1300 Block of Pennsylvania Ave. NW, June 6

Page Three photos are now in a weekly updated gallery.

Now joining the fray: AOL's Patch, part of a growing national family of online-only news sites covering small and mid-size neighborhoods, mainly in suburban communities. (They've been multiplying like "Gremlins," according to the Business Insider.) AOL has been gearing up to launch Patch sites in D.C.'s suburbs, but Georgetown Patch is the first such site in the District. Beyond neighborhood news, Patch is building non-news components, including directory and listings.

Its already-established competition: The online-only Georgetown Dish and Georgetown Metropolitan, the print-only Georgetown Current, the print and online Georgetowner, and Georgetown University's Hoya, Voice, and Independent, among others.

The big question: Can Georgetown support such a vibrant media scene? Business-wise, will there be enough people clicking to generate the necessary pageviews to create a sustainable operation? Will there be a media bloodbath in the wake of the coming Georgetown media war?

Most crucial: Which news operation will win over the loyalty of Sally Quinn? Our bet is on the TBD-affiliated Dish, whose party at Billy Martin's Tavern was recently graced by the fabled Georgetown hostess.

(One tiny point of disclosure: Back in January, AOL's corporate recruiters approached me about interviewing for a position with the Patch family.)

It may not come as a surprise that the 24-year-old District woman who allegedly stabbed 20-year-old NPR intern Annie Ropeik multiple times and for no particular reason Wednesday morning is mentally ill. Recently filed charging documents say Melodie Anne Brevard has been diagnosed as having Bipolar Type II disorder. Brevard was supposed to be on the psychotropic drug Abilify but hadn't taken it for a month, the documents say.

The description documents provide of the 9:30 a.m. attack in Chinatown is chilling: "Without any provocation, the defendant stabbed the complainant with a knife in the left collarbone, upper back, lower back, and right side. The stab wound to the complainant's right collarbone pierced through the complainant's back."

A  witness told police that after the stabbing occurred the witness yelled: "This lady just stabbed someone" and Brevard replied: " Yes, call the police."

One of the wounds damaged Ropeik's spinal cord. She is "currently paralyzed on the left side of her body below the rib cage." A statement from NPR says Ropeik is in stable condition.

Maryland court records say Brevard has been arrested before. She was arrested in Montgomery County for a second degree assault in 2007 for which she pleaded guilty. Then, in 2009, she was picked up by Prince George's cops for an alleged assault on a police officer. The charges were dismissed.

Also interesting:  Brevard appears to be an aspiring model. A profile on the site ModelMayhem.com seems to belong to the assault-with-intent-to-kill suspect.

"I am using this site for networking, exposure and modeling opportunities," the profile says.  Brevard mentions that she is open to fashion shows and print modeling. Under credits, she lists that she appeared in Jet Magazine in October 2005. The site displays a portfolio.

Brevard's aspirations would seem to be at least temporarily derailed. Things could be far worse for her, given what can happen to the District's mentally ill.

Ropeik is a junior at Boston University and is a classics and philosophy major.

In an appearance this afternoon on WAMU-FM's Politics Hour, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty made as stinging a rebuke to his political ankle-biters as he ever has.

"The difference, I think, between a councilmember and an executive is, you know, I'm the one making the tough decisions," he said in a lively conversation with host Kojo Nnamdi and reporter Tom Sherwood.

Shades of "I'm the decider" perhaps?

But, more than that, he gave what could prove an effective response to critics who say he's too arrogant, aloof, and personally out-of-touch to deserve a second term as D.C.'s mayor: "We're taking on issues that aren't just tough, we're taking on issues that are intrinsically not politically popular," Fenty said, citing D.C. Public Schools closings, mandating at-will employment for DCPS employees, and implementing taxi meters as examples.

In a version of an answer he deploys often, Hizzoner characterized concerns about his style, his bedside manner, as far removed from the concerns of everyday citizens.

"When they talk to me," Fenty said, "this is what they say: They say, Mayor Fenty, I want to you to keep continuing fixing the schools; I want you to keep driving the crime rate down; I want you to keep renovating schools, liberties, recreation centers. Keep building new construction in the city. I want you to keep the population growing. I want you to keep fixing up hospitals like Greater Southeast. Keep reducing the backlog in child welfare....They say deliver results because that's what we elected you to do."

In another portion of the show, Fenty addressed allegations of malfeasance involving allies Omar Karim and Sinclair Skinner and tens of milliions in parks contracting.

Without once mentioning Karim or SKinner's name, Fenty denied any wrongdoing and called for ongoing investigation by the D.C. Council and city inspector general to run their course. Any contract awards, he said, were "completely removed from the executive branch of government, completely followed the procurement law, and very high-quality work [is] being done."

"I think that is very premature...We need to get through an election, we need to get through a transition, we need to get through the appointments process, and then we will establish what we will do."

Asked for three policy goals, Gray said: "I'm a planner!...I will look at the first 100 days and the entire four years as a part of my planning experience and my planning background. And, you know what, we'll do that in concert with people. This campaign will elucidate the concerns of people. This campaign will raise issues that I think will substantially inform additionally what a Gray administration will do."

Thanks to WAMU and Kojo Nnamdi for having LL on and shooting the video.

UPDATED 6:15 P.M.

Last night, the District experienced the deadliest act of neighborhood violence in at least 16 years. Thus far, there has been no word on a mayoral press conference.

That's out of character for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. For instance, when a shooting last fall killed two and wounded three in the Clay Terrace neighborhood in Northeast, Fenty was on the scene soon afterward.

Over the weekend, Fenty and his wife Michelle traveled to Jamaica, where she addressed the Barbican Pines Optimists Club. It is unclear whether he's returned or not. This week is spring break for the D.C. Public Schools, which the mayor's sons attend, but Hizzoner is expected to unveil his FY2011 budget tomorrow.

A mayoral spokesperson declined to discuss the mayor's whereabouts this afternoon.

It's understandable that Fenty might not want to compete for media attention or answer questions about the candidacy of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, who announced a mayoral run yesterday. But this might be a moment where D.C. voters are looking for some answers from the top.

UPDATE, 6:15 P.M.: A press conference is scheduled for 9:15 this evening.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Embattled developer Omar Karim, in a rare appearance, submitted to journalists' questions today on WAMU's Politics Hour.

Under fire for his ties to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Karim answered questions from hosts Kojo Nnamdi and Tom Sherwood with thinly veiled outrage. Karim defended his own credentials and the record of his firm, Banneker Ventures, with an emphasis on the "defensive."

At one point, Sherwood asked to what LL's ears seemed to be a legitimate question: Name development projects you began or completed before Fenty became mayor. His initial response: "For you to ask me that is very insulting." He kept up with the bluster until finally naming a completed Silver Spring office project, as well as another project that's yet to move to construction.

Karim went on to deny aspects of a Washington Post story. In particular, megadeveloper R. Donahue Peebles therein accused Karim of approaching him at a 2007 event and telling him that "if I wanted to get to do a development deal with the District of Columbia government under Fenty, I'd have to do business with them and their circle...Essentially, the message was I was going to need him."

Karim denied the encounter ever took place, raised questions about Peebles' historical ties to Mayor Marion Barry, and in fact said he was considering filing a libel suit against Peebles. He went on to equate his ties to the mayor to certain D.C. councilmembers' apparent conflicts of interest.

But Karim made it clear he had another motive for coming on the radio: His own bottom line.

A project he's currently developing is in danger, he said, due to politics. Banneker had been selected by Metro to develop a parcel at 7th Street and Florida Avenue NW into a mixed-use project called "The Jazz @ Florida Avenue." That deal is now in jeopardy, he says, because the Metro board is refusing to extend a deadline to finalize its terms—a deadline that's already been extended twice, not unusual in a historically tight credit market.

He implied that his current notoriety has interfered with the deal, and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham, a member of the Metro board, is behind it. Graham told Washington Business Journal in September: "I know that the developer is dealing with a recovering real estate market, but we either have to move forward now, or take another look at who will do this job."

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

Now that Washington City Paper's resident media critic has departed, someone here's gotta cap on the InTowner. Hope this fills the void.

Witness the featured story from the InTowner's March issue, penned by Anthony L. Harvey. It's a nice piece of neighborhood journalism, albeit written in the 'Towner's impossibly verbose house style, about how Mount Pleasant residents are protesting the liquor license for stalwart Salvadoran/Tex-Mex eatery Haydee's.

The article's headline refers to Haydee's as a "Highly Regarded Mt. Pleasant Supper Club Restaurant." Webster's New World dictionary defines a supper club as "an intimate, expensive nightclub."

Now Haydee's might have live music on occasion, but the home of the $10.95 Fiesta Platter, beloved and highly regarded as it may be, is no supper club.

Lesson: Stay away from categorical negatives at all costs. And when you do use them, make sure you have ironclad sourcing behind them.

Yesterday's Washington Post contained a nervy categorical negative. The story in question was a feature on the love affair between former NBA star and current Sacramento Mayor Kevin "KJ" Johnson and D.C. public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Written by the prolific and wonderful Wil Haygood, it was a timely and well told piece, full of insights on this now-very-public relationship.

Yet it stopped me dead in my tracks when it vouched for KJ's bona fides in the fidelity department. The fleet-footed point guard spent 12 seasons in the NBA, and here's how the story characterized his romantic record over that period:

"Unlike some, he was no womanizer in the NBA."

Now that's a whopper of a categorical negative. Saying someone didn't fool around over more than a decade in the NBA is like saying someone went to a beer festival and had nothing to drink. The NBA culture of fucking everything in sight is too well established to belabor here.

So what testimony does the Post display for this stunning contention? That of KJ's mom: "He had always said it was too hard in the NBA with all the traveling to have a serious relationship," the mother is quoted as saying.

Time to take this thing apart, piece by piece.

No. 1: The quote from the mother doesn't even support the contention that KJ wasn't a womanizer. In fact, it supports the possibility that he was. After all, if it's too hard to have a "serious relationship" in the NBA, what the hell do you do? Right: You womanize.

No. 2: Since when does a journalist rely on a mom to substantiate whether her son is a good man? Sydney Trent, Haygood's editor on the piece, responded as follows when asked about the reliance on KJ's mom: "While we quoted his mother we also verified the information from other sources."

And then, under a subhed that reads, "Negative Publicity," Haygood delves into some events that occurred at the St. Hope Academy, a nonprofit that founded to create a network of charter schools. Haygood writes the following:

Then came the darkness: The local press wrote about a 1995 case in Phoenix in which a 16-year-old accused Johnson of fondling her in a sexual manner. Police declined to bring charges following an investigation. In 2008, there was a similar allegation made against Johnson by a high school student at his St. Hope Sacramento High School. Rhee considered herself familiar with the inner workings of St. Hope High and didn't believe the charges against Johnson.

"It was a hard thing for me," she says. "I actually knew firsthand about the accusations. I knew them not to be true. Kevin just said, 'If people want to throw stones, let them.' " Johnson's accuser later recanted and no charges were filed.

There's no way Johnson could have asked for a more favorable treatment of these events. As City Desk reported last November, the details of the St. Hope episode raised far more questions about the protagonist than Haygood even comes close to acknowledging. Here's a more definitive abridgment:

Rhee didn't merely "consider herself familiar" with the "inner workings" of St. Hope. Oh no, that way understates her role in KJ's alleged misdeeds. According to a federal investigation into shoddy management practices at St. Hope, Rhee performed "damage control" when KJ came under fire. When inappropriate touching complaints against KJ surfaced, for example, Rhee essentially pulled an Al Haig, telling a school worker that "she was making this her number one priority and she would take care of the situation." After that, the administrator discovered that KJ's lawyer had contacted the woman who'd accused KJ of the sexual misconduct, and the accuser dropped the complaint.

In perhaps the most blatant instance of whitewashing, Haygood's story suggests that there was only one instance in which Johnson stood accused of inappropriate sexual moves at St. Hope. In fact, the allegations form a much larger, stinkier pile than that. Three separate instances of KJ advances appear in the federal report. Here are excerpts from the investigation (Note: the excerpts refer to "members," code for members of AmeriCorps, the national volunteer group that had placed workers in St. Hope):

Accuser No. 1:

One Member, [REDACTED] (Ex. 19 hereto), reported that, in the February/March 2007 time frame, she was entering grades into the SAC High database system per Mr. Johnson's instructions at the St. HOPE office at night, purportedly as part of her AmeriCorps service. [REDACTED] contacted Mr. Johnson to inform him that she had completed the grades and wanted him to review them. About 11:00 pm, Mr. Johnson arrived at St. HOPE and instructed [REDACTED] to gather her things and come with him. Mr. Johnson drove to [REDACTED] apartment, which is managed by St. HOPE Development and houses its AmeriCorps Members, purportedly so that they could review the students' grades. While in [REDACTED], in which another AmeriCorps Member had a separate bedroom, Mr, Johnson laid down on [REDACTED's] bed, [REDACTED] sat on the edge of the bed to show him the grades, at which time Mr. Johnson "layed down behind me, cupping his body around mine like the letter C. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I felt his hand on my left side where my hip bone is." Further, although not detailed in her written statement, [REDACTED], during the interview, demonstrated, while explaining, that Mr. Johnson's hand went under her untucked shirt and moved until his hand was on her hip.

The report alleges that Johnson subsequently tried to pay off the woman.

Accuser No. 2:

Another former Member, [REDACTED] (Ex. 20 hereto), reported that, while attending a St. HOPE sponsored trip to Harlem, NY, from June 26 to July 16, 2006, Mr. Johnson, on three occasions, "brushed [her] leg with his hand," including once "flip[ingj up the edge of her skirt. Other times, she stated, Mr. Johnson kissed her cheek, brushed up against her as he walked past, and massaged her shoulders. ([REDACTED] reported another incident that occurred in Sacramento, CA, in which Mr. Johnson touched [REDACTED's] inner thigh with his hand while enroute to a restaurant. [REDACTED] said she did not report the incidents to AmeriCorps officials at that time because she feared she would be terminated from the program and because Mr. Johnson was assisting her in obtaining acceptance into the United States Military Academy, where she subsequently enrolled.

Accuser No. 3:

In addition, former SAC High teacher Mr. Erik Jones (Ex. 12 hereto) reported that a former AmeriCorps Member, [REDACTED], reported to him, sometime in 2007, that, while at SAC High, Mr. Johnson had inappropriately touched her. Mr. Jones stated that [REDACTED] had reported that Mr. Johnson started massaging her shoulders and then reached over and touched her breasts. (Attempts to interview [REDACTED] have been so far unsuccessful.)

How could the Post have simply overlooked this publicly available testimony? When asked about the wider body of evidence against KJ at St. Hope, Trent responds: "The accusations were investigated by police and Johnson was exonerated. We made decisions that balance fairness and space."

There's every reason to chronicle this fascinating relationship—this city has needed an authoritative take on the matter for some time now. Bits and pieces in gossip columns do only so much to fill out the tale. Yet why suppress the most delicious parts? Why not put it to Rhee: A federal report cites three instances of inappropriate sexual behavior by your fiance toward young women. What say you?

This month's Washingtonian contains a lengthy story on Mayor Adrian M. Fenty penned by longtime city reporter Harry Jaffe. It's titled "His Own Worst Enemy?" and looks at the ways that Fenty is standing in the way of a Fenty re-election.

It's also notable for containing a rare-one-on-one Fenty interview, where Hizzoner, more or less, directly addresses some common criticisms.

Thus far, the mag has only posted a short excerpt of the story on its Web site. But LL, hewing to fair-use doctrine, would like to share some other noteworthy passages in Jaffe's piece:

• On the polls: "I can't spend time worrying about how I can be more popular...or how people can think better of me or like me better or how I can win a poll. What I think about is how I can make the city run better."
• On his accomplishments: "The schools are improving. Our bond rating is the highest in decades. We put meters in the taxis. Great economic-development projects across the city. Renovation of countless school facilities. All high schools are slated for renovation. The homicide closure rate and sheer number arc at a 45-year low....Look at snow removal, trash pickup, pothole repair, ease of getting driver's licenses. Nothing is foolproof...but we are handling these basic services with private-sector methods."
• On schools: "We need a new collective-bargaining agreement....That will do more to improve test scores than probably anything else we've done."
• On his weak support among blacks: '"Do you sense that at all?" I ask. "I don't know what the polls say, and neither do you," Fenty says. "You don't have any idea what the people of the District of Columbia think. And neither do I." In our interview and in subsequent e-mailed questions, Fenty declined to engage the topic of race. He said he ignores polls.'
• On alleged cronyism: 'I ask Fenty to describe his relationships with [Omar Karim] and [Sinclair Skinner]. "Good friends," he says. Does he get involved in contracting? "No."...Fenty explains: "The contracts that went their way are 1 percent of the contracts that go to the little guys. And that is about 1 percent of the funds that go to big developers."'
• On the baseball tickets: '"In hindsight," I ask, "would you have handled that any differently?" "Are you trying to tell me this is the number-one question on people's minds?" he asks. "Maybe not, but it does stick in many minds. And I want to know." "I gotta probe you," he says. "As a writer for The Washingtonian, is this your top question?"'
• On his philosophy: "You have the thesis that people are paying attention to who gets baseball tickets and how often I meet with special interests....I have a thesis that people judge a mayor on how the government works and what they get in return for their tax dollars."

Until the 'Tonian posts the full story online, go pick up a dead-tree copy, or at least peruse one in the grocery line.

Unveiled this morning at the pre-legislative meeting D.C. Council breakfast: The city's august legislative body, as rendered in marshmallow. The diorama, to be entered in a certain publication's Peeps contest, was the handiwork of Lindsey Fell and Dee Smith, staffers for Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh.

Here's the media section:

The Peaceoholics honcho, for years called on by politicos far and wide to do gang interventions and conflict resolution, has moved on to his next project: media entrepreneur.

His outlet, launching today, is called OtherSide Magazine. Get it? If not, here's the publication's tagline: "Every Story Has Another Side."

Where his former job was all about settling tussles, this enterprise stands to stir them up. "I want a vehicle to tell both sides of the story," he says Friday afternoon in his new office, a modest storefront on Martin Luther King Avenue in Congress Heights, a few blocks from Ballou High School.

In the front of the office, formerly a church, his only employee, Damon Gorham, does design work on a computer; Moten has a bare desk set up in the back, in the boiler room—as in right next to the furnace. "I've always been a media man, a promotions man," he says, sitting behind it. "The toothpaste can get out of the tube, and it can do much damage."

Like the whole fishy fire truck fiasco, he says—Peaceoholics found itself in the middle of the controversy over the giveaway of surplus city emergency equipment to the Dominican Republic, even though investigations later determined the group was little more than a middle man. The affair meant a bright light was shined on the nonprofit, soiling its reputation and imperiling its funding. (Moten says he is no longer involved in Peaceoholics' day-to-day operations, but he remains on its board.)

So what stories these days deserve the "other side" treatment?

For one, Moten details "The Other Side of Omar Karim"—the principal owner of Banneker Ventures and frat brother of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty who became entangled in the parks contracting mess. The article describes Karim, Banneker, and the parks contracts in the glowingest of glowing terms.

To wit: "Like Benjamin Banneker, Mr. Karim has committed himself and the firm he founded to improving Washington, DC. The mission of the firm is "[t]o change the world...one community at a time." Banneker Ventures has remained true to this mission. This is a company whose ideals began to remind me of the noble goals and objectives of the Civil Rights Movement and such leaders as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks."

The other subjects of OtherSide Magazine align pretty closely with Fenty's political agenda. One piece deems Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander the "Worst Politician of the Year" for comments she allegedly made about dropouts. Another takes At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson to task for supporting tougher penalties for liquid PCP possession. Another talks up Blue Skye Construction, the D.C. government contractor owned by Fenty ally Scottie Irving, and its efforts to employ ex-offenders and troubled youth.

But OtherSide tackles some non-D.C.-specific topics as well. There's a piece explaining why rapper T.I. sought to buy a vertiable arsenal of unregistered machine guns. Another piece deems Rush Limbaugh a "homegrown terrorist." And then there's this biological perspective on Tiger Woods: 'Woods, like all humans who have come before him, suffers from two conflicting biological programs—the urge to establish a pair-bond with a mate to develop a family versus the urge to consistently find new mates to fertilize and subsequently diversify his genetic potential through the generations."

"That's something the dudes in the street are going to read," Moten says.

The articles are published on the Web, but Moten's also printed up 5,000 copies of an eight-page newsletter promoting his stories. (The Karim piece is printed in full.) Already today, LL found stacks of the newsletters inside the John A. Wilson Building. Moten says he has youths handing them out at Metro stops and elsewhere around town today.

Besides the newsletter and Web site, Moten says he plans to do Internet video broadcasts and PR work. And his cash cow is a market well-known to the well-established music promoter—go-go flyers, done by Gorham in a slick, bold style. "Flyers alone will pay the bill on this building," Moten said Friday. "We're doing all the go-go bands, but we're going to start marketing to nonprofits."

Moten's going to have to expand his enterprise at some point, and soon. He credits "some saving souls" with helping him with start-up costs, but he's the bottom line looms. "I'm gonna need some advertisers within a month and a half," he says. "And I'm gonna get 'em."

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

The release has since been recalled.

Since LL is going to poke fun at the release, he might as well pass on the info therein:

Some of the most influential thinkers, political pundits, corporate heads, religious leaders and entertainers will gather on Howard University’s campus for the State of Black America’s Address on Saving and Building Wealth on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 from 9am until 2pm. This unique national financial literacy address, in honor of Black History Month, will include a formal presentation and much needed forum on building wealth not only in America, but globally.

Presented by the Black America Saves (BAS) organization, the goal of the address and forum is to educate, enlighten and empower America by bringing people together and engaging them in thoughtful dialogue, leading to building strong, financially stable communities through individual and community action. Black America Saves State of Black America: Saving and Building Wealth Address and Forum will examine hard-hitting truths about the issue of saving and wealth building and address how politicians, corporations, religious leaders, entertainers, sports figures and American citizens, influence behavioral changes among African Americans.

The specific objectives for the presentation are simple to raise awareness of the importance of financially strong communities, to promote greater participation in saving and wealth building and, by doing so, strengthen not only the African American community but also, America!

Oops. In that e-mail, Dovi said, "This guy is trying to kill me. He may be the most tenacious flack of all time. He’s been calling me about this blind fucker for four weeks." Later in the e-mail, he says, "He’s making me want to claw my own eyes out in the hopes that if he won’t just get lost, I at least won’t have to look at his press release anymore!"

That was Friday at 11:58 a.m. McCaskey forwarded the e-mail to his boss, Dean Goldman of Norfolk, Va.'s Goldman & Associates. "I thought about it over the weekend," Goldman says. "I really put a lot of thought into this because I felt that the e-mail was discriminatory....I could have easily pushed the delete button. If I just pushed the delete button, that means I would be complicit in this process."

So yesterday, after consulting with Weeks, who he says was "very offended," Goldman e-mailed Style Weekly's publisher, Lori Collier Waran, its editor, Jason Roop, and Maurice Jones, the publisher of the Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot, which, like Style Weekly, is owned by Landmark Media Enterprises. Jones, Goldman says, agreed with him that Dovi's words were offensive.

By 3:30 p.m. yesterday, Dovi was out. On its Web site, Style published an editor's note that says Dovi used "language that violated the core values we hold sacred at Style. While he was regretful for the e-mail, it showed an unacceptable disregard for one of our chief missions at Style: to honor diversity as a company in all of our dealings with the community, and within Style’s hallways."

This is where the bullshit gets a little thick for me. (And, full disclosure, both I and my wife freelanced for Style when we lived in Richmond, so this hits a little close to home. I don't know Dovi, but I tweeted this morning that I thought his firing was stupid.) In his three years at Style, Dovi's pursued story after story about Richmond's poor treatment of its most helpless citizens, from the city jail saving money by cutting 80 percent of its spending on medications for mental health and AIDS, to the city schools botching the procurement process for ADA-compliant construction, to this piece about Richmond schools' absurd treatment of "problem students."

When I first called him, Roop declined to comment beyond the note on Style's Web site. "I just can't talk to you," he said, referring me several times to the statement. In a follow-up voicemail, he says, "We thought this was an important enough issue to involve several levels of management, and they were all involved in the decision. So no, it wasn't my decision alone, but I do support the decision."

Weeks, the motivational speaker, says Dovi's language in the e-mail, which Goldman forwarded him yesterday, "reinforced the notion to me that there's a culture set in place at Style Weekly."

"No one in their right mind," he says, "would forward that to any staff member unless you were good and sure that they were in agreement with that mentality."

But what mentality is that, exactly? Prejudice against people of color, sure, we've all heard that. Religion—well, that's pretty obvious. But who exactly is prejudiced against the blind? Weeks says he's experienced "prejudices in the public schools system growing up," as well as at work, and that he's been around "people who've said things that were downgrading" about his blindness. And there's no question that from building design to street furniture to crossing signals to our currency, America is miles behind where it needs to be as a society accessible to people with disabilities. But there's a huge difference between the sting of thoughtless planning and the hurt felt by someone left to die in a jail cell because the medication he required to live looked like a cuttable budget line to a reptilian public servant. I'll concede the possibility that there's someone, somewhere, who possesses the Herculean asshole-ness required to actually hate blind people. Dovi's words were coarse (though not intended for the dainty sensibilities of someone outside a newsroom). Were they insensitive? Arguably. Were they evidence that he intended to not write about someone because he hates people with disabilities? Faced with a PR man's bold new redefinition of the word discrimination, Roop and Waran decided to assuage an awkward situation by cutting off a talented reporter at the knees.

"I recognized that I was rude in my e-mail, but it was not bigoted," says Dovi. "If this man had been a paratrooper, I would have referred to him as that paratrooper fucker."

When asked about how much of McCaskey's pitch regarding Weeks was about the speaker's blindness, Dovi says, "Nearly all of it."

Goldman insists it wasn't simply the characterization of Weeks as a "blind fucker" that caused him to act. "It's not just that," he says. "He uses Mr. Weeks' blindness to make what he perceives as a humorous comment about the whole process," referring to Dovi's comment to his editor that the press release made him want to "claw my own eyes out."

"My own father is disabled," says Dovi. "He's blind in one eye. He had a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side." His father, he says, has expressive aphasia and can only answer yes and no.

"The only thing that upsets me about Style Weekly," Dovi says, "is that they never gave me the opportunity to speak to what I was accused of and summarily fired me after meeting for about two hours." Dovi says he did not participate in that meeting.

I asked Goldman about the attention that this has brought to his client. "We're not charging Mr. Weeks for what we did here," says Goldman, who notes that Weeks is otherwise a paying client. "This was something that occurred that offended us, that offended him. And we acted."

Weeks says the incident feeds into the subject of his Brace for Impact 2010 tour, which stops Feb. 25 at the Holiday Inn at 10800 Midlothian Turnpike in Richmond. "The seminar I was speaking on was about overcoming adversity," he says. "This was just a prime example."

UPDATED 9:36 p.m.: Goldman & Associates has removed its Web page about this matter. When I spoke to Dean Goldman earlier today, he proudly pointed to the fact that the firm kept up the page, with its negative comments about his company.

UPDATED 9:27 a.m., Feb. 19: I happened to have the deleted Goldman page open on my work computer when I got to the office this morning and took a screenshot of it. You can click this image to enlarge. I also took screenshots of the comments and will happily e-mail them to anyone who really feels like looking at them.