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.

• One woman was arrested outside of the poll at the Whitcomb Court recreation room in the East End after she flicked a lit cigarette at a police officer. The woman was upset because she no longer was qualified to vote in the precinct, [Registrar J. Kirk Showalter] said. The woman was arrested and charged with littering.
• Two workers from opposing campaigns got into a fistfight outside the poll at George Wythe High School in South Richmond, she said.

Sparks needs to charge up his cellphone. And, he says, he needs a drink.

It is 5:12 p.m. Sparks has been working at one precinct since 5:30 a.m. He says the turnout was huge and may be a record.

"I think our precinct is in the running for highest voter turnout in the state," Sparks says. "There is 2400 registered voters in our precinct. That's what we were told. As of a half an hour ago, there had been 1670 votes cast in our precinct today. In addition to that, there were 297–about 300–absentee ballots cast. I'm pretty confident that there is going to be over 2200 voters out of 2400 that cast their ballots...It goes until 7."

Sparks goes on: "This is an overwhelmingly dedicated Obama emancipation group that absolutely wouldn't have missed it for the world. It's going to exceed 90 percent in our precinct. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't exceed 95 percent."

I ask Sparks if there were any problems. He mentions there was at least one instance of a touch screening screwing up–it went to the page for the presidential race and then just showed a blank screen. One voter said that he didn't get a chance to vote–the screen promptly said he had already voted.

In more McCain-friendly precincts, Sparks reports, the turnout was way low.

"I can tell you I feel very very good about what I saw," Sparks says. "This is one of those rare elections where really, really nasty weather benefits the Democrats...."

"I'm totally dead tired," Sparks adds.

This morning, Sparks says, there was a three-hour wait to vote at his precinct.

There were only slight problems. The most recent thing–the Henrico County Sheriff drove by and planted McCain/Palin signs along a traffic median. "Once those went up, we called it in," Sparks says. "The Obama folks placed signs on either side of the McCain/Palin signs. Problem solved."

Earlier in the day, there was an issue with handicapped voters. "They are supposed to bring ballots to the curb, bring a machine outside or do paper ballot," Sparks says. Poll workers were cool "as long as the handicapped person waited in three hours of rain."

Another poll watcher got annoyed at seeing this and decided to help out. He moved the handicapped citizens to the front of the line and made sure they got ballots. "There was a minister-type guy who became their go-to," Sparks explains. "We funneled people to him. They wouldn't challenge this guy. We solved that issue."

Of the turnout so far, Sparks says: "There's no line right now. The line was still two -and a half hours long until about 10:30..... This precinct I'm in, there were probably 1400 votes." He thinks its 95 percent for Obama.

In some precincts, voters experienced problems because optical scanning equipment was not working properly. In other locations, people were filling out ballots with wet hands and clothes, which caused problems with the machines.

• 308 precint Library
  Librarian overslept did not open until 5:55am and voters let in at 6:25am
• Swift Creek Middle School-Midlothian
  Machines stopped working — no techanican on site. Long lines, hundreds of people waiting in line. Paper ballots were given out and filled out but can not be used because of broken machines. Ballots are being put in a metal container. Voters are worried about their votes being counted and privacy.
• Precint 108-Hunting-Henrico County
  Voting machines not working.
  Paper ballots are being filled out but put in an open brief case.
  Voters have no way of knowing if their vote will be counted.
• Southside Baptist-6000 Iron Bridge
  Cars being towed by WAWA

Seriously, if any locality can screw things up, it's this one. Should be interesting to see what emerges there–I'm expecting "Ukrop's Fried Chicken" to end up with at least three of the Commonwealth's electoral votes.