In his first at bat, our new VEP CEO has two strikes

Eric J. Lund is Visit Estes Park's new CEO.  I'm sure the job can be a bit overwhelming at first, so I sympathize.  My reputation generally precedes me, so it wasn't surprising when I went over to the new digs last Tuesday, was told Mr. Lund wasn't there, but was handed a business card and assured he generally responded pretty quickly to emails, which thus far (six days and counting) has proved untrue.  I can provide my email (date stamped) requesting a meeting if this becomes an issue.  I'm not sure if that should be counted as a swinging strike or not, I'm sure he saw my name and some pre-packaged warning from the file "troublemakers to ignore" provided by CDIV or Jimmy P. kicked in, or else he is just horribly inefficient or overwhelmed running a seven-person boondoggle where he used to command a much larger staff.  Let's call it a harmless foul ball.  No one is obliged to respond to a person not of their station - I'm not exactly John Cullen, after all (as far as I don't promise Wellness Centers to get land and then go out and build something which could be called the antithesis of a Wellness Center), so I'm willing to let that one pass.  (Although it will be a nice case study for a future "Ethics in Business" conference, say, in East San Diego.)

Because I was over at the VEP batcave for other reasons this morning (and kudos to the staff for not escorting me out immediately), Eric Lund was called over to answer tougher queries unrelated to why I attempted to schedule an appointment with him one week ago.  Here is a swinging for the fences coming out of your shoes strike to pretty much a softball-lob question:  Is Estes Park open and welcoming to those of all races and religions, and how should we respond when it appears (admittedly transiently, because the rest of the world, especially Rebecca Urquhart, recognizes were a dumb fuck cow town trespassing on wedges of ambrosia, so makes allowances) to a national audience we might not be?

The standard response would be "sure, we're a great community", and that's the response I got, but there was no reason to defend this response by stating something patently untrue.  "Estes Park is just like other communities as far as diversity," the CEO claimed, at which point I asked "compared to what?"

Maybe Mr. Lund is new to Estes and hasn't gotten out much, or maybe he was granted an honorary membership to the Stepford Wives Club immediately upon arrival, but Estes Park is decidedly NOT as racially diverse as Denver, for example, or Colorado Springs, or Longmont, or San Diego, where Mr. Lund came from, or Hawaii, where he spent some time, or the broader United States.  Yes, there are pockets of America as white bread as Estes out there, but those are not exactly the places (Harrison, Arkansas, anyone?) Estes Park wants to be rejoicing over and pairing up with.

According to the 2010 census, 0.3% of Estes Park's population is African American.  According to just opening your eyes, over 10% of the U.S. population is African American.  Asian Americans make up 6% of the U.S. population, but only 1.2% of Estes Park's population.  So you can pretend everything is wonderful and okay and Kumbaya in Estes, which your job description in some ways requires, but don't spout nonsense beliefs about neighborhood diversity and expect head nodding and adulation.  Again, I'm not saying Estes Park is racist because it is not diverse, I'm saying Estes Park is not racially diverse, and let's not pretend otherwise.  I didn't go over to VEP demanding increased spending on print ads in Jet or Ebony or Essence or Vibe or KoreAm or Hyphen (all of which likely have 0% VEP advertising dollars currently directed their way), I'm pretty sure I raised an issue of recent anti-Semitism that troubled me and heard the standard Estes Park response (not my problem/is there some kind of noise or fly buzzing around?) and then a confident yet completely unsupportable attempt at dismissive justification (we don't have a problem here, because we are diverse).

The wonderful new novel "Normal People" has this amazing line about "warmth", about how individuals are dismissed for lack of "warmth" because they can't pretend to like people who hate them.  I'm not a warm and fuzzy person, especially around those who have demonstrated no reason (or provide any street cred) for me to be warm and fuzzy around.  I decided about the age of 22 I wasn't ever going to prostitute myself to get ahead.  I've got nothing to apologize for as far as slapping the backs of criminals, or swallowing my tongue when something occurs in violation of codified rules or laws because "I need this job" or "I need to advance in this job".  I get, for example, that CDIV is angry over a pet pika spouting a penis, but I know who will ultimately come out on the right side of that issue, because sexual abuse of children is not a game.  I'm not making some wild "Comet Ping Pong Pizza" accusations here, I'm providing court evidence that CDIV's DOM pet was arrested on charges of impregnating a 14-year-old adopted girl.  I'm not going to not wonder aloud whether, for a kid's activity, there is a better choice of names somewhere out there to idol worship in order to be able to high-five CDIV when we unavoidably can't ignore each other on the street as he shuffles door to door promoting yet another time-wasting organization in town, the most recent of which dissolved in flames after its last incarnation when multiple lawsuits were filed exactly because of head-strong, underqualified individuals like CDIV running it.

So I have to be honest - I'm not thrilled by our new VEP CEO's bluster, and his providing of erroneous "feelings" when data alone will suffice.  I live here.  I'm not passing through.  The secret handshakes no longer work on me.  But who knows, maybe he'll find time to get around to responding to my email when his Elks Club chapter back in El Cajon, or his newly-welcoming Rotary Butt-Buddy branch here, goes on summer hiatus.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has trouble getting Professor Lund to respond to emails

Ouch.  "Untrustworthy" can be a damning allegation, especially when the candidate making such an allegation wins the election fairly handily.