harper Interivew...Almost

I emailed Cameron Harper at WPTY and asked if he'd do an interview with me. Unfortunately, he declined. I'm not surprised, nor are my feelings hurt. Active, high profile story; small, obscure blog. It's OK.

But he did offer a bit of background on the Herenton incident and allowed me to share the following, which does answer a couple of questions I wanted to ask:

Just so you know, I didn't go to the meeting with any plan to confront the Mayor. I was attending as a member of Rotary interested in what he was going to say. In fact, I was walking out when I saw our photographer was doing the one man band thing. you know, camera in one hand, microphone in the other. So, I simply walked over to help him out by holding the mic. The question occurred to me while I was standing there. Herenton had just asked the city school board to resign and said he thought the city council ought to do the same thing, if it would further consolidation. So, it seemed to me to be a logical extension to ask if the Mayor was willing to resign too, if he thought his personality was standing in the way of consolidation. Of course, we've all see what happened next.

When the Mayor tried to dismiss my question, I didn't back down. Come on, insulting the questioner is the oldest trick in the book. I've been around way too long for that to work.

As the Mayor turned away, he was well out of arm's reach. So, let me be very clear on this point. At no time did I grasp or grab him. That never happened. If it had, his bodyguard most certainly would have intervened in a more forceful way. In fact, the only person who got physical was the Mayor. If you look at the tape, he repeatedly jabs at my chest with his finger. The only threat of violence came from the Mayor, who said, referring to me, "I'm going to drop him."

My thanks to Cameron for considering the request. Maybe next time.