Chumley Publicly Seeks Advice on How Best to Batter Women; Now, OJB Has a Question for Galloway

By
Greg Diamond
– October 12, 2014Posted in: "The OC", Fresh Juice
Walruses fighting

Vision obscured by its own enormous face, one walrus lashes out blindly at another walrus in hopes of deflecting a question about its candidate’s position on issues critical to the herd, such as who’s stealing way more than their share of fish.

Vern is, for reasons presumably having to do with his frequent excess of honorable earnestness, trying to have it out with Chumley in comments on Lib OC.  (I’m not linking to it; OJB’s linking privileges, except when Prevatt is writing, have been suspended.)  This has led to what may actually be THE most offensive statement of this entire campaign cycle.  See if you can spot it.  My comments are in bold italic green and, when necessary, orange:

[1] Vern
October 10, 2014 at 4:54 pm

It’s become abundantly clear that Lorri’s strategy is to hopefully slip into office without taking a position on a single burning issue facing her town, and leaves her old ally to fight off the jackals and thieves all on his own. I really don’t know what she stands for any more. It is so disappointing. So, as I said for the first time yesterday (believe it or not) I am one more Democrat for Tait.

By the way, it sure gets quiet around here when the good people don’t come over to kick you around.

[2] Dan Chmielewski
October 11, 2014 at 12:12 pm

You are not a registered a Democrat Vern. At last check, you were DTS. You don’t know Lorri’s positions? That’s too bad. I do

Vern is a Democrat; he’s just a bit cranky about the local Democratic Party right now, because of people like Chumley, but his endorsements show that he’s a Democrat.  Like Vern, I find the prospect of Chumley’s explaining Lorri Galloway’s positions on the major issues affecting Anaheim to be very enticing.  Think he’ll actually do it? 

[3] Vern
October 11, 2014 at 2:21 pm

So you know Lorri’s positions on the Angels deal, the Convention Center expansion, the Ball Basin controversy, the toothless “public safety commission,” police body cameras, blanketing Anaheim in one big gang injunction, Bruno idolatry, a Disney gate tax, a living wage?

Please, let the rest of us know. Voters are counting on you!

Skadoosh!  Chumley’s gonna tell us what he knows!

[4] Dan Chmielewski
October 11, 2014 at 5:29 pm

Yes I do. But Lori has been walking neighborhoods for weeks talking directly to voters. The voters don’t need to hear from me when they can hear it straight from the source. She’s handled this smartly. So why won’t Tait explain himself on Pettibone? And why did he go after a victim of domestic abuse who dared ask him a question? Perhaps he was expecting one of those hugs Cynthia keeps talking about.

Let me print that one again with proper sound effects:

[4] Dan Chmielewski
October 11, 2014 at 5:29 pm

Yes I do. But Lori has been walking neighborhoods for weeks talking directly to voters. The voters don’t need to hear from me when they can hear it straight from the source. She’s handled this smartly.

<Chumley simultaneously yanks the steerting wheel while slamming on the brakes>

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!

So why won’t Tait explain himself on Pettibone? And why did he go after a victim of domestic abuse who dared ask him a question? Perhaps he was expecting one of those hugs Cynthia keeps talking about.

When I have to explain to my grandchildren how to tell when people are trying to deceive you, I’ll be able to pull this one out of the file.  Chumley is a PR Professional, you know!

[5] Vern
October 11, 2014 at 5:47 pm

Explain what? Why he didn’t know something that had happened with his neighbor 16 years ago, that had been sealed, that his neighbor didn’t see fit to mention? Go jump in a lake. Voters want to know people’s positions on things like I just mentioned above.

Vern tries to grab the wheel and set the course back to the topic at hand.  Will he succeed?

[6] Dan Chmielewski
October 11, 2014 at 9:48 pm

You mean like, “when battering a woman, do you prefer an open hand or a closed fist?” Pettibone attempted to hide this detail.  tait still hasn’t answered the question about whether he did his homework.

…

My God.  Wow.

To appreciate how truly awful this statement is — putting aside that it is being used to deflect questions about why Lorri Galloway isn’t presenting her positions to voters generally rather than one-by-one at their doorsteps, making it impossible for anyone to know whether her issue positions are consistent from house to house — you have to know this:

No one — NO ONE — accuses Doug Pettibone of EVER having physically struck his ex-wife — or any other woman.

To review: in the middle of a child custody dispute (in which he was ultimately granted joint custody, suggesting that the Judge was comfortable with his character) with his ex-wife (who showed her amicable views towards him by supporting his campaign), Pettibone had a loud argument with her.  Anyone with any experience of divorces and custody disputes knows that such verbal altercations happen, but they are a FAR CRY from physical altercations.

The DA quickly dropped any battery charges against Pettibone for lack of evidence — although a document that Pettibone had never seen, despite searching for it, and that was either erroneous or forged was either exhumed or planted in the official records by someone with the power to do so, wrongly stated that it had gone to a jury trial.   Pettibone was also never convicted of making threats; the FAMILY COURT judge (as opposed to a criminal court judge) ordered him to go through counseling to keep his custody bid alive, which he happily did, at which point the charge was dropped.  It is not even clear whether a charge of “making excessive noise” actually remained in force — if so, it was without Pettibone’s knowledge — because the records in question are so unreliable.  (And, of course, the office of the DA, who recently came up with an implausible TV ad blasting Tait, would be one of the few that might be able to get a new document snuck into the public record.  Not that I’m saying that they did; I’m just saying that the record wasn’t there, and then one day — heralded by commenter “Anon No. 9” here at OJB, who pretended it was there all along — it was.)

I don’t think that there’s any way to read Chumley’s statement in response to Vern’s “Voters want to know people’s positions on things” —  namely, “You mean like, ‘when battering a woman, do you prefer an open hand or a closed fist?’ Pettibone attempted to hide this detail.” — as anything other than an assertion that Pettibone engaged in physical battery of a woman, presumably his wife.

This is FLAT OUT FALSE.  There is NO EVIDENCE FOR IT.  Chumley, based on what we know he has read about the case, VERY LIKELY KNOWS THIS.  It is literally as unsupported as speculation over whether Chumley himself has ever battered his wife.  Even with Pettibone being a public figure, this vicious smear probably clears the high bar for “malice” in a defamation case.  (We know that Chumley has been aching to bring this up for a while because he speculated on whether I would ask Pettibone “when he stopped beating his wife” — which I wouldn’t, because I’m not a humorless vicious sociopath without regard for the facts or basic human decency.) 

That this statement was made to provide political cover for a woman who is IN THE BUSINESS OF PROTECTING VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE makes it all the more heinous.  And THAT now puts the onus on Lorri Galloway to comment, presuming that she does want people to think that she takes such allegations seriously.

As I’ve stated here before, I don’t think that Chumley really favors Galloway at all.  Like his friend Matt Cunningham and his political ally Kris Murray, I think that he favors Lucille Kring — and that he wants Galloway in the race solely to sap away the Democratic vote that would otherwise (and may yet) overwhelmingly go to Tait.  But Chumley is making a great show of being Galloway’s biggest public supporter, and the topic is “in her wheelhouse,” so she should step forward and — even if she WON’T tell the general public what she thinks about all of political issues that Vern raises — tell the public her beliefs about WHETHER IT IS OK TO PUBLICLY SPECULATE ON “HOW A CANDIDATE PREFERS TO HIT A WOMAN” WHEN THERE IS NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER THAT SUCH AN ACCUSATION WAS EVER EVEN MADE AGAINST HIM.

This is one of the lowest things that I have ever seen in local politics — and it comes from an unsurprising source.  Maybe Galloway can do some good by saying what she surely knows: that this sort of baseless accusation is NOT OK because it undermines the seriousness with which the public takes REAL accusations of ACTUAL domestic violence.

Hopefully, Galloway will have the decency and honor to kick Chumley to the curb over this.  I won’t ask Kring, because it seems unlikely that making such an accusation is beneath her.

Back to the accursed comments section.   

[7] Vern
October 12, 2014 at 11:36 am

And – not that I’m interested in any discussion with you about it, but I can’t let so many lies stay up here unanswered: Never having been to an Anaheim council meeting before, you wouldn’t know that Tait has several times chewed out Fitzgerald for his distasteful speech, including on “sick faggot” day. Also, James Robert Reade as well, who I’m sure you think is just some swell fellow because he comments on Matty’s blog and joins you two in attacking Tait. It figures his comparison of Anaheim’s latinos to “bonobo monkeys” would bother you less than Latinos’ “f the police” chanting which was a reaction to his being allowed to say such things.

Don’t take the bait, Vern; you can’t argue with a professional deceiver.  You, to your credit, really don’t have it in you.

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)