DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

LETTER TO THE SUNPOST OWNER-EDITOR

2 August 2013 Kim Stark, Editor SUNPOST Miami Beach Dear Ms. Stark: Kim (if I may), some months ago I heard glad tidings on Washington Avenue from a political insider that Jose Smith was about to be sued for fraud on the courts. I was particularly interested in what the plaintiff might have to say in his complaint because my personal interactions with the city attorney have educated me to the general opinion, unspoken for fear of retaliation, that, behind his placid face and unassuming demeanor, his self-congratulatory reports to the City
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Commission and frequent public references to his fifty years of stellar public service, there is an inordinately mean lawyer whose representation of our illustrious city on the beach should be dispensed with as soon as possible so he can be elected commissioner or mayor. And you know that I alone have been glad to speak frankly about him despite his threats, denigrations, and allusions to the effect that I would soon be gone from his city. You admitted you have blackballed me as a consequence, although the paper still proudly carries my name as a contributor. Mean lawyers are naturally in demand, but Smiths inflationary identification of his ego with the city corporation into which it is narcissistically submerged for sake of sovereign immunity, and his intemperate tendency to denigrate offhand anyone who criticizes his or other officials behavior without first inquiring into the facts immediately available to him, summarily dismissing anyones complaint as frivolous, baseless, and delusional, has given too many good people cause to despise him and wish the city administration and commission ill. In retrospect, I came to believe it was he who should have been involuntarily retired by the city commission instead of City Manager Jorge Gonzalez, who just may tell all in a sequel to Sins of South Beach. You certainly know your city attorney has ardent fans. Their perspicacity, however, is at issue. For example, you named him your private papers Best City Official 2013 after he flattered you and repeatedly defamed me in public record email for asking him embarrassing questions for the sake of journalistic balance, something one of your competing editors told me Smith has a custom of doing whenever he thinks something bad will come out about him. Curiously, you informed me by email some months ago that you know nothing about Smith, and just last week you remarked that you do not know him well, to which I responded, How in the world, then, can the SunPost name him as the Citys best, choosing him, for example, over the great clerks in the City Clerks Office, who excel him by far in their excellent service to the public? Quite frankly, Dear Editor, the credibility of your weekly is ruined. I could not help noticing that the SunPost nomination of Smith was merely rhetorical and onesided, without citing a win-loss record. Anyone can do that, including myself, but I believe I can do it most artistically. Why did you fail to mention that Smith has also been named Magic Eight Ball 2013? A commissioner said his opinions, however, are slightly better than those of a Magic Eight Ball, so he may be stripped of that title. Smith has informed me he is putting the SunPost nomination as best official on his wall with his Florida Bar and F.B.I. and other laurels he rests his self-esteem on, and I hope he gets plenty of laughs looking at it for what it is worth to the twenty-nine people including contributors who read your paper, as you so often do not. Mind you that I do not begrudge him the title, as he has named me Best Moronic Journalist 2013. Taste is like the anus everyone has whenever reasoning on facts is ignored. He may very
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well be the best official in some sense, but in other senses, like that of smell, he is far from it, and my main objection to the nomination is not due to some vendetta with him but because you have made your paper a laughing stock of some of his best friends, among which I count myself. I have been working up an article on Smith, whom I expect to run for mayor after he retires from his licensed extortionate and libelous occupation, a campaign I shall vigorously support if his platform includes changing the charter to a strong mayor system and if he supplies me with a darkened room and computer at City Hall to advertise his achievements until I am found dead in my apartment because I do not show up for work and my doorstep is littered with Miami Herald deliveriesit is also good for stuffing shoes soaked with the floods around here. We need a strong mayor for Miami Beach, one who can veto the commission, and better yet if that mayor is a Cuban American Hebrew. If Fidel Castro were Jewish, the world would be a lot better off today! My trenchant article may also include illuminating information on mayoral candidate Michael Gongora, with whom you said you made a deal not to publish anything negative because your columnist hurt his feelings and he was in tears. I may relent, however, and tell my source that I am not interested in anything on Gongora unless s/he has pictures I can sell for more than $5,000 each, since I am told the candidates leading opponent is a fascist who wants to dispense with city cliques and fiefdoms, shut down the RICO operations, and convert La Familia into an efficient business enterprise. You have confirmed that my brilliant submissions are rejected because I criticized Smith. You say I have no proof of my statements about him, but that is because you do not read the proofs, reminding me of Joe Centorino at the Ethics Commission, who falls asleep over the evidence and claims there is none. However, to show that you have backbone in your editorial capacity despite your inherent conflict of interest as both an owner and editor, would you mind running my forthcoming article in your paper? You should not mind if you publish it like the other articles you do not bother to read thoroughly or pay your writers even a pittance for out of the Gongora ads so they can get their teeth cleaned, or even to run their articles through Spell Check as a common courtesy. Someday you may learn that slashing out sections of articles haphazardly, leaving sentences dangling out of context, and converting titles into nonsense, does not constitute editing, and kowtowing to the power elite does not guarantee success for newspaper owners, but I do not mind a final butchering if the truth still comes out somehow. If you will not run my article because of your ban, perhaps you will have the backbone to run this Letter to the Editor as it is pending audits to determine the advertising value of your hard-tofind rag and barely frequented website, Readership will dramatically increase and advertising revenue from small business will follow suit if you employ whatever shred of editorial courage you possess to take Leviathan to task.
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Faithfully, David Arthur Walters Wild Card Journalist aka The Miami Mirror

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