The Arizona Republic ran an article today about Captain Joel Fox's lawsuit against Terry Goddard and Cox Communications over the public release of sensitive e-mails.
The story by Repub veteran JJ Hensley, though, fails to mention one thing:
The e-mails' gushy love talk between Fox and his supervisor, Larry Black, which are undoubtedly the motivation behind the suit. (See our article from Friday about the lawsuit.)
We put in a call to the paper's editor, Randy Lovely, to find out what happened. It seems safe to assume the omission was made after a discussion by editors, but it's unclear why the final decision shortchanged readers. Would the Repub have decided differently if one of the pair had been a woman?
Sure, the intense expression of man-love between Fox and Black is personal stuff, but it's well within the scope of the SCA scandal, as we've explained.
The pair spoke of their love as they carried out what state and federal investigators saw as a criminal conspiracy; some of the "Zorro" e-mails, ("jdzorro" was the e-mail name used by Fox), mention the SCA scheme and their love for each other in the same body of text.
Investigators didn't examine all of Fox's e-mails or put them all in their report. They only bring up e-mails they found noteworthy in light of their investigation, and those -- obviously -- includes the love letters.
