Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Radio Soft-Toss With Andrew McKay and Doug Underhill.......

The portion of the interview I heard early this morning on AM 1620 between Andrew McKay and Doug Underhill was more like soft-toss practice than anything substantive....


Early this morning I had the misfortune of flipping channels in time to catch a part of an interview on the radio with Commissioner Doug Underhill.

It was on AM1620 with Andrew McKay.

Every time I have had the occasion to be invited on Andrew's show--which is infrequnetly---he never has an issue with asking direct, pressing questions of me--which I appreciate.  I'm sure the listeners do as well.  And I answer them all--and it typically takes up the entirety of the interview....

But this morning's interview was a straight-up joke.  A radio version of softball soft toss practice....two minutes of the 11:00+ minute interview with two softball questions on the ethics probe--thrown out  as if it is "nothing to see here..."  No pressing follow ups.  No questions about the meat of the complaints.  Nope.

I'm not sure if it was recorded and re-played--or if it was actually live.  I'm not sure if I missed the cogent, timely questions on the front end of the interview--but I doubt I missed anything but fluff.    But if it was, in fact, a live and non-recorded interview--where were the rest of the  pressing questions beyond the two softballs up front that took less than two minutes of the 11 minute interview??

Like, how about these? (the questions the host should have asked but didn't...)

    1.  Doug, as of late last week the ethics commission has found probable cause on multiple counts that you misused your position and violated state ethics law(s)--who are these three individuals and why do you think they put these complaints in against you?

    2.  Doug, your Federal Lawsuit for violation of civil rights--what is the status of that?

    3.  Doug--on citizens' watch chat site, you insinuate a local pastor was unethical by requesting funds from you in an aggressive manner--yet you won't name the pastor-----why?  Who is this person?

    4.  Doug--on citizens' watch chat site--you incorrectly insinuate that the County Attorney has sought reimbursement from the 401(a)--yet she has stated publicly multiple times she will not seek the settlement.  So why did you say that, and why did you insinuate she and the entire county is corrupt?

    5.  Doug--the board has stated and voted to not pay your legal fees because even though you believe the conduct at issue which drew your lawsuits was in the course of your job as a commissioner--the board apparently believes otherwise.  So why should they pay?  What is the status of your lawsuit in circuit court to compel the board to spend taxpayer monies on your legal defense?

    6.  Doug--your initial recommended redistricting plan would bounce a sitting elected official (Vicki Campbell--ECUA) out of her district against her will, and would take three schools out of D1 and create an imbalance of schools between School Board D2 and School Board D1----did you think this through before you just threw that unworkable idea out there at the last meeting nonchalantly?

.....and I could go on.  I mean, after all--this individual commissioner, Doug Underhill,  is the lightning rod county commissioner that has had the most ethics complaints and lawsuits by a sitting commissioner, more than ANY OTHER ---in the entire 200 year history of Escambia County....  but I digress.    (And Underhill along with his 12 to 15 sycophantic, water-carrying pom-pom squad members on Facebook will say things like "It's because Doug's honest" or "He's the only one that stand's up to Good Ole' Boys" or "He's the only one with integrity" or he's the "victim."  All garbage excuses that ignore reality and that are void of any factual basis.  Complete and utter nonsense, like a comedy sketch).  

So essentially no tough questions today.  Nope.  Instead-we got these, the following softballs and snow-cones in this puff-package: (paraphrased)

"Doug-theres all these allegations and insinuations what's your response?"  Doug's answer "It's all lies and none of it is true at all I'm just a disruptive leader that invites scrutiny and I look forward to the investigation which will include more rigor"

"Doug--tell us about your military service as you contemplate retirment?" (We all appreciate Doug's military service, as we appreciate the service by all veterans..but this question at this time when he's facing potential $10,000 fine and removal from office for allegations and probable cause findings that he violated state ethics law?????????)

"Doug, will you miss it"  (What???--are you kidding me???)

"Doug, tell us why your redistricting plan is better than Godzilla Bergosh's"

"Doug, what will you do in retirment?"

........and so on.  You get the picture.........Bizzaro.  (If it gets made into a podcast sometime later today, I'll post it here so you can listen for yourselves....)

I thought these sorts of biased, partisan media set pieces were limited to the national media's relentless fascination with making the senile, confused "Weekend at Bernie's" shell of a human Joe Biden actually look coherent, cognizant and strong---------- instead of what he, Biden, really is.

But no.

We now have a slightly skewed, localaized version of that on the radio locally too, apparently.  At least with this one "interview" anyway. 2 whole minutes on the big ethics issues that erupted last week, and 9 minutes of fluff and remininicing about his career and his future retirement.     Hopefully it's not the harbinger of the shape and tenor of things to come. 😏  It's a good thing there are now two good choices on morning radio now for local listeners.  And the other guy---he would not and does not throw soft balls and that's why he is most likely sucking up viewership numbers back from AM1620 like a dyson vortex vacuume machine sucks up rubbish.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe Andrew feels sorry for him because he is such a miserable failure and Andrew was trying to feed DD some ego supply.

https://iamandco.com/blogs/articles/how-to-deal-with-assholes

Melissa Pino said...

I stopped listening to Andrew McKay's interviews with Doug a long time ago. Some people just have an innate need to kiss his pretend sceptre for whatever reason. Andy's got it bad for Doug's BS and that won't change. Apparently the higher ups at his station support that. As you said, thank goodness Rick Outzen is now on the job.

What Doug did to Pastor Tisdale, and what Jacqueline Rogers helped orchestrate, was a new low. It won't be the lowest, however, per what the despicable people who now are the core of Escambia Citizens Watch will produce.

For years I have been trying to explain that Doug is a sick individual who draws needy people in and works on them until they share his sickness. That's how cults work. There is no limit or status quo to how bad he can get. His life from here will be a steady deterioration of his psychological disorders finally doing him in. Sadly this County is his location at the time in his life his mind is unravelling.

The problem is, the longer people continue to placate his insanity as if it is just politics as usual, the worse this will get. And Jacqueline Rogers will continue to deteriorate, as well. As has Ellen Fortinberry, who used to be able to pretend that she was the grandmotherly voice of reason, and is now being pulled face down into the vortex of their self-implosion.

Wendy: I'm not obsessed with your husband. Don't confuse determination and laser focus on exposing a crook, such as your husband is, with any interest other than seeing you two beat it from any relevance here. You know. Kinda like happened after Treasure Hills. Your husband deserves to be behind bars. I don't have a thing with him. I have a thing with exposing corrupt politicians.

Thank you to the BOCC tonight for supporting Pastor Tisdale. She and Sherri Myers were the definition of a class act in the face of the disgusting attempt Doug made to pick a black female pastor to try to blow up the budget hearings into a religious and racial war.

Fell flat once again, Doug. But God knows what you'll try next.