CON GAMES: Marilyn Dearest, The General, And The Death Of A Free Press

November 4th, 2009 at 06:34pm Michael Conniff 2

In all the booshwa surrounding Marilyn Marks attempt to re-write history by voiding the Aspen Mayoral election—and getting herself appointed and anointed in the process—nothing has been quite so disturbing as her relentless attacks on the press.

She’s called Curtis Wackerle of the Aspen Daily News “biased.” She is now both attacking and refusing to talk to Mitzi Rapkin of Aspen Public Radio News despite Rapkin’s meticulous reports about the attempts of Marks and Mini-Me Elizabeth Milias to control the Election Commission (EC). She has from all appearances provoked the Aspen Times into absolute silence about the EC controversy, an absolutely amazing omission by any measure and nothing less than a chilling precedent. If you believe her blogging, then everything in every story about her is at least 75 percent “false” with the other 25 percent “totally false.”

As for Post Time News, our history with Marilyn Marks is long and unhappy. She was accusing us of both libel and slander long before we wrote a single word of the story commissioned by Factual Aspen Investigative Reporting (FAIR). She not only impugned the integrity of a young reporter but literally drove him out of town when FAIR refused to print the Post Time News story that eventually appeared in Aspen Post. She took good men and convinced them they had been misquoted. In the course of the FAIR brouhaha she wrote hundreds and hundreds of emails to FAIR board members trying successfully to get them to kill the story.

Her charges of “libel” and “slander” continued right up until the story appeared. Let’s just say no charges have been filed against us, because all her charges were booshwa and we are protected, thank God, by this little thing called the First Amendment.

Now consider this: as a self-appointed watchdog, there were reports that both Marilyn Marks and General Milias received press credentials from the Colorado Press Association because they wanted greater access. So they are now attacking a profession that they may at least nominally belong to. And let’s not forget that the General has told everyone in town about her top-level security clearance as a spokesperson for the Pentagon. You can’t make this stuff up.

If a citizen activist like Marilyn Marks is interested in transparency, her mantra, then the transparency has to extend to her and all who have swallowed her charges like sushi washed down with sake. A free press remains the best way to get to the bottom of things, especially when it comes to her.

All of her fans out there who keep cheering her on despite her odious attempts at suppression should consider that she has not only perverted the election process for her own ends, but that she is also doing her very best to kill any semblance of a free press in a small town. If you applaud what she’s doing to local democracy, then you have literally made a deal with the devil.

Entry Filed under: Media, Aspen, Aspen City Council