The Truth or Something Like It

I was actually going to wait and do this update sometime in the near future, but I heard something this morning that made me want to address it right away.  As I had outlined in my last post, there has been a bit of an uproar around town concerning a confrontation between Jay Levine of CBS 2 and William J. Kelly of The Kelly Truth Squad.  As you may recall, Mr. Kelly pays for an hour of time each week on Saturday nights at 6:00 to broadcast his “show” on the local conservative minded station WIND.  Well, Mr. Kelly was back on WIND this morning, but this time as a guest on the morning show with John Howell and Amy Jacobson.  During his appearance part of the conversation revolved around whether or not Mr. Kelly misrepresented himself as an employee of WIND radio.  In response, Mr. Kelly said, “I never once said that I worked for WIND.”  Which is true, but what he does say several times during the confrontation is that he is “with” WIND.  At one point, Charles Thomas of ABC 7 can be heard saying to Kelly, “You’re not even a real reporter.”  Kelly’s response is, “I am too.  I’m with WIND radio.  I do a show with WIND.”

It sounds to me like Mr. Kelly is suffering from something I like to call Greg Brady Syndrome.  Remember the episode of The Brady Bunch when Greg is told he can’t drive the family car, but he is later seen driving a friend’s car.  He falls back on the defence that he complied with the punishment’s “exact words” and did not drive the “family car” even though he probably understood he shouldn’t be driving “any” car.  This is in effect what Mr. Kelly has done.  When asked directly who he was with, why didn’t Mr. Kelly say he was with The Kelly Truth Squad?  Was the truth not important in this instance?  Why even bring WIND into this at all? 

But enough of that, let’s get back to that whole “Truth” thing.  In my first post, I admitted to not knowing much about Mr. William J. Kelly, but since that time I have done a little research and have discovered quite a bit about him.  He has a number of blogs floating around on the world-wide web.  Four of them that I have found right here at WordPress.  There is William J. Kelly’s blog, Friends of William J. Kelly’s blog, Kelly’s Truth Squad’s Blog, and Kelly Truth Squad II.  He also has a blog at ChicagoNow and an independent website also called Kelly Truth Squad.  On that website in a post that is dated today, October 20th, Kelly says that he plans to challenge Rahm Emanuel’s petition to run for mayor of the city of Chicago on the basis of his residency.  He then asks for help with this battle and directs people to www.friendsofwilliamjkelly.com and to ”donating to our efforts as generously as you can.”  The only problem is that THIS website is set up to accept donations for Mr. Kelly’s campaign for 42nd Ward Alderman in 2011.  THIS website was formally where he also took donations when he ran in the Republican primary for comptroller, when he lost his bid to Judy Baar Topinka.  No where on THAT website does it mention anything about Rahm Emanuel or the challenge to his petition for mayor.  Am I the only one who is having a problem with this type of “Truth”?

Let’s look a little deeper into this whole “Truth” thing.  On many of Mr. Kelly’s web pages, in his biography he mentions three different things.  First, that he is a graduate of the Second City Conservatory, that he is ”the host and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning Upscale TV”, and that he writes a column for The Washington Times.  He also talked about his writing for them while defending his history as a journalist in his interview with WIND.  Let’s start with this last claim first.  If you go to The Washington Times website, and you look under the heading of Communities, then under the sub-heading of The Loop, you will find about ten articles written by Mr. Kelly under the title Bill Kelly’s Truth Squad.  Now, I am not the brightest bulb in the box, but if you ask me, this looks just like another blog.  In fact, if you look closely at the site, way down at the very bottom, you will find a disclaimer that reads, “All site content Copyright The Washington Times, LLC.  Contributors are responsible for this content, which is not edited by The Washington Times.”  So, Mr. Kelly, I have one simple question for you:  Do you get paid for your work as a journalist writing for The Washington Times, or are you just “with” them?

The other two items in his biography are a little confusing to me, and although I would not go so far as to call them lies, they too probably suffer from a little bit from the Greg Brady Syndrome.  Although Mr. Kelly claims to be a graduate of the Second City Conservatory program, if you look at the Second City website they clearly state that they are “not an accredited institution of higher learning, just an awesome professional training center.”  I could find nothing listed in their course listing to indicate how someone would “graduate” from their conservatory.  If you look at the history tab of the website, they do happen to have a very extensive list of Alumni dating back to 1959.  Surprisingly Mr. Kelly does not appear on that list.  There is also a reference guide on the Second City website that includes rules on how to list Second City performances on a resume.  No where in that guide do they include the term “graduate.”

And as far as that whole Emmy thing goes.  I have spent a couple of days looking through the data base of both the national and local Emmy Award winners and nominations, and I have yet to find any mention of an Emmy Award being given at either level for William Kelly, William J. Kelly, Bill Kelly, or the program Upscale TV.  Knowing that I might have missed something, I also enlisted the help of my favorite librarian to also do a search.  She also come up empty-handed.  Once again, I am sure there is some sort of “exact word” error in how we are looking for this information, but I can’t figure it out.  You see, on one of his pages here, he does show a nice picture of himself holding what looks to be an Emmy Award.  But then again, if you look at his other hand, he seems to be holding a microphone.  A microphone that looks somewhat like the microphone he was using while he was filming his confrontation with Jay Levine or any of his interviews for Upscale TV.  Oh, maybe that’s it?  Upscale TV was just ”with” the Emmy Award.

In a final touch of irony, I would like to present the following.  On THAT website where donations are being taken either to oust Emanuel or elect Kelly, there is a tab that says Taxpayer Resources.  On that page, Mr. Kelly has compiled a list of links and blogs that he feels might be beneficial to people who visit his site.  To be very honest, I didn’t even look at the list.  I was too busy scratching my head because of the quote Mr. Kelly included at the top of this page.  It is a very old quote that dates back to 1758, before our great country was even born.  It was written by Benjamin Franklin and was included in the pages of his Poor Richard’s Almanac.  I thought it was also very apropos for the closing of this blog.

Half a truth is often a great lie.