Patrick J. Grubb is still a creep but the end is near! An editorial by Shannon Tomsen and Victor Riley
Next week we will publish our last comic, for now at least. We do not intend to publish again, but if the need arises, we will be there. We’ll put our signs back up to let you know. Yes, in spite of many of our signs (seven, in fact) being stolen, we have more!
We’ve been publishing on this site much longer than we intended. Our original group of comics went out in October 2017. We were going to stop at the end of 2017 but really important things kept happening so we kept reporting.
We have thoroughly researched everything we have published, every word and sentence was considered, and every drawing was carefully rendered. We based what we wrote on facts and had supporting backup for everything we wrote. We have always told the truth.
It has frequently been a lot of fun. Really, what can be funner than ridiculing Patrick J. Grubb, a self-important, creepy, sexist, pompous ass who is thin-skinned and super petty? This panel of his alter-ego Gus on his high horse from Shannon's favorite comic resonated with a lot of people:
Click here to see that whole comic.
(There are more details about the background in the “About Us” section.)
In what would be his last election, Stan Riffle beat Judson Meraw for Fire Commissioner in November 2015. At the following Fire District meeting, Shannon gave a public comment in hopes of putting an end to Judy Ross’s and Pat Grubb’s campaign against the Fire District. You can watch Shannon’s comments here, or read the short description in the district's minutes here.
Protecting the fire department and the district’s commissioners from maliciously misleading articles, blog postings, and gossip was one part of Shannon’s two-part mission when she became a Fire Commissioner. The second part of her mission was to show the community what a great fire department we had because of Chief Christopher Carleton’s work and the courage of the commissioners who hired him.
When Shannon became a Fire Commissioner, there were long-standing issues between the Fire District and Hospital District. Shannon tried to resolve them privately with then Hospital District Superintendent Elaine Komusi. Instead, either Komusi or the Hospital District Commissioners made the decision to go public and "somehow" Meg Olson and Grubb got involved.
Since much of what was being said and written was incomplete or inaccurate and often painted the Fire District in an unflattering light, Shannon believed the Fire District needed to protect itself. She took instruction from then Hospital District Commissioner Robin Nault. On behalf of the Hospital District, Nault had been attending Fire District meetings so Shannon started to attend Hospital District meetings. It was glaringly obvious there were a number of concerning issues being brought up at Hospital District meetings but those commissioners were ignoring them.
Over the next year or so, Pat Grubb did everything he could to defend the Hospital District and Unity Care. Since he couldn't defend them on their merits, he did so by disparaging Shannon and trying to undermine her, and then our, credibility. Grubb’s goal clearly was not to seek the facts or truth. He was not investigating anything. He was grandstanding and propping up the pony he had chosen. Grubb’s motives were based on revenge, putting Shannon in her place, harming Shannon’s reputation, and showing his oh so awesome power to the community. Some people bought it, but our readers, numbering more than one thousand each month, knew better.
Unlike others before us who have been treated this way by Patrick J. Grubb in his little rag, which he uses as a weapon against people he doesn't like, we did not run away or hide. The Small Point Bulletin was our way of handling the intentional infliction of shit he was flinging at us. Ridiculing his hypocrisy was cathartic.
Why didn’t we just quit? Because the Hospital District was being severely mismanaged, the clinic was going to close, and no one on the district board was doing anything to stop that from happening. Some members of the board were clearly clueless about it. Grubb read the same public records we read and he went to the same meetings we went to. Based on what we saw, he had private conversations with Hospital District staff so he knew at least as much as we did but undoubtedly more. Instead of sounding the alarm about the clinic’s future, he propped them up until the bitter end because his personal vendetta against us was more important to him.
Contrary to the Hospital District's belief, this comic was never about them. We wrote about them because they were completely clueless about what they were supposed to be doing and many things they said were funny. It was even funnier that quoting them verbatim upset them so much.
But this site was really about Pat Grubb and his trusty tagalong Meg choosing to ignore the egregious problems at the Hospital District while nitpicking anything and everything about the Fire District with a vengeance. Much of this was captured in an editorial he published in April of 2017:
At that same time, he also submitted one of the sweeping public records requests he regularly used as a cudgel against the Fire District, and published it at the bottom of this editorial:
It included the following line:
The original version of Grubb's records request called them "blue-footed booties", so Grubb had to later issue a correction:
But the correction also contained an error, because the correct spelling is "blue footed booby", not "boobie".
Where did this odd bird reference come from? We have a suspicion:
All of which led to our blue footed booby (note the correct spelling) character:
That is why Vic's favorite comic is the one this panel is from. Little Gussy Pratt is so wrapped up in himself he misses the UFO outside his window. Now that would have been a story any real newsperson would love to have covered:
Click here to see that whole comic.
A real newsperson would have also covered what was going on at the Hospital District. He didn't, so we did.
At the end of all of this, let’s take stock of what happened in the last couple of years:
Tempest in a teacup? More like cleaning house.
It's been said that a public office is a public trust. So is a newspaper. When a publication calls itself a "newspaper", it lays claim to the trust that members of the public automatically invest in the word "news". When a publication channels that trust toward the publisher's own agendas, it betrays that trust. And when that agenda is to attack competence and defend incompetence, it betrays the public interest.
Join us next week for our last edition, when we will let Patrick J. Grubb have the last word.
New comic every Monday