Office harassment

Evidently, someone at the Urinal's business section believes that the sensitive feelings of the Mr. Man business types who routinely lay people off under the guise of downsizing and fight maternity leave and comp time while padding their own salaries must be protected from the possible ill thoughts of their workers.

P&J are of course referring to the BeloJo's apparent attempt to censor Scott Adams's Dilbert cartoon strip of Thursday, July 17, which appeared just below the paper's first page of stock market listings. In the final frame, Dilbert's co-worker responds to the reading of his boss's lame core value statement for the company -- a statement, the boss boasted, that had been done up by "ten of our finest executives" -- by saying, "I'm glad we didn't try to skimp and do that with only nine executives."

To this, Dilbert is shown in the Urinal adding, "Yeah. It might have been useless."

Well, either the Boston Globe got a slightly different version of the strip from its syndicator, or a hidden hand was at work on Fountain Street, because in the Globe's comic section that day, Dilbert's final line is, "Yeah. It might have sucked."

Ooh, the words Adams used! Golly gosh!

The right guy

Does anyone out there think that Jeffrey Hornoff, the Warwick police officer convicted last year of murdering Victoria Cushman in 1989, is innocent? You'll remember the case because of the bungling (some would say "willful" bungling) by members of the Warwick police department and because of the amount of time it took to finally make an arrest. But after all was said and done, it seemed at the time (and still does) that they got the right guy.

Not so, says the National Police Defense Foundation, which recently began its own investigation into the case. The Foundation wants to know why Craig Price wasn't considered.

Well, the truth is that Price was a prime suspect, and you can bet that that possibility was thoroughly investigated. In fact, for a very long time, the police did everything they could to avoid the obvious suspect, Hornoff (check out Kevin Bristow's report on this one).

The interesting aspect of the National Police Defense Foundation investigation is that NPDF officials say they rarely take on such cases. Of course, if you have the resources, it's not the most difficult thing in the world to find holes in a prosecution case built on circumstantial evidence. Still, while there is a lot of circumstantial evidence here, we believe it.

The wrong guy

The case of William "Skip" Miller, the former Brown University track coach accused of raping a student member of the women's track team, now appears to be over. Miller has pleaded no contest to a lesser assault charge in exchange for the state's agreeing not to retry him or seek a sentence for which he would have to serve any more time in prison. (Miller spent 13 months in the ACI.) But while the case may be gone, it will not be forgotten.

Miller was convicted two years ago on one count of rape (other charges were dismissed), but the state Supreme Court overturned this a year later because, quite frankly, the whole case stunk to high heaven. Miller's accuser, for instance, had waited more than a year before accusing the coach of rape.

In that time, she also had continued her friendship with him, had bought him gifts and had kissed him in front of others. Especially damning is the fact that a number of other members of the track team considered her a liar. In fact, the woman acknowledged fabricating a story about having leukemia in an effort to gain sympathy from others.

Despite all this, Skip Miller was convicted by a "jury of his peers." Whether race (Miller is black) played a part in the jury's decision is an ugly question, but from where Phillipe & Jorge sit, it certainly has resonance.

No one can blame Skip Miller for taking the no contest deal and wanting to avoid the possibility of a retrial, not after what he experienced in the first trial. If you're guessing that we think he's not guilty of any of the charges, you would be right.

While your superior correspondents certainly believe in aggressively pursuing cases of domestic abuse and rape (one area where AG Jeff "T.T." Pine has been very good), this one was beyond dubious. That Skip Miller now has a record is a real shame.

Shocked!

A couple of weeks ago we noticed that Ed Morabito, Governor Bigfoot's chief political hatchet man, said that he was "shocked" that anyone would think politics had played a role in the governor's decision to replace Sandra Thornton-Whitehouse, wife of US Attorney Sheldon, at the Coastal Resources Management Council.

Of course, the "anyone" in question was Ms. Thornton-Whitehouse herself, who suggested that politics had indeed been involved. After all, many (or Bruce Sundlun, at least) consider her husband a prime candidate to challenge the Missing Linc in '98.

The fact that Ms. Thornton-Whitehouse's tenure has met almost universal praise and that she happens to possess almost perfect credentials for the job (a doctorate in benthic ecology) make P&J wonder about Bigfoot's motivations as well. Actually, the only thing "shocking" about all of this would be to discover that BeloJo reporter Peter Lord didn't laugh in Morabito's face when he expressed his "outrage."

In the spirit of Ed Morabito, therefore, Phillipe & Jorge must express their "shock" over a report in a German newspaper that beloved bandleader Glenn Miller did not actually die when a plane he was supposedly flying in disappeared over the English Channel during World War II. Instead, the paper says, Miller was actually snuggled up next to a Parisian prostitute at the time of his demise.

While there's no definitive evidence to prove the story, we find it just shocking that anyone would suggest that a band guy might actually be involved in such hijinks or that the government would cover up such a story while in the midst of a war. Next, some spoilsport will tell us that some of Miller's band members drank a lot or that Louis Armstrong really liked marijuana.

A frightening vision

Mayor Buddy "Vincent A." Cianci behind the wheel of a RIPTA bus at the RIPTA "roadeo" driving competition last weekend at Quonset Point. What we'd like to know is where the Bud-I got that really neat "Mayor Cianci's Racing Team" shirt. We can pretty much figure out how all those bus drivers got the marinara sauce.

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