Dear
Philip:
There’s a rumor going around town that –
Let’s stop. Let’s stop right there. Though the phrasing has varied, several folks
over the last few months have sent emails starting with some version of,
“Allegedly, (neighbor/town official/guy I don’t like) has been
(lying/cheating/stealing/being downright rude), and I know it’s true because I
talked to someone who knows someone, and it needs to be stopped!”
There’s the person
in power who’s been bullying a subordinate to bend the rules for a friend. There’s the neighbor with an official “in”
that gets her kid out of all kinds of serious jams. There are scores to be settled and justice to
be brought, and all the letters describing these situations are different
except in the most basic sense:
The writers want
someone else to fix things. Things
they’re not even sure are happening.
Sometimes they believe
I can do it, by answering their letter directly in a way that will “out” the
wrongdoer. Sometimes I think they just
want me to pass along whatever they’re upset about to the paper I write for, in
the hopes reporters will investigate; which will result in righteous firings,
public humiliation, and a return to moral order, alleluia, amen. Mostly, I suspect these folks have been
watching too much television.
Things don’t often
get solved because someone thrice removed from the situation makes an anonymous
complaint. When solutions are found,
it’s usually because the people involved avoided shortcuts or fantasies that
someone else would magically, quietly make it all better.
A friend once phoned
to tell me about a young public school teacher who got a call from a member of
her local Board of Ed, asking that she “reconsider” a grade she’d given a
student who was looking to go to school on an athletic scholarship. The Board member – somehow related to the
student’s parents – didn’t get what she wanted, and then leaned on the
student’s coach to lean on the teacher.
Eventually, the story went, the coach got strong-armed by the town’s
Superintendent of Schools.
That’s what my
friend had heard, anyway, and based on the rumors, she was loaded for bear. “This stuff goes on all the time!” she assured
me. I listened, and then asked her four
questions: Did she have first-hand knowledge of any of this? Did she hear that either the teacher or coach
had been fired, or threatened with firing?
Was the kid’s grade changed? Finally, what did she think should
happen? She answered the first three
with a simple “no,” and to the third she said, “Well, someone needs to be told! This has to stop!”
And I agreed: the
person who had to be told, if the story was in fact true, was the direct boss
of the teacher and the coach. The
principal. The inappropriate phone calls
would have then been a matter of record, and if either of their jobs subsequently
became threatened, the teacher and the coach would have had grounds for juicy
lawsuits. If the principal wasn’t willing
to help, they should have gone to his or her boss, and so on. It’s how the process works.
The problem with
anonymous vigilantism is that it tends to be all heat and very little light: in
my friend’s little town (and here, too, judging by my inbox) there are more
than a few angry people who aren’t exactly knowledgeable about the source of
their anger. That’s a recipe for
unfairly damaged reputations and rampant cynicism…
…and ill-advised
letters to your faithful advice columnist, who would really rather help you figure
out how to deal with your pesky mother-in-law.
