A Democrat Illinois mayor has been censured after he launched into a tirade against a citizen journalist.
Bloomington mayor Tari Renner attacked Diane Benjamin earlier this month on her website, BLNnews.com, which she uses to cover public meetings and local government.
She posted a critique of the Feb. 10 meeting in which she alleged the mayor’s son and his girlfriend were attending the meeting to criticize the city’s quality of life.
Renner visited Benjamin’s site and commented on the post:
NO! Diane! It shows what an ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL PIECE OF GARBAGE you are -actually worse because garbage can be converted into something useful – you are a TOTAL ABSOLUTE HUMAN CANCER! PLEASE quote me on that! I haven’ checked this site in ages because it’s mostly crazy bullshit -to be charitable! But, WHEN YOU ATTACK MY SON YOU ARE GOING TO PAY THE PRICE YOU SICK DIRTY SLIMY IGNORANT FOOL! And, frankly, that’s raising you to a level you ABSOLUTELY don’t deserve!
Nothing you ever report on this site makes any sense because I will give people anything they want to know about their government. Diane you REALLY are the craziest human being I”ve ever known. This WILL be my last post on this sick site of the worst part of humanity! The fact that some of you still think you’re Christians is PATHETIC! There is a special place in hell for you!
The Bloomington city council moved swiftly to denounce Renner’s attack.
“How has our public discourse gotten this nasty and vile?” Alderman Scott Black said during the special council meeting Friday night, according to the Pentagraph.
“We should take what’s happened as a lesson and learn from it.”
While the city council’s resolution did not contain the word “censure,” that was how they viewed the move.
“In my opinion, this is a censure. A censure includes a rebuke for actions,” Alderman Karen Schmidt says.
“I look at the text of the resolution and what it called for. And to me, what was approved tonight was a censure resolution based on the common definition of a censure,” City Attorney Jeff Jurgens tells the paper.
After being unanimously censured by the council, Renner took responsibility for his actions and apologized to “anyone who felt hurt.”
Another Pentagraph story prior to the censure vote reports the mayor called the citizen journalist to apologize.
“I don’t know what to say,” Benjamin tells the paper. “Is that suppose to absolve him from what he did? It’s a nice gesture, but am I suppose to forget all of the vile comments he made and are the city’s citizens going to forget? And are there going to be any consequences for his behavior?”
According to the Bloomington city website, Renner is a political science professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, a Christian college.
h/t USofArn.com.
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