Ghost Patriots
Frances Semler keeps backfiring on people.
When Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser named a new parks board in June, he declared an end to a culture of community divisiveness. At the time, Funkhouser wasn’t aware that one of his appointments, the grandmotherly Semler, belonged to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a nativist outfit known for its odious rhetoric about the United States becoming a Third World country.
In spite of howls from minority constituencies, a stubborn Funkhouser refused to accept Semler’s offer to resign. I still don’t understand why the mayor, who preaches honesty, didn’t dump Semler after she claimed — falsely — that she was “not active” in the Minutemen. (After Semler made that claim, Pitch writer Carolyn Szczepanski quickly revealed, in blog entries, the real extent of Semler’s involvement.)
Funk screwed up, all right. But critics of the Semler appointment have screwed up, too — one of them in a way that bodes ill for her next few years as a 4th District city councilwoman.
On July 16, The Wall Street Journal printed a 1,300-word, trouble-in-the-heartland piece about the Semler controversy. The author, Miriam Jordan, quoted Councilwoman Beth Gottstein as saying: “This is about racism and divisiveness — everything we are not supposed to be about.”
No argument about that. But later in the piece came this nugget: “Two days after the council approved a resolution against Mrs. Semler’s appointment, several demonstrators gathered outside council member Ms. Gottstein’s gated condominium with placards protesting her vote. Her office has been flooded with angry e-mail from Minutemen supporters across the country, she says.”
I believe that angry ‘mericans gave Semler’s opponents an electronic piece of their minds. But the bit about protesters outside Gottstein’s condo? I think the councilwoman made it up.
I’ve been reading about the local Minutemen since Szczepanski’s cover story on them last fall (“To the Rescue,” November 16, 2006). The feature didn’t leave the impression that local chapters of the “corps” mustered that frequently. Yet we’re to believe that the Minutemen or their supporters rallied for the not-very-satisfying experience of waving signs outside the crib of a councilwoman who voted with eight others on a largely symbolic resolution?
Szczepanski went to Topeka for a Minuteman rally on the day of the supposed Gottstein protest. None of the people she spoke with, she says, brought up the council resolution. Olathe resident Ed Hayes, who founded the Kansas Minuteman chapter, says he doesn’t know anything about the demonstration described in The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t even know where that woman lives,” he tells me. The manager of Gottstein’s condominium declined to comment.
I called the councilwoman on July 18 in an effort to talk to her about the Journal story and left a message. She didn’t return the call, so the next day I tried to get a word with her after the council’s regular Thursday business session. This is a fairly normal course of action for a reporter (after the meeting adjourned, The Kansas City Star‘s Lynn Horsley went behind the council table to chat with Funkhouser), but Gottstein acted as if I had ambushed her. She refused to talk and ducked into an elevator. Later, she called Pitch writer Nadia Pflaum, whom she had met on the campaign trail. Pflaum encouraged Gottstein to give me a call, which she did.
Gottstein, as you’ll read in this lightly edited transcript of our conversation, refuses to remove my doubts about the protest. After greetings are exchanged, she begins by scolding me for trying to interview her between council meetings.
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Beth Gottstein: “The element of surprise does not work too well with me when I’ve got my head all over the place.”
Me: “OK. Well, I wasn’t trying to — ”
BG: “Oh, it sure felt that way. OK. So what was your question?”
Me: “Yeah, I just wanted to follow up with you about the story that was in The Wall Street Journal on the 16th.”
BG: “What are you writing about? What are you covering?”
Me: “I wanted to follow up with you about the section of the story where it talks about the demonstrators outside your condominium. Can you describe that a little bit for me?”
BG: “I need to know what you’re writing about.”
Me: “I’m writing about you saying that there were people gathered outside your condominium.”
BG: “Why now? It was so long ago. It’s been over a month.”
Me: “But the story just came out in The Wall Street Journal. That’s the first I had seen of it, that this had happened.”
BG: “Well, it’s kind of old news now. How long ago has it been since he appointed her, five weeks?”
Me: “But, again, reading this article was the first time I had seen this mention of them protesting outside your house.”
BG: “My complex. I live — ”
Me: “Your residence — ”
BG: “If you saw where I lived, you’d see…. I live in Oak Hall, where the poor woman had the moped incident. [Surveillance video from July 17, released to news organizations, captured two thugs wresting a scooter from a 65-year-old woman as she pulled into the garage of the midtown condominium tower.] … You know, the issue here is institutional racism and discrimination. It’s not my own world. We’re talking about bigger issues and leadership. I don’t think we have to worry about me, or you shouldn’t be.”
Me: “So are you or are you not going to describe for me what happened?”
BG: “It’s been so long. No. I mean, I don’t want to keep bringing it up. I think that eggs people on, and I don’t what to egg them on any further. If you want to discuss the issues, I will, but this just eggs people on. Don’t you see what I mean?”
Me: “Yeah, but the reason why I’m bringing it up is — ”
BG: “I know you need to write a story. But I don’t want to keep egging people on. If we all want to sit down and have a dialogue, that would be great. But this … makes people angry and brings them on out. Plus, there’s 140 condo units in my place. I don’t want to do anything to bring out people and make other people feel less secure. And while I don’t know that that happened, and I don’t want to say whether or not it happened, I wouldn’t want to encourage an environment where it could happen.”
Me: “So you didn’t see it happening?”
BG: “I didn’t say that. No. I’m saying in terms of talking to my neighbors, none of my neighbors complained to me.”
Me: “So how did this story get to the Journal reporter about the demonstrators?”
BG: “The Journal is not the story. The Journal is not the story. I know you need a story, David, but the Journal is not the story.”
Me: “Well, it’s what I’m choosing to ask you about, and you can — ”
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BG: “I know, but it’s not the story — ”
Me: “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not your decision.”
BG: “I mean, there’s so many other things to talk about. I mean, I don’t know why you’re — ”
Me: “I’m asking because, I’ve got to be honest, the story sounds fishy to me.”
BG: “It sounds fishy?”
Me: “Yeah. I find it hard to believe the Minutemen or some other people would have gathered outside your residence to protest a vote on a resolution opposing Semler. It just doesn’t — ”
BG: “There was also a press conference. I was on Darla Jaye [on KMBZ 980]. I was pretty visible. It wasn’t just a vote. But I also know you’re a reporter. You have to do a good job, and you’re going to say that to egg me on — ”
Me: “I’m not trying to egg you on. I’m trying to determine if it really happened or not.”
BG: “Well, I’m not going to sit here and try and convince you. I’ll talk about the issues with you, but I’m not going to sit here and do things to drag out the angry activism [that] people have already experienced. I want to get to the issues. Been through that once.”
[Pause]
BG: “Hello?”
Me: “Yes.”
BG: “Oh, OK. It clicked. I didn’t know if you hung up.”
Me: “No. So you’re not going to talk about it?”
BG: “It’s not a story.”
Me: “I guess I’m coming at it from the perspective of … I think it’s a story if … the story just seems fishy to me, and I’m asking you to make it unfishy, I guess. I’m trying to give you an opportunity.”
BG: “What do you want me to say? I don’t think I can just … I mean, what do you want me to say?”
Me: “Well, I guess if you could describe what happened, that might help. But you appear reluctant to do that.”
BG: “No, I’m not going to stir it up again. I don’t want a story written about it so that we can stir things up again, you know, and talk about me again. I don’t need to be the subject. And that’s all it’s going to do, and that’s what folks want it to be, is to be about me. It shouldn’t be about me. It should be about the kind of leaders we’re nurturing in our community.”
Me: “But I presume you told this to the Journal reporter.”
BG: “I talked to her awhile ago, when it was newsworthy. I don’t know why you didn’t call me then, when we were getting lots of calls. But I understand that sometimes it takes awhile to get to things.”
Me: “Well, I’m calling you now. I’m just following up on this one aspect of the Journal story that didn’t appear until Monday [July 16], so I couldn’t have followed up on something that didn’t happen.”
BG: “Yeah, but the story’s been out there about the appointment, the anger and the bitterness about the selection.”
Me: “Right. We’ve covered that.”
BG: “I haven’t seen a lot of it, I guess, in the Pitch…. Like I said, I’m not going to stir things up again. There’s no reason to. I could also go through the 75 e-mails I got from all over the country, more from all over the country. But what does that do but stir things up? I could sit here and read them to you or talk about the phone calls. Again, all that does is stir thing up. I want to think that something good can come from all of this, a good dialogue.”
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We said our goodbyes.
If Gottstein hopes “good dialogue” comes from this controversy, the first thing she could do is start telling the truth. Looking back at the transcript, I notice that Gottstein repeatedly states her reluctance to stir things up. But she’s done so anyway. And it’s not about the Semler story anymore but, rather, why an elected official would feel the need to embellish a story to make herself look like more of a hero or a victim. Or whether taking the progressive position in an immigration detabe gives her permission to act like a flake.
