Worse, future practitioners of hate speech will have every right to expect that their own despicable actions should be as casually dismissed as Bryant's have been.
God, this thing is frustrating. Our leaders just don't get the precedent they've set with their lame response.
At least the Anti-Defamation League saw the harm in what Bryant did.
"To use such highly charged words in a manipulative, self-serving, divisive way, and to make allegations that are unsubstantiated, is reckless and irresponsible," wrote ADL regional director Barry Morrison in a letter to Goode.
The whole thing could've been so simple to remedy. The moment she held up those hand-made signs accusing Fox-TV news reporter Jeff Cole of being associated with the Ku Klux Klan, someone in Council could have stood up and condemned Bryant's display.
It would've taken two minutes. It never happened.
At the following week's Council meeting, our august body of legislators had a second opportunity to say something leader-like.
Instead, Goode went on a tear about how he doesn't see enough diversity in the media.
Last week, Bryant finally wrote to her boss apologizing for her "inexcusable" actions, which she followed with a list of excuses for what she had done.
Why Bryant apologized to Goode and not to the city in the context of a formal Council meeting is beyond me.
Why Goode, as her boss and our public servant, didn't apologize to the public for the very public actions of one of his employees is equally beyond me.
And why no one from Council took a stand against Bryant's actions is baffling. This is the legislative body that, last year, voted to strengthen the prohibition of ethnic intimidation in the city by forbidding the display of three "symbols of virulent animus: a noose; a burning cross; or a swastika."
