E-Mail Conspiracy Theory
Color me a cynically, clinically insane conspiracy nut, but there’s a neuron firing in my brain’s Machiavellian lobe that says Mayor Anthony Foxx’s e-mail to council warning off sexual harassment of city staff has as much to do with politics as possible perversion. Not that politics and perversion are mutually exclusive.
Foxx’s message, sent last week, didn’t overtly state that any sexual harassment of city staff had taken place, nor did it identify any specific councilmember of being accused of such, and no formal complaint has been filed. The ambiguity of the whole situation, however, cast a predictable cloud a suspicion over every councilman.
To clear the air and find some answers, Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess made a motion near the end of Monday night’s council meeting to immediately discuss hiring an outside investigator to determine whether any sexual harassment had taken place. To be placed on that night’s agenda, however, required unanimous approval from all 11 councilmembers. It failed when Councilmember Warren Turner voted in dissent.
“Is there a complaint that we’re not aware of that requires such investigation?” Turner asked. “If not, it is pointless, it’s worthless, it’s a waste of the taxpayers’ money.”
Turner subsequently voted with his colleagues to discuss an independent investigation at the council’s April 12 meeting, and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
But if Turner’s reluctance to immediately move forward on an outside investigation put him in the crosshairs of suspicion, a report the following morning in the uptown paper of record pulled the trigger. The paper sourced three unnamed city officials as identifying Turner’s “inappropriate behavior” toward a female employee as the impetus for Foxx’s warning to council:
“The staff member complained to City Manager Curt Walton, who then asked Foxx to send an e-mail to all 11 council members. The e-mail, sent by Foxx on March 14, said that “sexual harassment … will not be tolerated” but did not name who his warning was directed at.”
That implies that Foxx: a) did not know who his warning should be directed at because he didn’t ask Walton; b) knew which councilmember had been accused but decided to keep his warning generic; or c) didn’t think such a cryptically worded broadside would cast suspicion on all 11 councilmembers and produce an uproar of backlash. On Monday night, Foxx sounded like he was claiming the latter.
“What I wrote was a statement of principle, that certain conduct is wrong and don’t do it,” he said. “I was a little taken aback by the level of defensiveness that followed that.”
Frankly, that’s a little hard to believe. So is the prospect that upon being told a councilmember was sexually harassing staff, the mayor would willingly be left in the dark about who it was. Which leaves the possibility that Foxx was informed of the culprit and begs the question, why wouldn’t he confront the councilmember with a private warning.
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