Given my previous expressed support for the straight-talking Chula Vista city manager, David Garcia, a couple of readers this morning inquired about my thoughts on this story in the Union-Tribune today about Garcia’s use of the internet at work.
The story has all sorts of innuendo about the supposedly “inappropriate” things Garcia was doing on the computer. Considered among the stream of news briefs about this or that teacher or public official downloading pornography at work, it’s not a light charge.
But the story and Garcia’s accusers never shared exactly what it was that he was inappropriately viewing. There’s an allusion by City Councilman Steve Castenada that Garcia spent “an inordinate amount of time viewing the Pamela Anderson Web page.”
This is rather comical, first for the awkward way it’s presented. It’s the way you might imagine John McCain saying it: I tell you he was lookin’ at the Pamela Anderson Web page. As if there is one said page among various “Web pages” floating around that Internet thing.
I went trolling for “the Pamela Anderson Web page” — shhh, don’t tell the board — and couldn’t find anything named that. I settled on her “official site” the pamelachannel.com.
And I was immediately intrigued:
To say that Pamela Anderson is enjoying a full life would clearly be an understatement; the most recognizable icon of the new millennium has hit her stride again in so many different fields.
Wow. Who knew? I hadn’t realized she was the “most recognizable icon of the new millennium.”
The other allusion to wrongdoing in the Chula Vista City Manager’s Office was the admission that Garcia was looking at vacation photos in his office. The horror.
In the news climate that exists right now, if you’re going to accuse someone in the newspaper of downloading inappropriate content, you better come with something a bit sexier than vacation photos and an “inordinate amount of time” spent on a page described as merely the Pam Anderson page. I mean, what was he doing with the Pamela Anderson Web page? Is he reading about the “most recognizable icon of the new millennium” or projecting her images onto the wall in his office next to his vacation photos?
It’s difficult to care right about it right now, but if the U-T and his critics want us to, they need to bring the details.