In the Jan. 23 issue of Wednesday Journal, River Forest Village President Frank Paris is quoted saying, “I’ll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parent. Those kinds of questions can’t be asked.” What Mr. Paris actually said was, “I’ll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parrot.”
Wednesday Journal regrets the error. Link
From the original, uncorrected article:
Paris brought discussion to a momentary halt when he attempted to make a point regarding the right of trustees to request legal opinions from the village attorney during board meetings.
At one point Steve Dudek criticized Paris for not allowing Village Attorney Jon Gilbert to make a legal ruling on Paris’ legal duties as board president.
“That always seems to come at a time when that answer might not be desired by a certain person or a certain group,” said Dudek. “I don’t think it’s proper for [Paris] to determine if a question is appropriate to ask the village attorney,” said Nummer.
Paris responded, “I’m not going to allow a question to be asked that automatically is going to have an answer that’s wrong.” He then said, “I’ll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parent. Those kinds of questions can’t be asked.”
After five or six seconds, board members recovered enough to speak, and Paris re-phrased his comment.
“You can’t ask the village attorney if it was legal to beat up my wife last week,” he said.
Paris acknowledged Monday that he could have used a better analogy, but stood by the gist of what he was saying.
“It was a comment that I shouldn’t have made,” he said. “The response was intended to [make the point] that questions can’t be asked that create answers that are misleading or for the purpose of disrupting a meeting.”
Thanks, Julia!
