The Dog Days of Censorship
August 24th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Rule #2,351 for Politicians: When ordering a city employee to toss copies of an opposition newspaper in the trash, make sure there aren’t any surveillance cameras around to capture your indiscretion. Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas apparently hasn’t learned this rule. In June he ordered copies of LareDOS, a monthly rag critical of the city government, removed from the Laredo airport and City Hall. Naturally that didn’t go over so well with the free speech fanatics and Salinas had to apologize.
But things get worse for Mr. Mayor. Recently LareDOS got their paws on the surveillance tapes from the airport showing the mayor in action. Obtained through an open records request, the two-minute video is now available on YouTube and the LareDOS site.
In it you can see Salinas - the mustachioed, bald guy who kinda looks like Colonel Blimp - at first doing politician type things like looking enviously on while someone else is interviewed by a television reporter. But at about the 1:36 mark he can be seen talking to an airport worker and pointing to the metal rack holding copies of LareDOS. The woman then picks up the stack of issues and dispenses with them somewhere off-camera. You can’t see it in the grainy surveillance tape, but on the cover of that issue was something naturally offensive to the mayor.
As it turns out, the rabblerousing newspaper had visually impugned and humiliated a valued member of the Salinas family. Understandably, the mayor - a former FBI agent - was incensed that Princess, the First Dog of Laredo and an absolutely precious longhaired Chihuahua, made a cameo appearance on the cover of the newspaper. She appeared as a skeletal dog watching the unappetizing tableau of the city elders partying down - Laredo pachanga style - with a private prison CEO.
“I’m sensitive sometimes. I have feelings too,” Salinas told the Laredo Morning Times weeks after the incident. “You learn through your mistakes, but it does hurt when someone depicts you in a fashion that’s not true.”
The Times reported: “Putting a positive spin on Princess debut in LareDOS, Salinas said his dog is more popular now, which has brought more attention and donations to the animal shelter, he said.”
Bonus: Check out the Mayor’s MySpace page!
