It's official: The drama surrounding Cobleskill's village mayor and town supervisor, who were caught on tape dropping N-bombs, is now national news. The AP has weighed in. So has the Huffington Post.
Mayor Mark Nadeau resigned Tuesday, at a meeting that supervisor Tom Murray did not attend.
The Times-Union asks today: Murray, what are you waiting for?
But what about Mr. Murray? What does he have to say for himself?
Cobleskill is way too small a place to hide. The people who elected Mr. Murray are entitled to the same answers to the same questions that Mr. Nadeau had to confront. Mr. Murray needs to be just as mindful that some words ought to be obsolete by now.
Readers who have yet to hear the actual words the two men uttered may be wondering if they were somehow taken out of context -- though I'm not sure there's any context in which an elected official could be caught uttering the word "nigger" and expect to stay in office. (Oh, right: Maybe this one.)
WNYT helpfully provides a transcript:
Keenan was so outraged, he sent the audio clips to News Channel 13. Keenan said in the first audio clip, Mayor Mark Nadeau allegedly used the N-word to make fun of President Obama's campaign slogan
."That's what change means you know. What's that? Come... help... get... a... (N-word) elected. Oh. Change. That's the platform he ran on. What do you think I'm running on. Change. I'm a (N-word). I've been treated like one."
In a second audio clip, Keenan identified the speaker as Town Supervisor Thomas Murray, who reportedly used the N-word when talking about Martin Luther King Day.
"...and the other thing, too, is the, the holiday. (N-word) day. Martin Luther Day."
Yep, that's pretty damning. (Can't help but notice that Nadeau seems to be confused on the spelling of "change," too.)
