I wouldn’t ordinarily use this forum for a personal anecdote, but I thought this audience would get a giggle out of it.

I live in a part of Virginia that hasn’t yet (not yet) been completely bulldozed under asphalt. Many of us who live out here like it that way very much — but others don’t. I simply can’t stifle my contempt for people who move to the country and then complain about living in the country, but that’s human nature, I suppose. Another aspect of human nature is duplicity, and that’s what was on display early this summer, when we found that a group of our neighbors had secretly banded together and petitioned Loudoun County to pave our gravel road — which is lined with beautiful stone walls that date to the 1780’s, walls that would be destroyed, along with ancient oaks, hedgrerows and farmland, by paving.

We incensed tree-huggers banded together and fought it — and won. The last nail went into the coffin at last night’s Board of Supervisors meeting. They won’t try that again anytime soon. Plenty of other nastiness, sure, but not paving that particular road.

A great deal of e-mail flew back and forth from both sides during the ugly business, some of it openly slanderous, probably actionable. But one missive in particular is worth pointing up for its spectacular rudeness. It came two nights ago to my neighbor Mary, one of the ringleaders of the anti-paving effort and a fearless thorn in the side of the utterly contemptible Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Cc’d to every member of both sides of the argument, it came from the beaten and abused keyboard of one Eugene DelGaudio, Supervisor, Sterling District.

I reproduce it here, with not one letter changed:

THERE WAS NEVER ANY CHANCE YOUR ROAD WOULD BE PAVED “SECRETELY” DUE TO A
REQUEST TO CONSIDER SAME. THANK YOU.

EUGENE DELGAUDIO
STERLING DISTRICT

Savor some of the contempt and flat-out loathing for its interlocutrix that this missive barely conceals. All-caps yelling. Impatient, clipped syntax. The wingnut passive-aggressive “quote marks” around the amusingly misspelled word — in a later reply he implied that any imputation of “secrecy” on the part of the Board was political “spin” from his enemies.*

Nasty stuff, no?

Well, this is the man who was shrieking at my neighbor.

Here’s an extract:

Delgaudio [is] executive director of the group Public Advocate of the United States. For its part, Public Advocate is, on the surface, a typical “Family Values” lobbying group. However…Public Advocate has been known to support a vehemently anti-gay platform, and indeed has been known to express these ideas, both in postal mailings and even in theatric “performances” outside Capitol Hill…:

“You’ll see men hand-in-hand skipping down to adoption centers to ‘pick out’ a little boy for themselves,” read a 1998 letter from Delgaudio seeking money to fight gay adoptions.

Delgaudio targets “pro-homosexual” politicians from both parties, using media-ready skits that he calls “conservative political street theater.” Past productions include a “Man-Donkey Mock Wedding Ceremony” outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and a “Perverts for Cellucci” rally to protest President Bush’s nomination of then-Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci to be ambassador to Canada.

This is the man who was shrieking at my neighbor.

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*This is nothing less than complete bullshit: If somebody hadn’t caught one tiny paragraph at the end of a long, boring article in our local freebie advertiser, we’d be looking at bulldozers next week.