Well not really but let us explain. So our loudest critics have mentioned a picture of a monkey with the old mayor’s face photoshopped into the monkey’s face. It’s in a portrait and that is an import part of this story. So a picture of a monkey with the mayor’s face is rrrrrrracist. Right?
Well context matters. It matters a lot. Let’s clear the air. We know things are in Framingham Unfiltered on facebook and on the Web, not scrubbed like some say. But much of it is from our early days and who has time to reminisce about the past man. We are all about progress and moving forward. The person that is displaying THE! monkey pic it is the former Chair of a city commission that violated the open meeting laws that we don’t have enough fingers and toes among the Frank Woods here to count their violations.
We’ve seen the pic and in reflection it’s a bad thing. A really bad Photoshop. We apologize as our Photoshop skills have improved much in the past 5 or 6 years.
Context matters, remember. The questionable Photoshop was used in a story about an anonymous tip given to FU from inside City Hall. It was heard by the tipster that a certain city employee saw Mayor Spicer’s portrait and said something to the effect that “there could be a portrait of a monkey instead and the monkey would be a better mayor”. Rrrrrrrrracist!!!!!! Maybe, but maybe not.
The Mayor had trouble working with the City Council in the spirit of the charter. The Mayor purchased a nice SUV, and equipped it with all the bells and whistles that would make a Police or Fire chief blush. She had a fairly permanent driver/bodyguard hand pick from the police force which reduced the FPD active patrols most days. How can one patrol when you are following the mayor on her daily things. Lack of transparency. That was her Achilles. She challenged us to file FOIA and we are the Hank Aaron of FOIA. Not Barry Bonds, he was roided up. Hank Aaron, the guy that bested Babe Ruth of Babe Ruth Drive, Sudbury.
The city hall employee making the monkey remark was probably had a mathematic background because what he is theorizing is something called “the infinite monkey theorem”. So math is racist. No, not really. What the theorem says:
The infinite monkey theorem is a concept in probability theory and mathematics. It states that if you give an infinite number of monkeys typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they would eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare or any other given text.
The theorem is based on the idea of randomness and probability. According to the theorem, even though the chances of a monkey typing a specific sequence of characters by randomly pressing keys are extremely low, given an infinite number of attempts, it becomes statistically likely that they will produce any given text.
The concept is often used as an illustration of the principles of probability, as well as to discuss the nature of infinity and the notion that given enough time, seemingly improbable events can occur.
This stuff was being discussed 100 years ago and things were a bit racist back then so the city employee is racist, right? No he kind of butchered it up or maybe not. Maybe one monkey wouldn’t do anything so the city would not have bought a tricked out SUV, assigned a driver/bodyguard to guard mayor monkey …You get it.
So context matters and our bad Photoshop was used to show the story of a CITY HALL EMPLOYEE ALLEDGEDLY that made a disparaging remark about Mayor Spicer. We’ve seen the Spicer supporters club mention her great appointments like Chief Baker to the FPD. Common ground on that on folks, we agree. He’s a good Chief who by not getting body cameras for so long, pisses off another of our great haters. You know who you are! Remember kids, play nice in the sandbox.