Skip to content

Jan 23

Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 3.55.39 AM

Tony Brown: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Lie, Lie Again

As the old adage goes, politics makes for strange bedfellows. This is certainly the case in Alexandria.

And there’s another adage that also comes to mind: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I understand that a few folks may have thought that my most recent post about talk radio host Tony Brown was “harsh.” Maybe it was. But I make no apologies. In my opinion, Mr. Brown’s outlandish, public accusations against the City of Alexandria administration deserve a full-throated, thorough, and rigorous response. If you’re going to accuse people of conspiring to suppress African-American voter registration, which is a serious charge, then you should be prepared with the facts, and if you’re going to do so on publicly-owned airwaves, then you should, at the very least, provide those you are accusing with the opportunity to respond.

The simple truth is: Mr. Brown is wrong. He may be entitled to his own opinions, but he’s not entitled to his own facts. As I mentioned previously, the facts are straight forward: It doesn’t matter who you are or how noble your intentions may be; if you seek to use a public facility, then you need an agreement in place. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or pernicious about such a policy; it’s sensible, and it’s fair.

Only hours after I published my post about this, Tony Brown responded. But he didn’t respond on his own show. He responded with an “interview” with the blogger Greg Aymond.

Listen here.

Before I delve into the specifics of this interview, I think readers should be aware of a few things. During the Jena Six protests, Tony Brown, like me, was an outspoken advocate for fair justice. Meanwhile, Greg Aymond was the attorney for Richard Barrett, the leader and founder of the White Nationalist Movement, a recognized hate group that sued the Town of Jena for the right to get a permit to conduct a counter-protest. Indeed, the late Mr. Barrett actually spent the night at Mr. Aymond’s home in Alexandria. Mr. Aymond, a former member of the KKK, may claim he was also interested in fair justice– not necessarily for the Jena Six, though, but for the leader of a white supremacist organization.

Incidentally, Mr. Barrett was later murdered by a young African-American man after Barrett allegedly attempted to have sex with him against his will. Seriously, the whole story is nothing short of bizarre.

During his interview, Tony Brown repeatedly praised Greg Aymond, and Greg Aymond returned the favor, claiming that Tony Brown “has over two million listeners a day.”

Let’s start with that: TWO MILLION LISTENERS A DAY. Here is a list of the most popular radio shows in the country, ranked by WEEKLY listeners:

Program Weekly Listeners
in Millions
American Top 40 20+ worldwide
The Alex Jones Show 15+
The Rush Limbaugh Show 15+
The Sean Hannity Show 14+
Morning Edition 13+
All Things Considered 13+
Glenn Beck Program 9+
The Savage Nation 9+
The Mark Levin Show 8.5+
The Dave Ramsey Show 8.5+
Delilah 8+
The Neal Boortz Show 6+
The Laura Ingraham Show 6+
Fresh Air 5+
Car Talk 4+
Coast to Coast AM 3+ (Most listened to late-night radio show)

Extrapolating from these weekly numbers, Tony Brown, with allegedly two million listeners per day (times five days a week), would be seventh most popular radio show in the United States of America, more popular than Glenn Beck, Delilah, Laura Ingraham, and Fresh Air, among others. It’s an astoundingly ridiculous and embarrassingly laughable claim. It’s difficult to know where that number actually came from. Do two million people even live in the areas that carry his show? Probably not, and probably not by a long-shot.

But, I suppose, using this logic, my blog has an audience of 2.095 BILLION, which is the total number of people connected to the Internet. Impressive, huh? To Mr. Aymond, you asked for my blog stats. Well, there you have it: 2.095 BILLION.

I’m not trying to beat a dead horse here, but this was, literally, the first thing Mr. Aymond claimed about Tony Brown during his interview. And it speaks directly to the integrity, the credibility, and the honesty of both men. Two million listeners per day: That’s nearly half of the entire population of Louisiana; that’s more than 40 times the entire population of the City of Alexandria.

Mr. Brown didn’t dispute this claim; instead, he said that his show was broadcast in the “entire State of Louisiana,” which it isn’t.

I think my pal AlexCenla was much more on target, when he estimated that Tony Brown’s listening audience was closer to around 400 people a day, which, to be fair, is only a difference of 1.999996 million and which that, yes, means my audience is much larger.

Of course, a fair question would be: If Tony Brown receives two million listeners every day, much more than Michael Baisden, then why on earth would he waste nearly thirty minutes of his time interviewing with Greg Aymond about something I published on my completely and totally irrelevant blog? I don’t get it either.

Mr. Brown, interestingly, never really disputed any of the facts I published. He played the “blame the messenger” card by way of blaming the messenger,  and he doubled-down on his lies in an attempt to save face, I suppose. He never once got my name right, referring to me alternately as Lamarcus, Lance, Leroy, and Fredricka, and suggesting that we’d never met, that he wouldn’t be able to pick me “out from Adam.” Here’s the thing, though: I’ve met Tony Brown on at least a half of a dozen occasions. I’m not sure what affects his memory or his retention. He said I “lost” my job with the City; no, I resigned to attend law school. He said I was hired as a “computer guy” and that I was nothing more than a “crony.” For someone who claimed he doesn’t know me, he sure seemed to believe he knew a lot about me– none of which is true, by the way.

But ultimately, this has nothing to do with whether Tony Brown “knows” me. He doesn’t really know Jacques Roy either, for what it’s worth. That doesn’t necessarily qualify or disqualify “journalism.” (And believe me, contrary to what Mr. Brown told Mr. Aymond, I don’t dream about being a journalist. If Tony Brown considers himself to be a journalist, then those wouldn’t be dreams; they’d be nightmares). In all seriousness, this is ultimately about the objective, realizable, foreseeable, and currently-appreciable knowable record; it’s about the facts.

Voter disenfranchisement is a serious, criminal accusation. As Mr. Brown’s interview forcefully and almost comically demonstrates, he seeks to have it both ways: Labeling himself as a journalist, but when the facts don’t quite fit with the story he seeks to advance, suggesting that he is only offering his opinions and is, himself, the victim of a conspiracy.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Brown, I’ll interview you on my blog any time you want.

Jan 21

Screen Shot 2012-01-21 at 12.48.07 AM
6 Comments

Questioning Tony Brown’s Ethics and Professionalism

Earlier this week, on his radio show, Alexandria talk radio host Tony Brown leveled an explosive and sensational charge against leaders of the City of Alexandria: That they were purposely attempting to deny and suppress African-American voter registration. The accusations were quickly, almost instantly, reposted on Greg Aymond’s website, with Mr. Aymond directly accusing Mayor Roy of responsibility.

The story, in a nutshell, is this:

This year, during the City’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration, members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, without any prior consent or agreement, showed up at the Alexandria Riverfront Center, the location of the event, and attempted to set up a booth, allegedly with the intention of conducting a voter registration drive. But before they could get their booth set up, they were informed that they did not have permission to use the facility. Indeed, although the City of Alexandria helped to sponsor the festivities, the center had actually been rented out to a non-profit ministerial alliance and the Buffalo Soldiers, both of whom, like the AKA, are African-American-led non-profit organizations.

Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Aymond incorrectly reported or implied that the City of Alexandria is responsible for renting the Alexandria Riverfront Center. To be clear, although the City owns the Riverfront Center, the facility is managed by the Alexandria/Pineville Convention and Visitors Bureau. Either way, though, when an organization seeks to utilize a public facility for any purpose, it is necessary for them to have a written agreement for such use; this not only protects and indemnifies the public from potential liability; it also protects the organization renting the facility. AKA, however noble their intention may have been, did not have an agreement and, apparently, did not even attempt to pursue an agreement; they just showed up. And when they were given the word that they could not use the facility without an agreement, apparently- one can only surmise, some of its members alleged that this denial was a racially-motivated conspiracy to suppress African-American voters.

Without any question and with all due respect to the AKA, if they had actually contacted the good people of the Alexandria/Pineville Convention and Visitors Bureau beforehand and then entered into a written agreement, then they would have been granted the use of the facility at no cost, just as the other groups were on that day.

But the truth doesn’t make for good radio, I suppose, and Tony Brown, a man who was recently paid thousands of dollars to run controversial race-baiting commercials on behalf of William Earl Hilton’s campaign for Sheriff, is apparently never one to let a potentially explosive and racially divisive story go unnoticed, despite the facts.  ”This was about not getting more African-Americans to register to vote. I’m not going to give y’all the opportunity to register more black folks to register to vote in this town. Y’all got too many registered voters already,” Brown said on his radio show on Tuesday.

The truth, of course, is much more innocuous than Mr. Brown (and Mr. Aymond) would want people to believe: One group had a public facilities use agreement, and one did not. The City administration is not responsible for executing and enforcing those agreements; the CVB is. And they didn’t do anything wrong. They merely ensured compliance with a legal agreement. This wasn’t about discriminating against the AKA; it was about ensuring the opposite: That no one is unfairly discriminated against, that everyone abides by the same rules when they seek to set up shop in a public building, regardless of however noble their intentions may be.

But Tony Brown makes a living, in part, stoking and promoting the flames of racial divisiveness. He blamed the City administration for seeking to suppress African-American voters, an absurd and hateful allegation, and given the true facts, an allegation that seems antithetical to the life’s work and the legacy of the man being honored that day, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tony Brown spent nearly an hour talking about this story this week, fielding phone calls from several listeners, and doubling down on his sensationalistic and contrived outrage by suggesting that the City of Alexandria requires, in its agreements, that anyone who uses public buildings agree to not criticize the City administration. Sandra Bright, the outgoing leader of the Lower Third Neighborhood Watch Association, was named as the source of this incredibly disturbing news, though, in fairness to Ms. Bright, she never appeared on Mr. Brown’s show; these words were put into her mouth by others. And suffice it to say, as someone who knows exactly and precisely what these agreements look like and how they are structured, this accusation is not just ignorant; it’s maddeningly stupid. If Ms. Bright or Mr. Brown can offer even a scintilla of evidence that this is the case, then I am more than happy to issue a public apology; I’ll put the apology on the front page of my website for an entire year. But this is nothing more than a completely contrived lie.

Alexandria deserves better than Tony Brown’s lies. I don’t really care who he has worked for in the past or how important or influential he may believe himself to be; the man is an unethical, unprofessional, race-baiting liar whose antipathy toward the City of Alexandria and the Mayor has less to do with policy and almost everything to do with money.

And I can back it up, Mr. Brown.

When City Attorney Chuck Johnson, an African-American, asked Mr. Brown if he could appear on his show to clear up the controversy and present the facts, this is what Mr. Brown wrote back:

From: Tony Brown
Date: January 20, 2012 4:18:00 AM CST
To: Chuck Johnson
Subject: Re: Program
Reply-To: Tony Brown
Eyes Open is an open formatt for listeners to tell their story! The AKA’s and Links did just that. The opposing side came from Minister Larry Turner. In my more than 25 years of working as a journalist my ethics and professionalism has never been called into question by any city I ve worked in.
I appreciate your’re interest in coming on the show but no one from your adminsitration has come on eyes open for several years now and certainly has not tried to use this formatt for any radio buys which has been numerous with others who don’t question the ethics or professionalism of the Jacque Roy administration.
When we decide to advance this story we may decide to give you a call, until then, Town Talk, KALB-TV, KBCE Mix 93.9, 102 Jamz, Kiss 97.9 and The On Point Show with Mrs Xmas…those stations and shows that your administration spends money with, I suggest you reach out to them.
T Brown
Eyes Open

In his 25 years of journalism, Mr. Brown says his ethics and professionalism have never been called into question. I’m honored to be the first person to do so: Tony Brown, I call your ethics and professionalism into question.

Tony Brown believes he can spend as much time as he wants to on publicly-owned, publicly-regulated airwaves making baseless, defamatory, divisive, and race-baiting accusations about specific individuals in the City of Alexandria, but that he does not owe them an opportunity to counter these claims on air and on the same forum. Reverend Larry Turner, incidentally, does not and has never represented the City of Alexandria; he was an organizer of the Martin Luther King Day event, but it’s completely disingenuous and dishonest for Tony Brown to assert that Reverend Turner represented the “opposing side.” Reverend Turner was not asked and was under no obligation to oppose the numerous and sensationalistic lies espoused and advanced by Tony Brown against the City of Alexandria; Reverend Turner was simply defending himself, and righteously so, I may add.

But perhaps most insidiously, Tony Brown reveals that he is not interested in hearing from the City Attorney– on a story that he broke and manufactured almost entirely on his own– because the City of Alexandria doesn’t spend advertising dollars lining his pockets. Read between the lines, folks. Read this with your eyes wide open. A few years ago, as I recall, the City took out an ad on Mr. Brown’s radio show promoting the Que’in on the Red festival, and Mr. Brown, despite this, actually discouraged his listeners from attending the very festival his show had been paid to help promote. Maybe it was an act of righteous defiance, but more than likely, I believe, it was nothing more than a reflection of Mr. Brown’s arrogance: He didn’t approve of the musical line-up for some inane reason. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I ever spent thousands of dollars advertising my business or my event on someone’s radio show, only to have the show host then discourage people from supporting my business or my event, I’d never spend another dime with that person. That’s what happened to Tony Brown, and apparently, he is still bitter.

Again, I don’t think Tony Brown is ethical or professional, and frankly, I am surprised no one has questioned his integrity until now. There’s a treasure trove of evidence out there that he simply cannot avoid.

There’s one other thing, which is extremely important for Alexandrians and for listeners of Mr. Brown’s radio show to understand: He operates on a noncommercial, educational radio station. That’s right. And as such, he and his station are beholden to a completely different set of rules and criteria, particularly as it relates to advertising and the free and open exchange of ideas.

For some reason, Tony Brown apparently believes he can accuse others of committing crimes– serious crimes; he can suggest that an entire City administration believes and endorses the suppression of African-American voters; he can broadcast lies over and over and over again. But if you want to respond, then please, send in your check first. I’m sure he’d take cash as well.

Sue me, Tony. I’d love to get you under oath. It’d be fun. You could call Greg Aymond as a character witness.

PS: Senator Landrieu and Mayor Landrieu, do the good and decent people of Alexandria and Central Louisiana a favor– the people who actually supported you and actually campaigned for you and actually gave you money– STOP giving this man credibility. Seriously. My audience, without any doubt, is bigger than his, and unlike him, I (perhaps stupidly) do all of this for free. Maybe I should have taken lessons from Tony Brown.

Jan 17

11-year-old Mitchell Wilson
6 Comments

Everyone Has A Disability

Less than two weeks ago, on the night of January 5th, I was hanging out with some friends at the Blue Nile on Frenchman Street in New Orleans. For many reasons, it’s become one of my favorite places in New Orleans, though, admittedly it’s primarily because I’m good friends with a handful of its employees, and whenever I am there, they treat me like family.

I’m also an unabashed fan of Frenchman Street. For someone like me, someone who can only visit New Orleans sporadically and who can’t stand the stench, the obnoxious public drunkenness, and the claustrophobia of Bourbon Street, for example, Frenchman is vastly superior, at least in my opinion. There’s a reason Austin needs to remind people to “Keep Austin Weird,” an underlying fear that the unique, cultured, and urbane enclave it has become could easily be eroded and destroyed and, with that, a tacit acknowledgment that its “weirdness” is relatively new and fragile. New Orleans may have its fair share of gimmicky slogans, but if the storm and the recovery have proven anything, it’s that the city’s culture is deeply engrained in its DNA. There are, of course, hugely important discussions about the nature and the direction of the city’s ongoing recovery and the need for historic preservation, yet New Orleans proves, at least to me, that culture is more resilient than buildings; real culture is weatherproof, and as threatened and as fearful as some of New Orleans’s biggest champions may have been about the potential of losing that culture– of Disneyfication or corporatization (some of which, no doubt, has occurred), New Orleanians don’t have to remind themselves of the fierce urgency of maintaining their own “weirdness.” Baby, they were born that way.

But I digress.

It was the night of January 5th, and I was upstairs at the Blue Nile, sitting on the balcony outside and catching up with my friend Daniel. At some point, we moved back inside to visit with our friend, who was tending the bar. And I was happy, ebullient even, thankful to be reunited with so many of my friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in seven or eight months, and I was marveling at New Orleans.

I can pinpoint the exact moment this occurred, because immediately beforehand, I sent out the following sentimentally ridiculous tweet:

I pressed send, I walked to the bathroom, and then, while making my way back to my seat, I accidentally bumped into a girl. I’ve never been particularly skilled at walking through crowds; every stranger seems like a potential landmine, and when your balance is as bad as mine is, there is a real fear that you could miss a step or drag a foot and end up causing yourself and others to fall like a chain of dominos. But thankfully, I didn’t hurt the girl. She was just nudged, and I could tell, immediately, that she thought I had intentionally tried to bump into her.

And obviously, I was in a particularly great mood, and in no way did I want to cause any trouble. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

She was a petite, blonde-haired white girl, around twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and she’d obviously had a little too much to drink. “No, you’re not.” She was standing next to a young white guy wearing a polo with an upturned collar. “He bumped me,” she told him.

“No, look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m clumsy. I’m disabled, and I’m not really great at walking around crowds.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “No, you’re a liar.”

“No, no, I have cerebral palsy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you,” I said.

We were standing only two feet apart, and she reached over and grabbed me by the neckline of my shirt. “You’re a liar. You don’t have cerebral palsy,” she spat. And then, with her hand still holding my shirt, she shoved me as hard as she could, and suddenly, I was on my back, surrounded by a few dozen people on the dance floor, pointing and laughing (which is what most people do when someone falls flat on their back in the middle of a crowded dance floor).

Within seconds, though, two people hoisted me to my feet, and I stood, once again, face-to-face with this girl. “You need to leave this place right now,” I said. “Leave.” And before she could even muster a response, two security guards walked over to her and escorted her out.

Her friend, the guy in the polo shirt, didn’t follow her. “I can’t believe she did that,” he said.

“It’s okay. It happens.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “My brother has cerebral palsy. I’m so sorry she did that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I fall all the time. I’m made of rubber,” I said.

*****

According to a 2008 study by the British Journal of Learning Support, nearly 25% of students, at some point, are the victims of bullying; among kids who live with physical or developmental disabilities, the number is closer to 60%. Other studies have suggested that disabled children are two to three times more likely to be chronically bullied, and in a “landmark” study conducted in 1994, researchers found that children with conditions like cerebral palsy were “more likely to be called names and aggressively excluded from social activities.”

Last September, 11-year-old Mitchell Wilson, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, committed suicide after a group of kids beat him to the ground, smashed out some of teeth, and stole his iPhone. Mitchell suffocated himself to death.

Mitchell Wilson

My heart aches for Mitchell and his family, because I know, first-hand, what it feels like to be bullied as a child because you walk differently or move more slowly than other kids.

Whenever this happened to me, whenever I felt sorry for myself or wondered why, existentially, I was born with a disability, my father would tell me, “Everyone has a disability. You’re fortunate, in many ways, because most people can see yours. Sometimes, it’s even more difficult for people who suffer from things that you can’t see.”

It’s advice that has carried me through life. It’s made me stronger. It’s made me more resilient, and I think it’s made me more understanding of those who think it’s funny to bully and humiliate the physically and mentally disabled– the notion that they too must be suffering from something, something so pernicious that they feel the need to hurt and humiliate people simply because they were born with a condition over which they have no control.

*****

I am 29 years old now, and even today, I still am sometimes ridiculed and bullied by strangers. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t bother me; of course it does. But at this point in my life, I’ve shaken off the last bit of self-pity that I may have ever possessed as a child. The girl at the Blue Nile, she didn’t upset me personally.  I’ve learned, through time, to be headstrong and to understand that the problem belonged exclusively to her. Still, when things like this happen to me (and they still do, more frequently than even my closest friends and family may imagine), I’m not bothered because I feel any sense of embarrassment or shame. At my age, when you’ve fallen in public as often as I have, you tend to develop an almost matter-of-factness about the whole thing. I’m bothered because I know that if a person is willing to make fun of me for my disability, to call me a liar and throw me on the ground, then they’re also capable of doing the same thing to people who are much more vulnerable than I am.

*****

I am who I am, and I have just as much of a right to share my perspective and my story as anyone else. If you think that I write about these issues in order to garner sympathy, then I seriously feel sorry for you. During the last year, one outspoken member of my hometown has publicly claimed on the Internet that I deserve to be labeled a “gimp” because I write about my disability to drum up sympathy.

I am not, have not, and have never written about my disability for sympathy. This is my life; it’s sometimes a big part of my life; it’s informed my opinions on certain issues. And now that I am adult, I feel more obligated than ever to share my perspective, to raise awareness, and to stand up to those bullies who think it’s perfectly acceptable to shove kids onto the ground, literally or figuratively, simply because they walk or talk differently.

The same person who has called me a “gimp” has also altered photos of me to make it appear as if I am wheelchair-bound. I would submit to him and to others who may think like him: The men and women, the boys and girls who must navigate through life in a wheelchair possess more courage, more strength, more integrity, and more compassion than anyone who would ever attempt to use a wheelchair as a symbol of inferiority or ridicule. And whenever you do something like this, whenever you encourage someone who believes this is perfectly acceptable, you are contributing to a culture of hatred and bigotry; you are endorsing a climate of intolerance that makes kids like Mitchell Wilson feel there’s no way out, that no matter what a kid like him could do in his life– graduate from college or become a doctor or a lawyer or a physicist– he’ll always be nothing more than a “gimp” in want of sympathy.

But kids like Mitchell remind me of my special obligation to stand up to bullies. Sure, sometimes, they may knock me down, but with a little help from my friends, I’ll always be back on my feet in seconds.

Jan 15

Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.02.38 AM

A Short Preview of An Interview With Daniel and I In The Upcoming Documentary Film “The American Way”

A few weeks before we both moved from Alexandria, my friend Daniel T. Smith and I were interviewed for the upcoming documentary film, “The American Way.” Quoting from the movie’s official website:

The American Way, a documentary chronicling the journey of one man across the country in search of the genuine American voice, has begun shooting. Joshua Cook, who created the project, will serve as director and will be conducting the interviews. Dane Kroll will serve as cinematographer and Adam Macy will be producing the project through Temporary Productions, his production company based out of Los Angeles. In each city that they visit, the crew will interview average Americans on the state of the union, the state of political discourse and what they see and want for the future. Between destinations, the crew will both film the natural beauty of the American landscape and interview fellow travelers. The final produced film will juxtapose the words of Americans from a variety of backgrounds and iconic images of the nation with the narrative of Joshua’s quest to find the common ground and shared experience that defines America in the 21st Century.

Daniel and I spent a couple of hours with Joshua, giving him a tour of Alexandria, and then, we sat down with him for an interview at the Alexandria Riverfront Amphitheater. This is, literally, the last minute and a half of a forty-five minute interview, an interview that focused, primarily, on the ways in which the corporate consolidation of small to mid-sized media markets has affected the democratic process, the fair and accurate reporting of news, and the nature of civic engagement.

So, if we appear to be somewhat tongue-tied, blame it on the fact that we had been talking on camera nearly non-stop for 45 minutes.

Regardless, it was an honor to be able to participate, and I wish Joshua and the rest of his team the best of luck as they prepare for the festival circuit. Here’s the short preview:

And here’s a short clip of me ranting about the relationship between money and small, local elections:

← Older Entries