Sunday, April 27, 2008
“FU.” That’s how Attorney General Marc Dann’s former scheduler, Jessica Utovich, responded via e-mail to her boss last October. How utterly pedestrian.
But don’t judge Utovich too harshly. After all, Dann himself and his director of communications, Leo Jennings III, aren’t exactly creative in their use of the “F” word.
Yes, the very same word that has caused newspapers so much consternation that they’ve come up with boring substitutes, such as “expletive deleted” or “----.” But the word does has a storied history in literature.
In March 2006, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a re-enactment of the trial of D.H. Lawrence’s world renowned book, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
Lawrence’s use of the word made the book an international bestseller. But more than that, it established that the common use of “----” actually demeans it.
As British writer Clare Dudman noted in a review of the BBC trial re-enactment, “I thought it particularly interesting how D.H. Lawrence’s use of the word “----” was defended. Apparently, he believed that the word should be used for the sexual act and was demeaned when used frequently as a swear word. He thought it a pure word which had a proper place in the English language and in literature.”
But you wouldn’t know that hearing Attorney General Dann spewing it, as he did when he verbally attacked a reporter who had displeased him, or reading it in e-mails from Utovich and Jennings.
Press coverage
Dann’s use, which received statewide press coverage, came on June 19, 2007, when he was walking from his car to the home of Valley businessman Herb Washington for a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. Dann spotted Warren Tribune-Chronicle reporter Steve Oravecz across the street and shouted, “Hey, Steve, write this, ‘Go [expletive] yourself.’”
Dann was upset that Oravecz had written about a young woman by the name of Mavilya Chubarova being hired by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Chubarova wasn’t just another hiree. She had been raised by Marc Dann and his wife, Alyssa, as their daughter.
Jennings, whose colorful language is his trademark, was reprimanded last fall by Dann because of an e-mail he sent Steve Lamantia, then the acting superintendent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.
Jenning was upset that Lamantia, former Howland police chief, had failed to keep him informed about an investigation into the death of a Summit County inmate.
Here’s what the attorney general’s communications director wrote in the e-mail, which was first published by the Dayton Daily News:
“Steve the fact that you thought you could go around me to Jennifer Brindisi shows what an absolute [expletive] incompetent insubordinate moron you really are. You’ve completely botched this. I know it you know [it] and everyone else is going to know it you coward. If you have something to say to me call me and say it to me you [expletive]. Leo.”
Compared with Dann’s and Jennings’ use of the word, Utovich’s “FU” in her message to the attorney general is mild.
Term of endearment?
Indeed, a reading of the 2,000-plus e-mails between the two of them — the electronic messages were released last week after several newspapers demanded them under the freedom of information act — the “FU” could be viewed as a term of endearment.
As this writer pointed out in his blog “Stirfry” on Vindy.com, going through the e-mails makes the skin crawl.
All of the messages can be read on The Vindicator’s website. What they show is a relationship between Dann and Utovich that borders on intimate.
Indeed, the tone of her messages gives the impression of an employee with a crush on her employer.
And at the very least, the attorney general comes across as an enabler.
In not one of his e-mails does he warn her that she’s crossing the line when she refers to him as a “dork,” or writes “I hate you,” or tells him “FU.”
If only D.H. Lawrence were around to give the folks in the attorney general’s office a lesson in the proper use of the word.