Huckleberries: CAVE men receive no respect

I almost spit out my coffee when I read in the Coeur d’Alene Press Wednesday that City Council wannabe Dan Gookin was unhappy that a city-commissioned report referred to local Luddites – my word, not the city’s – as CAVE people. Or “Citizens Against Virtually Everything” (a term like NIMBY that’s been around awhile). Dunno if the CPD Blue survey specifically fingered Gookin and other CAVEmen who are trying to take over City Hall. But I know that the term fits. Gookin and/or his buddies have complained about the use of urban renewal money or tax dollars to construct the Kroc Center, Riverstone, the new library and other amenities that have made viewtiful Coeur d’Alene even better. I also know that Gookin isn’t bashful about using pejoratives. In a post on a Coeur d’Alene Press blog in May, he labeled respected Trustee Christie Wood of the CDA School Board “a snake.” Why? He disagreed with the board’s decision to use urban renewal money to upgrade Sorensen School for handicap access.

Then there are all those times that he and other posters have called me DOF and/or DOoF on the Brand X blogs, a disrespectful mangling of my initials. Which I don’t mind. It’s clever. And it provides free advertising for Huckleberries Online on a competitor’s Web site. (In interest of full disclosure, I’ve ID’d Gookin on my blog as the leader of the “Wild Goose Chase Gang.” Which refers to the time in April when he and several CAVErs staged a media event on the Spokane River after they were tipped incorrectly that developer Marshall Chesrown had illegally diverted the Spokane River.) My point? If you’re going to call names, you shouldn’t act like a victim when someone returns the favor.