Rebuke came swiftly in Sabattus, why not here?

Selectman and Assistant Rescue Chief Jason Cole

A Sabattus town official is in hot water today for threatening President Obama and using a racial slur.

David Marsters, who is running for town selectman, made the comments on his personal Facebook page under a link to a story about how some Republican lawmakers think the president should be impeached.

Sabattus’ town manager was quick to rebuke Marsters’ comments, saying they were reprehensible and had no place in today’s society.

Marsters was also visited by Secret Service agents, who respond to any threat against the president.

But things are different here in Lebanon. 

It was three months ago around Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, that Selectman and Assistant Rescue Chief Jason Cole said on his Facebook page that Gilpatrick Property Service was “fleecing” the town of Lebanon in its mowing of Forest Grove Cemetery off Baker’s Grant Road.

But here it is, Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, and we haven’t heard about any public rebuke or censure from selectmen or Cole’s boss on the Rescue Department, his wife, Samantha Cole.

Now of course we are in no way equating the two slurs. One is a reprehensible racial epithet. The other is, well, the other is just Jason Cole being Jason Cole. 

However there are similarities: they were both done on personal Facebook pages and both involved slurs.

Back in early June, then selectman chairman Robert Frizzell and present Selectmen Chair Karen Gerrish were quick to say something should be done about Cole’s slur of Gilpatrick Property Service and its owner, Chris Gilpatrick Sr., with whom Cole has often sparred in very public fashion. Frizzell and Gerrish said, in fact, the town was happy with Gilpatrick's mowing work at the cemetery.

Keep in mind selectman newcomer Ben Thompson wasn’t on the board when this all went down.

Bear in mind also we’re not in any way condoning what Marsters did or mitigating the appalling nature of his remarks, especially today on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s stirring “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

However, we think Dr. King would agree with us that when a wrong is committed it should be made right. Like the “Colored Only” water fountains and lunch counters of the South in the last century.

Cole’s only apology to Gilpatrick was a watery and disparaging one. In it he said words to the effect that Gilpatrick Service Property does “the best they can with what they have.”

This is known as “damning with faint praise” and is a long-used literary device to insult someone while trying to make it look like you’re not.

We think Cole should think better of the people of Lebanon than to insult their intelligence by using such sleazy tactics.

Cole in this instance in no way sounded contrite, only conniving.

Since then selectmen have held several executive sessions, ostensibly to discuss Cole’s Facebook comments and how they fly in the face of Lebanon Rescue’s Social Media Use guidelines which prohibit disparaging remarks.

Still, we have had no public repudiation of his comments, no genuine apology from Mr. Cole to the Gilpatricks, no punitive action from Lebanon Rescue and no closure to what happened three months ago. 

Nor do we have closure to last year’s Rescue Probe, which any thinking human being would realize that, given it was administered by Frizzell, a longtime political ally of Cole’s, bore tainted fruit.

Just like the Negroes of the 1950s we sit and wait for justice, and then wait some more.

We, too, have a dream.

                                                                                               - HT