Consequences, but no truth

I must say, the Portland cops are really getting away with it on the whole Jo Ann Hardesty slander scandal. Here we are eight months after it happened. The head of the police union lost his job because of his part in it. And still the public doesn't know what he did. It's "under investigation."

Willy Week keeps flogging the incident, week after week, howling at the coverup. But the union, the police chief, and the mayor have given us all the finger, non-stop. We'll get some version of the facts, but not until they're darned good and ready to give it to us, which will be on some day like Chistmas Eve or the day before Thanksgiving. Or maybe Easter. Or the Third of July.

A sad aspect of this story is that no one who knows what happened is leaking anything to the mainstream media. It shows how weak those media have become. In the old days, tirades like the one the Week keeps running would have shaken something loose. By now Dwight Jaynes or Phil Stanford would have had the scoop. But it's a different era, and the old back channels have fallen apart. It's a distressing trend, to say the least.