CONSPIRACY BUFF WIGHTMAN SLURS INNOCENT BYSTANDERS

By Juan Montoya
We won't mince words this time around.
We've been made aware by our cyberfriends that local blogger Robert Wightman is casting aspersions hither and yonder about his feverishly contrived conspiracy over who arranged an interview between us and Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz.
Wightman writes over this event as if merely getting an update on the current operation of the office after disgraced former DA Armando Villalobos dragged it through the mud of corruption and racketeering was itself a crime.
What gives?
Isn't that the function of a medium that strives to inform people about the running of its government officials and institutions? We thought it was, and we still do.
No, Mr. Wightman, Zeke Silva (who advertises here) did not initiate, facilitate or intervene in the "arranging" of the interview. In a community like ours, those of us who have dealt with government and media have come to know each other in a very personal way. When I worked for a county commissioner in the 1980s, Saenz was the DA and Rene Gonzalez was the legal counsel for the commissioners court. Of course, Mr. Wightman wouldn't know. He was still in Dallas and arrived here after wandering  "to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it."
We see each other on the street, meet at the supermarkets, see each other attending school events where our kids and grandkids participate. We see each other constantly at political functions. Sometimes we're on the same side, sometimes not. It's something called friendship, something a misanthrope like Wightman obviously does not know. Just recently a mutual friend of Mr. Saenz and mine took ill and was hospitalized and we both visited him at Valley Regional to inquire about his health, albeit not at the same time. Was that also a "conspiracy?"
We don't need anyone anyone to "arrange" interviews for us. And we certainly didn't need to utilize the good offices of Ms. Zamora, the DA's PIO, to simply talk to a friend and neighbor. They go on about their business, we go about ours. We have known each other for so long that no intermediaries are needed to simply communicate. This is no disrespect of Ms. Zamora, a media professional and a colleague who like many others have paid their dues in print and the broadcast media. As far as personal friendships with elected officials and with each other, we simply call each other and talk. This doesn't in any way amount to a disparagement of women in general as Mr. Wightman has stated in his own words.
Mr. Wightman, if any of your "sources" have told you that Silva was overheard bragging about setting  up the interview, you might want to double-check and confirm their veracity. Silva – just as Ms. Zamora – had nothing to do with or or even knew about it. There is nothing sinister about picking up the phone, calling Rene and outlining the parameters of what I wanted to know, him calling back and saying he could meet with me and suggesting that Luis sit in to give me a full picture.
That, in a nutshell, is the nature of Wightman's alleged "conspiracy."
Now, suddenly, Saenz and Silva are – to use your own words – "moronic misogynist eunuchs" – or to state it more simply; they hate women and have no balls. That's what Mr. Wightman has said in as many words.

It never ceases to amaze us here of the leaps in logic that this blogger concocts and which drag his subjects through the muck and mire of his diseased mind. How can someone callously speak about someone's grandchildren and warn about them being around their grandfather as he did against Saenz?
He then goes on to say Saenz ran his mouth "like a cackling hen...and then like the misogynist eunuch he is allowed a woman to take the blame for his actions."
Sooner or later Mr.Wightman's drama queen rantings and ravings will destroy what little shred of credibility and relevance he might have been trying to nurture through his blog.
We at this blog – having repeatedly been the objects of his ire – have grown inured and frankly, bored, of his diatribes against us and don't even bother to dignify his constant belching with a response. Even though he knows it's a lie, he continues to repeat the fiction that I paid him $60,000 for some defamation that existed only in his mind.
Political figures lose some of their personal privacy when they court the public spotlight. That's the nature of the beast. They expect that their actions will be scrutinized under the harsh glare of public scrutiny. The same applies to media practitioners. It comes with the territory.
However, when he accuses innocent  bystanders like Zamora, Saenz and Silva of participating in some dastardly plot against womanhood, morality, and all that's good and decent in this world, we have to get up and set the record straight. They, after all, represent the highest law enforcement office in the county and must be above reproach, especially in light of the recent history of the previous tenant there. Or is the intent to spread dissension in the ranks?
Mr. Wightman is an example of those kind of people who gleefully make unfounded statements against other people so that their "friends" will consider them daring and outrageous and they will be the darlings of the party. "Oh, that Bobby he's such a renegade...he's got electric boots, a mohair suit..."
This community will continue to exist with or without blasphemers like him and others, and the sooner the better.
On to bigger and better things.