Beaten Like He Owes Us Money

By Robert Tuomi

(WINDSOR, ON) – The first Windsor reporter is out of the gate and has started the race to restore the tarnished disgraced councilor Al Maghnieh to his old lustre, if he ever had any. As predicted by the Square, the media, suffering from Al Maghnieh withdrawal seems to have quickly decided not to take it anymore and get right back on the horse and start promoting the fallen councilor.

Doug Schmidt of the Windsor Star gets the honour, or drew the short straw, of chastising the citizens of Windsor for picking on poor disgraced Maghnieh.

On May 28, 2012 he started the race to the bottom with an absurd comment, being “the merciless beating up of disgraced city councilor Al Maghnieh continues.”

Schmidt uses the word “merciless” without any explanation. Why is the so-called beating of Maghnieh merciless? Does he not deserve all that is dished out to him? Does Schmidt have a scale of what should be done and has the city exceeded it. Schmidt did not put the word in quotations so it must be his view and not of some eminent person in the community, which would be a story in itself.

It is also interesting that Schmidt seems to be using the word to cleverly build sympathy for Maghnieh. He even goes on to predict that Maghnieh’s road to redemption will be “long and bumpy.”

By this statement alone, Schmidt is telling everyone that Maghnieh can be polished up and put on display as a great councilor, or something like that.

If nothing else, Maghnieh most likely knows that gaining his old status, and all the perks, like city library issued credit cards, requires him to be on the inside, shoulder to shoulder with the inward and other selfish members of council. If he did resign his job would become much harder and you would not expect him to take the hard way back to home base.

He ignores the irony that he is sitting with a council that plans to spend millions hosting a non-event for tweens and teens that are at an impressionable age and that think, like many children in the city, that those who are elected to municipal positions are people of considerable integrity. Maghnieh has shown himself to be a little short in the integrity department.

What is even more interesting about Schmidt’s approach is that he calls Maghnieh “Al” as in “Al is still permitted full participation at council’s committee of the whole meetings.”

This alone suggests that Schmidt wants all to know that he is on a first name basis with the disgraced councilor.

This whole writing by Schmidt, and his work to resurrect Maghnieh, does not sit well with some in the city. William Lukas posted a comment that probably asked the question Schmidt might not want to ask, being, “I am tired of al (sic) the productive time that is being wasted by council on this matter. Tell me why there have been no police action including charges?”

It was a comment echoed by Bob Evans who wondered if he was the only person who thinks he (Maghnieh) should have been/should still be arrested and charged.

Comments by Schmidt that Maghnieh is being beaten in a merciless fashion will do nothing but embolden the disgraced member of the inward and selfish council.

Complaining, even calling for an arrest, will probably get Lukas and Evans nowhere quick because that doesn’t seem to be on the table, even though Maghnieh admits he used a credit card given to him in trust for personal reasons, and earlier had borrowed the card of the library boss to treat his girlfriend to a couple’s massage in Chicago.

No, Maghnieh knows that he has about a year to scrub clean his image and slowly regain all that has been unceremoniously taken away from him so he can stand tall among all Windsorites as proud as can be to be a disgraced councilor, oops, an elected councilor of distinction and welcome the kids to Windsor.

With help from Schmidt, and you watch, there will be others, it will probably be as easy as a baseball batter manoeuvring a slide to first.

For more of the Rest of the News listen to CJAM 99.1 FM Monday evenings at 8:30.

Short URL: http://www.windsorsquare.ca/?p=32853