quote:People have dragged a hodgepodge of props -- sheep, tractors, Darth Vader, Patrick Henry, fake coffins, the music of Tammy Wynette, thousands of Monopoly houses -- into the battle over suburban sprawl in Loudoun County.
But none of the theatrics ever got anyone into serious trouble, until a man walked up to the podium at a board of supervisors meeting last year and identified himself as "Mr. Valerie Kelly," the husband of a vocal critic of development.
His nearly three-minute monologue landed him in court -- a bizarre twist in the county's heated debate over growth that raised questions about the line between satire and humiliation, between witty zoning rhetoric and bad taste.
The man said he'd come to apologize for the behavior of his wife. "You just got to talk to her," he said, asking whether he could smoke and placing a tall bottle of liquor next to him on the podium. "She listens to you. She reads everything you say. She doesn't give me the time of day anymore, which is why I've just left and I'm shacked up with some blonde in Hillsboro."
He was tall and unshaven, scruffy-looking in a flannel shirt, jeans and black knit cap. And he wasn't Valerie Kelly's husband.
His name was John Grigsby, and his speech was a performance -- a snippet of amateur theater poking fun at Kelly, his political rival on the development issue. A few in the audience chuckled, and others looked dismayed. But one person in particular was not amused: Kelly's real husband, Bob.
Bob Kelly sued Grigsby for defamation of character, seeking $1.5 million in damages.
I was a little sympathetic, although thinking the lawsuit was pretty darn anti-free-speech, until I got to this point in the article:
quote:She [Valerie Kelly] was so displeased by the board's Republican majority that she displayed for them her idea for a new county flag: a collage of flags from North Korea, the Taliban in Afghanistan and other regimes.
She symbolically equated her legally elected opponents with an insane totalitarian dictator and a terrorist-assisting, woman-oppressing fanatic regime. In a dispute about how many houses to build in the county and where.
I have no sympathy if her feelings got hurt by another over-the-top political activist.
quote:The seven-person jury needed only a few hours to reach its verdict: Its members ruled against Grigsby and awarded Bob Kelly $7,500 in damages.
No appeal is planned - givent he small award it would make absolutely no sense.
posted
Living in Loudoun county is a grand adventure in real-estate planning, zoning, re-zoning, legislature, and deep-pocket developers. God I love living here...
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