Mark Twain once said “Never pick a fight with someone who
buys ink by the barrel.” Faleomavaega
apparently forgot that old adage about avoiding an argument with the press when he
issued a news release Monday to accompany a copy of a 30-second video Christmas
greeting he provided KVZK-TV during
the holidays. In his statement he
blasted Samoa News for not publishing
earlier releases reporting on the progress in Congress of several pieces of
legislation of importance to the territory.
For its part, Samoa
News responded that the paper had covered those issues but did not use his
releases because, among other things “there was still no reply from the
Congressman’s office on previous Samoa
News questions on the status of his health, why was he hospitalized in the
first place, and how he is staying in contact with his office if he is in
rehab.” The bylined story goes on to say
“[t]hese are the same questions many residents, including voters, are raising
with Samoa News and these questions
have yet to be answered,” firing back: “Having his office issue a news release
quoting the Congressman still does not provide answers to lingering questions
on his health.”
At the same time, Radio
93KHJ-FM news director Monica Miller aired the audio of Faleomavaega’s
Christmas greeting saying “The 30-second clip shows the congressman from the
chest up and he looked like he lost weight.
In his Samoan greeting one can detect a slight slur in Faleomavaega's
speech. The brevity of his greeting is also unusual.“ In her commentary that also ran in talanei.com, Miller also noted that
Faleomavaega’s “Washington D.C.
office has not answered any questions about the congressman’s health and
whether he is in hospital or at home.”
We long have urged both Samoa
News and Radio KHJ to withhold disseminating
Faleomavaega’s news releases as a means of forcing his office to be forthcoming
on his health issue, which is what he clearly has tried to do with the release
of his Christmas video. Originally
sent down here to be aired on television, the Delegate apparently was
frustrated that it only played once and was seen only by a small number of
people, so he decided to send it to Samoa
News and KHJ in hopes of getting
wider distribution. But sending it with a combative news release, rather than
complaining in a private communication with Samoa
News, probably did him more harm than good.
Wrote Samoa News
reporter Joyetter Feagaimaali’i-Luamanu: “The video, with the message in
Samoan, was released by the Congressman’s Washington D.C. office and was
received by Samoa News, but didn’t
provide any other details such as where the video was recorded and when; and
did not address the health condition of the Congressman.” She went on to disclose that “Samoa News has sent questions to [his
chief of staff] Faiivae, with a copy of the email questions to the Washington
D.C. office for more details but as of yesterday [Tuesday] afternoon, there has
been no reply. Faleomavaega made no
mention of his health on the 30-second video,” which the paper posted at its website.
Because Faleomavaega has received such uncritical attention
by the local media over his long career and has a reputation for being
vindictive, we have suspected that if the media were not participating in a
cover up of his health condition they were being intimidated into silence. This is clearly not the case, as we now
realize the News and the radio
station were withholding dissemination of most of his releases, just not
telling their readers and listeners. We were misled by looking for his news releases on his website, on which he has not published any since early October nor is any information available in the "In the News" section. It also appears that he only sporadically posts on his Facebook page and does not tweet from his Twitter account at all.
Obviously his releases were being targeted just to the local media directly and we
now understand that rather than participating in a conspiracy of silence, they
were giving him every courtesy due him as a measure of respect for his position
as is customary in our Samoan culture.
But it looks as if his response has backfired and an irritated
media looks to be ready now to start to hold his feet to the fire publicly. Indeed, there already have been comments
on-line to the effect that while people respect Faleomavaega for his years of
service, he has disrespected the people by the way he has handled questions
over his health.
In recent days there has been a spate of announcements of
senior Members of Congress retiring, including Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who,
like Faleomavaega, is a protégé of the late U.S. Rep. Phil Burton (D-CA). Burton in
the 1970s rammed through the House legislation creating congressional seats for
Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa (the last seat in a bill drafted by
his young staffer--Eni Hunkin). Miller,
as chairman of the House committee with jurisdiction over wages, is the person
most responsible for making the most recent minimum wage hike applicable to American
Samoa the first time. The wage hike led to the closure of one of the two tuna canneries, throwing thousands of people out of work.
Faleomavaega, of course, can stay in office as long as the
voters keep electing him. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) was elected to a new term
after suffering a serious stroke that left him permanently impaired and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) remains in office while continuing to rehabilitate. Nevertheless, it is
difficult to comprehend why he would want to keep going. He
reminds us of the character in the Terminator movie that just keeps going
despite being shot up, blown to pieces and even thrown into a vat of molten
metal.
This is obviously a good time for Faleomavaega to call it a
day. He is 70 years old and has had a long
enough government career, including his years as a Capitol Hill staff member
and military service, to have a very handsome pension. His congressional health plan, which is the
best in the country, would go with him into retirement and he has gone as far
as he can on the House leadership ladder: in the last two years he was passed over by a freshman
Chinese-American for the chairmanship of the Congressional Asia Pacific Caucus
despite having served loyally for seven years as vice chairman and was
passed over for the senior position on House full Committee on Foreign Affairs
despite having highest seniority in his party on the committee.
Moreover, it is unlikely Democrats will regain control of
the House this fall and most independent analysts believe Republicans will be
able to maintain their majority until the next redistricting and
reapportionment after the 2020 elections.
At that time a chronically ill (by his own admission) Faleomavaega would be approaching age 80.
All the while, American Samoa is losing
the opportunity to let someone else build up seniority in the House and will
end up even worse off than Hawaii, where every member of the delegation is new
following the retirement last year of long-serving Sen. Dan Akaka (D) and the death of
the Senate's most senior member: Sen. Dan Inouye (D). Too, when legislators like Johnson and Kirk are incapacitated, there are others in their delegations to pick up the slack. Faleomavaega is all we have in Congress and he does not enjoy long-standing friendships the way he did with Akaka, Inouye and the soon departing Miller to help advance his issues.
Finally, it is unlikely his doctors will permit him to
resume his passion for extensive foreign travel and, since he has no real legislative
record, it is difficult to understand why he would want to hang on. Had he been honest with the people from the
beginning, there no doubt would have been an outpouring of sympathy for
him. But by choosing to deceive everyone
on the state of his health, he has lost credibility with the media and
increasingly the respect of the voters.
Aside from demonstrating he is not comatose or near death,
the only question Faleomavaega’s video has answered is that he is well enough
to direct his staff, meaning we now know they have not been
freelancing. The tactics are his, not
theirs.
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