After-action report on the deposition: Ron Price's sign-stealing now hinges on Reidsville Christmas Parade

So yesterday afternoon - and a half-hour earlier than I had earlier been summoned to appear - I appeared for deposition in the lawsuit that Ron Price has filed against Richard and Debbie Moore.

What can I say about it? I'll hold off on too much about it right now but I will say this: the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

It was mostly about Price's attorney Doug Hux showing me a photo from last year's Reidsville Christmas Parade (?!?!?). Hux asked me if I recognized it and I was like "Uhhh well DUH 'cuz THOSE ARE MY PICTURES that WGSR is using in their commercial for this year's Reidsville Christmas parade so OF COURSE I was right there!" Those weren't my exact words but you get the idea. Anyhoo, Hux showed me a photo that's very much like this one that I took at the 2006 parade, a few weeks after what Price called "the sign incident":

The actual photo that Hux confronted me with was a screengrab from WGSR's coverage of the parade, but as we were standing close to WGSR's setup, the two are quite similar. Hux made a big deal about how it was that Richard Moore is holding one of Ron Price's campaign signs. And Hux grilled me a lot about what I thought of that. I told him (using a coupl'a uses of the word "hell" but at this point I don't care) that I didn't know how Moore got his Ron Price sign but I could assume it was acquired legally. I didn't say this during the deposition 'cuz it didn't occur to me later, but I absolutely remember Moore asking on his website last year a week or so before the parade if anyone had a Ron Price campaign sign that was in their legal possession, that they wouldn't mind Moore having or borrowing. So I know for a fact that Moore at least did make a sincere attempt to get a Ron Price sign legally. As I told Hux, Moore could have been given the sign by someone who had it legally to begin with. In which case that person could have done whatever he wanted to do with it: give it to Moore or burn it or whatever. All I can say is, so far as I know Moore didn't pick the sign up off the highway... whereas Ron Price did pick up several signs off the highway.

So far as I can tell, Hux's line of questioning had nothing to do at all with anything mentioned in Price's lawsuit. At one point I even told Hux that he was making a ridiculous "leap of logic" with it. He replied back that I was entitled to my opinion.

I answered the questions as best I could, in spite of the fact that this deposition was one of the most inane nuisances that I've had to deal with in quite awhile.

I did get in something on the record that I've been saying almost since this whole thing started: that Price's actions in stealing the signs (I don't care about the semantics: he illegally took the signs) for sake of a political party, set nothing less than the worst sort of example for the children of this county. And that as far as I was concerned, all 16 of us who were candidates in that school board race were pledging to do right by those students, whether or not we won a seat on the board. That our commitment didn't come to an end on the morning of November 8th, 2006. I told Hux that I was an Eagle Scout and that honor was something I had to uphold every day of my life. I then asked Hux "were you an Eagle Scout?" He said that he wasn't.

The main reason I'm feeling compelled to make a post about this though, is to address something that I was asked yesterday, just for clarification...

Doug Hux asked me the question of whether I considered Richard Moore to be a friend. I didn't know exactly what he meant by that. I told him as best I could the nature of our relationship, which goes back now about 20 years or so (I first remember meeting Richard Moore when he and Debbie opened their first bookstore - K.C. Books - on Freeway Drive in the Ashcroft Commons in the fall of 1987). But as for friendship...

Richard Moore and I, no doubt do disagree on plenty of things. In the greater scheme of things though, those don't matter too much. So yes, he is a friend. I'm glad to have him as a friend. And differences of opinion have never come in the way of that. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't let stuff like that interfere with friendship. You have to do something pretty darned rotten - like stealing campaign signs for political gain - to get on my bad side. And you would probably be surprised at the diversity of people that I am glad to count as my friends. They range from professed "conservatives" to professed "liberals" and quite a few "libertarians". Many are Christians. Some are atheists. Some are homosexuals... and though I have my beliefs about whether that is right or wrong, I still can't do anything but hold them in high regard as individuals. If that is a sin that they struggle with, then they are no different than the rest of us - myself included - who have our own sinful natures that we struggle with handing over to God.

What a person believes has never mattered to me so far as friendship goes. I just hope that that person is sincere in his or her beliefs. It's what he or she chooses to do with those beliefs, is what defines whether or not I'll want to keep considering them as a friend.

Richard Moore and I on the surface will probably disagree on a lot of things. He is still a friend. In the world's way of looking at things, Ron Price and I should be friends because he calls himself a "conservative". Price threw that away when he put his political party over his principles and refused to own up to that. There's no way that I could possibly support such a person.

And if there are any lingering questions as to whether or not Richard Moore and I are friends, my short film The Baritones should put those to rest...

A few last things before I wrap this post up: I have heard that my involvement with this may not be over with, because Doug Hux expressed interest in deposing me again.

And during the time that he was being deposed yesterday, Ron Price apparently said that any campaign signs that get put out on the highway are, as I have heard it, "fair game"!

This is gonna be one hella mess for Ron Price if he wants to bring this to an actual courtroom.

I'll post the full text of my deposition as soon as I get it.