Editorial: Does It Matter?

If the salacious allegations were "true," as "suggested" they might be in this "article," then the case againsts Mr. Greason would not have been withdrawn and dismissed. The "truth" is that the allegations were withdrawn and dismissed. That is the truth. Instead your paper seems to want to focus on the false and withdrawn accusations made against Mr. Greason.

Why? Why does this "paper" continue to speculate on whether something was true, which was withdrawn and dismissed by a Federal Court? The only truth we know is in the court order. Why is this "paper" pretending we don't know whether the withdrawn complaint, dismissed by the Court, was true or not?

Bogus story. Bogus smear. Bogus back peddling. Bogus "reporting." Embarrassing lack of journalistic integrity? So now we have to pretend that even if something that is false were actually true, it's not so bad? It's not true, so why are we pretending? Are you kidding? Such stretched back peddling justifications for your error in judgment in publishing this article do not reflect well on you.

Who gave the story to you? Democratic operatives who want to continue to hurt Mr. Greason, his campaign, his wife and his children with the stigma of a lie. All to try to influence unfairly the outcome of an election, because the Democrats are desperate, they are losing on the real issues and cannot win a fair race? That is what it looks like; you were duped into running a false story, smearing a good man.

SHAME on YOU Mr. Geddie for not having stronger journalistic standards, and SHAME and your little friends' dirty tricks, too. Disgusting that you and these people would stoop so low. Someone on another thread said it best, "YUCK" that you would listen to this or print it.

The smear and lack of judgement is yours, Mr. Geddie. Now, we can decide if we trust you anymore to read what you write. Too bad, you have hurt yourself by this as much as anyone. You should apologize, and not run the article, which was very unfair. Make it better with honesty, not back peddling excuses for why you ran it.

Re: Sally (interesting that such vitriol comes from a woman in defense of a man who may have engaged in offensive behavior around a woman) -- It does not matter that the woman who claims the incident happened has never backed off her claim one iota, regardless of the court's ruling? That's not "bogus" at all.

There's a huge difference between an undisputed thesis and a false accusation of something that never occurred.

We as citizens have/had the opportunity to debate the content of the McDonnell thesis with the author. We as citizens have/had the opportunity to use the context of time to filter a relevant view on how the thesis' tenets will affect our vote. There has been a strong public debate on this thesis and voters now can make up their own minds about it.

Contrast that against an anonymous source for the Greason smear and citizens are left with nothing but speculate. Your article above actually keeps alive the speculation. Which leads to speculation of why the Independent isn't telling us more. Maybe pride is getting in the way of making things right. Maybe the source is to damning.

I can respect the Loudoun Independent's protection of the woman who made the accusation, but for credibility sake please let your readers know who sourced the story to you. Let the public have the same opportunity to debate the merits of their report/investigation with the author of it, just as we have had the health opportunity to debate McDonnnell.

Certainly McDonnell's thesis was insightful into the author conscience. The source of the Greason report/investigation would be just as insightful as to the motives of the lead given to you.

My sense is a follow-up story should really be about how the smear came to your attention, and by whom. Now that would be good solid journalism. It wouldn't been a perfect way to get the truth out but it would have been the right thing to do. And as readers and citizens we could judge all the facts and conclude for ourselves the relevance of the accusation. At this point, the Independent is robbing us of that opportunity.

McDonnell didn't hide from his thesis, the source shouldn't hide from his/her/their claim either.

"What a baffling editorial this is."

"Baffling" is one way to describe it, almost perverse another.

I've never seen such an amateurish attempt to appear to say one thing, while implying, in creepy and lingering detail, the opposite. I mean, what are we to make of this line:

"There are very few us of who did not make mistakes at 24."

Clearly implying guilt, even as you go on to say there's nothing to suggest guilt at all.

Your initial handling of this story was poor, this just rubs salt, or more accurately, "mud" in the wound.

You've done yourselves, your newspaper, the citizens of Loudoun County, and the candidates a disservice in your handling of this.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and just say you were probably naively exploited by a professional political dirty-trickster, who likely approached other media outlets, only to be rebuffed as the facts of this (non)story failed to meet their journalistic standards.

Although, frankly, there isn't much difference in whether you were naive or malicious, the only difference I can see is that if you were being malicious, I suspect you'd have handled this better; as it is, "clumsily and bumbling" are a couple of adjectives that come to mind.

I'd say the damage is done, precisely what the author of this fiasco wanted. The only reasonable thing to do now is to do what the previous comment said - publish the source(s) of this information - that is, who brought this to your attention, and and be sure to ask them on-the-record how did they come by the information, were they paid for their participation and if so, by who?

After all, you have a newspaper, now it's time you started acting like journalists.

The legal system is a strange place. I want to know all the facts available, so I can make an informed decision. As a voter, I'd feel cheated if I didn't know about this. It's one more thing to consider. I doubt that Mr. Geddie has an axe to grind, or that this is motivated by a desire to sell papers. More information is always better than less, especially in politics, where a lot of dirt never sees the light of day.

The one who has been cheated is Tag Greason, who never got his day in Court to confront his accuser and to prove that he was somewhere else when she alleged this happened.

The prosecutor withdrew the complaint, and dismissed the case. There is no pending complaint, nothing Mr. Greason can do to defend himself from this smear.

Too bad he did not get a chance to face his accuser. Instead the accuser is still out there, still accusing apparently, but unwilling to face the scrutiny of a court, refile the complaint, etc... just willing to complain now about the case that dragged on for more than ten years being dismissed THREE YEARS AGO (which she did not know about until this paper called.) Very bizarre.

I'd say voters should have all the information about the candidates and the charges brought against them, including the legal outcomes. Our delegate, whoever he may be, will be making decisions that affect all of us. Maybe this revelation will make Mr. Greason less likely to participate in "witch hunts" over social issues, since he knows how it feels. And that's a good thing in my book -- we sure had a problem with that with the former delegate from this district.

To quote the editorial: "The story on page 3 is news." Really? Since when are 15 year old false accusations news? I'm sorry, I thought there were actual issues out there.
To answer the editorial's title question "Does it Matter?". Simply, unequivocally, NO!

If Barack Obama had a 15 year old salacious sex charge in his past, don't you think the country and mainstream media would have it vetted?

Why is this different? Because he's a Loudoun Republican and Sally Mann and Greg Stone say it's unfair?

Ok, now we've reached the point where the posts are getting dumber than the editorial.

And according to Geddie's standards, it is important that we should know about Larry Sinclair's allegations, and we should debate whether or not we should have elected Obama, if these allegations that he killed a previous gay lover, and had sex and did cocaine with Larry Sinclair in a limo with another witness were true.

Google Larry Sinclair if you want to see his news conference and UTUBE video, where he claims he has a witness. After all, a lot of politicians have had gay sex, and have done drugs, and Kennedy even killed someone, in an accident. Should we judge Mr. Obama, even if this is true what Mr. Sinclair, who swears it is true and has a witness, says?

Is this the rationale of the paper with respect to Obama? No. But it sure is with respect to Mr. Greason.

pfallsgirl,

I don't know how you claim she left the military within a month of filing the charges? That's not in the story, and if you had been reading, someone claiming to be her husband said she got back from a tour in Afganistan in 2005...

And the case was dismissed nine years after it was brought--after several continuances... it was withdrawn completely when Mr. Greason refused to plead guilty to a lesser charge of disturbing the peace. The lady had her day in court and she was a no show. The case was dismissed.

Also, it is apparent you did not read the part of the article that states that Mr. Greason had proof that he was not where the accuser said he was when she claimed this happened--

All this is amounts to is an unsubstantiated and weak accusation that Mr. Greason had proof was false, and the prosecutor decided to dismiss it. Pfallsgirl, this is otherwise called as JUSTICE.

According to your reasoning, Obama should be in jail a long time, for doing cocaine with Larry Sinclair (according to Sinclair's UTUBE press conference) in a limo with more than one witness (and having gay sex,) and for killing his supposed gay lover who sang in Rev Wright's choir. Such double standards!