Last Friday morning I was sitting behind the wheel of our rented car waiting to drive aboard a ferry for the trip back to Vancouver and reading a paper that was a couple of days old at that point. The headlines in the Vancouver Sun caught my eye, "Billionaire unflappable in court. McCaw's testimony contradicts . . ." For a moment I thought I was back in Santa Barbara and that the NLRB hearings had started a week early.
The McCaw in question wasn't News-Press owner Wendy, but rather her former brother-in-law, John McCaw, Jr.
Little did I know a couple of days earlier, when I pointed out Vancouver's distinctive and modern courthouse building to my kids, that a trial was going on inside over John McCaw's sale of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team and the arena they play in. According to Sun columnist Ian Mulgrew; "McCaw stepped from the stand with his credibility black and blue from numerous changes to previously sworn testimony and failures of memory."
Sounds somewhat similar to what an arbitrator had to say about Wendy's testimony a few years back in her case involving former boyfriend Greg Parker where the fact finder concluded that she, "waffled, contradicted herself, was generally uncertain, suffered from unusual lack of recollection, was evasive and expressed denial of events even in the face of written evidence to the contrary."
I wonder if Wendy is on good enough terms with her former brother-in-law to call him up and get his advice on how to remain "unflappable" during what was described as "90 minutes of bruising cross-examination." It may come in handy if she's called as a witness at the NLRB hearings. If nothing else maybe he can tell her how he used several decoy limos to successfully dodge the photographers who were waiting at the courthouse.
Here's one article you won't read in the News-Press, the Ventura County Star had a story in Sunday's paper about the upcoming NLRB hearings.
I have to wonder though how much interest there is in this story outside of Santa Barbara. As of 10 pm Sunday the article was neither among the most e-mailed or most commented on of all those on the paper's website.
According to sources, don't be surprised if former News-Press editor Jerry Roberts is one of the witnesses called by the paper at some point during the NLRB hearings which begin tomorrow.
And yes it's good to be back home. While on vacation I would write my blog in the hotel room every evening then head out at about 10 pm to walk two blocks to a 24 hour coffee shop that had free WiFi in order to post it.
Today's last word comes from Dr. Laura, who had this to say about me in her column yesterday: "Craig Smith's Blog's daily anti-SBNP slam is inaccurate: On Aug. 8, Craig Smith wrote, "I'm also told there's been very little updated information about the fire coming from either the News-Press or its radio station AM 1290." A while back, I complimented Mr. Smith on his even-handedness in writing about the News-Press. That's history. Now, he's obviously so enmeshed with the hate-SBNP crowd that he doesn't even check what he's told (After citing several examples of fire coverage in the newspaper and on its website she concluded) As far as the radio station - don't know - I'm on a competing one!"
Apparently one that has far better fire coverage than News-Press Radio.
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