Mayor, through statement enables, vice mayor who was charged over weekend with wife beating

9/17/02 

Editor:

It appears that the City of Virginia Beach’s mayor needs to resign if she does not know the moral concepts of right and wrong.

I say this after reading an article in the Virginian Pilot [ By JASON SKOG / MATTHEW JONES/ JON FRANK/ September 17, 2002] in which the Pilot has alleged it conveyed Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf’s [who was observing Yom Kippur with family in San Francisco], statement issued Monday afternoon:

``The legal actions taken over the past weekend against the city's vice mayor, Bob Mandigo, are obviously of great concern to the leadership of Virginia Beach. But while we are concerned, we also understand that the rights of everyone involved must be preserved and the judicial system must have time to reach a legitimate conclusion to this situation,'' she said. ``For this reason, it is inappropriate for city officials to comment further on this matter.''

I've always been under the impression that if its walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck it is a duck. It appears that the Beach’s Mayor does not know that if it walks like a wife beater, quacks like a wife beater, and looks like a wife beater, it is a wife beater. The mayor’s statement appears to be saying she needs the courts [judicial system] to tell her if her vice mayor is a wife beater - on her own she doesn’t know right from wrong.

This is a matter of politics, controlling who represents the city as its vice mayor. This is a matter that the City Council controls. This is not a matter the courts controls.

The very moral fiber of the community is exposed here - do we accept wife beaters as our leaders or do we turn them out of office. I would think this is a no-brainer for Madam Mayor. As the Pilot reported she was in San Francisco observing Yom Kippur with family. During that observance she should have stood before her God, in a public confessional, and expressed that she and each human is responsible for all sins of the society in which she lives, either by her own acts of commission or by her passive acquiescence in the conditions that breed crime and lawlessness and ask forgiveness for those acts.

It appears that Madam Mayor, rather than ask for forgiveness for her sins, committed a sin by what appears to be her act of passive acquiescence to the wife beat!

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