BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY MAY 5, 2021) — Ward 1 councilor Helen Moon’s decision not to run for re-election comes as no surprise to THE PLANET. She made her decision because of ill health: The voters got sick of her.

Moon issued a statement via social media: “Thanks for the experience of being Pittsfield Ward 1’s City Councilor. It’s been a blessing and we have accomplished a lot during our time together.”

After that statement, Moon might consider going into fiction writing. We love how she capitalizes both “C”s in the job title. The only one entitled to do that by state law is Ward 4 councilor Chris Connell. What Moon calls a “a blessing” goes by a more familiar name, that is, “a curse.” Moon mentions the whole-bunch-a-lot “we” accomplished together but doesn’t give one example. That’s because when she went to that particular cupboard, she found it empty. And don’t you like the “we?”

Reminds THE PLANET of the old Lone Ranger joke.

Ranger and Tonto are surrounding by hostile Indians. Lonesome asks his sidekick, “What’re we going to do about this, Tonto?” To which Jay Silverheels replies, “What’s this ‘we,” white man?”

You’ll recall last June, with the country caught up in George Floyd Mania, Moon called for defunding the Pittsfield Police Department. That went over like whoopee cushion during an audience with the Queen.

Connell jumped all over the sentiment and rightly so.

“I don’t understand what is going on here,” Connell said. “We have severe problems here in Pittsfield … we have gangs, we have drugs. I don’t understand what we are doing. Are we drinking the Kool-Aid because of everything happening in the world? All lives matter, but you have to have law and order.” Connell said the city’s crime problem will get worse “if the police force is a skeleton crew.”  Not content to vomit on the PPD, Moon played the race card. She said she represents the “black and brown community.” THE PLANET wondered at the time: Have all the white folks moved out of Ward 1? Earl Persip said Moon’s remark was racist.

Of course, THE PLANET, Judge Crater, and everyone else under the Moon knew she was toast when District Attorney Andrea Harrington fired her. The D.A.’s office first played it cool with respect to the action, but in late winter this year, the office opened up on why. Harrington said she fired Moon for insubordination, calling her assistant dishonest, untrustworthy, traitorous, lazy, and hostile.

A couple months before that, Moon made the still-unsupported claim that she was pulled at gunpoint from her car, arrested, and jailed in Boston by Hub cops during a traffic stop because she’s a minority, non-white, female. Moon loves pulling the race and gender cards, but her two deuces haven’t stood up to the full house held by THE PLANET and every other media outlet who tried and failed to come up with proof of her claim. Moon still hasn’t produced a lick of evidence.

Later, Moon said words to the effect, “Oopsies, it wasn’t Boston that this happened but in New Hampshire.” Again, she has not produced any hard evidence to back this claim. She doesn’t say when this happened or where in the Granite State. To date, no documents have surfaced bearing out this tale, at least none that we have seen.

Consider Moon’s decision not to re-up addition by subtraction. No matter who runs for the Ward 1 seat, it has to be an improvement.

We have tried with diligent effort during her entire term to include Moon’s views on this board, but she has refused every one of our entreaties. As she discovered, it doesn’t play out well in the long run to public office holders who choose this path of least resistance and pretend they can ignore us.

Moon has expressed her interest in helping women of color in seeking office. Not people with the best qualities, but a qualification of office based on gender and race. By that account, Moon is both a sexist and a racist. Care to deny it, Helen?

Finally, if Moon wishes to discuss this in person with THE PLANET or have us publish any comments of rebuttal, we are more than willing to oblige.

Until then, we wish her the best.

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“In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe we graft into our very soul” — Writer Mary Renault.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

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