[StBernard] EDITORIAL: Mr. Taffaro's mistake

[Westley Annis]

Craig, the way I see it....the Times-Picayunes admissions here only
pertained to you.
They were not in the least an "attack" and they sure as hell weren't going
after the "rest of St. Bernard parish."

I would think it common sense if you don't want media exposure - or people
talking up media exposure - on poor decisions made by our government
leaders, then the lesson to be learned and not to make the poor decisions in
the first place.

Your position comes across as sounding "how dare someone talk about what the
newspaper criticized me (us) for."  I thought that's what serving in public
office entailed - some criticism and praise from time to time.

Take a lesson from my years umpiring baseball from the high school ranks up
to the pros...if I was out of position and knew I could have missed a call,
when a heated coach got in my face to argue, instead of coming down on him
for arguing with me, I found the best thing I could do was not to admit that
"I probably could have gotten in better position to see the play to make the
call, and coach I promise the next time I'll do that."  Craig, I can't tell
you how much that calmed the situation, not to mention the respect I gained
from the coach that I could admit to being human and maybe having blown the
call - not that this happened often ;-).

I believe there's no difference to serving in public office.  Take the
criticism as construction (even though at times that's easier said then
done), admit you might have made a mistake and will work from this point on
to improve it.  I think people can live that...I know I can.

John Scurich