I am appalled and shocked at the recent comments made by Waynesboro Vice Mayor, Jim Wood, directed toward Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
Mr. Wood appears to be clinging desperately to the seriously outdated Southern white male’s imagined position of supremacy, in which he can spout the most egregious slurs against a high ranking public official and later, meet his friends in a back room to guffaw with impunity over cigars about how he put that – fill in the blank – in his place.
This kind of behavior is not acceptable for many reasons. I posit two here. The first is the utter disdain Mr. Wood shows against our community as a whole, but specifically, the LGBTQ individuals and families in Waynesboro, in the Shenandoah Valley and the rest of the country. Mr. Wood is painfully out of touch with his constituents and with the world outside his ignorance. We do not need a public official who refuses to come into the present ready and willing to meet the world as it truly exists, not merely what he wishes it to be.
Second, what kind of elected official asks for money from the federal government with one hand and with the other, shoves dangerously inflammatory insults into the face of those who would feed him??
Mr. Wood is not the kind of representative needed at the helm of Waynesboro if this is how he intends to represent himself or the city.
Letter from Connie Wright-Zink/Middlebrook