The mouth that roared went uncharacteristically meek Thursday.
Ben Meisner, easily Prince George's most well-known, and in many circles most liked and admired of radio personalities, has decided, after a long and storied career of poking his nose into everyone and his dog's business, that his business is no one else's.
Meisner told The Citizen Thursday that his appointment to one of the province's most influential legal bodies - the B.C. Law Society's board of governors - does not require the kind of public scrutiny he made his chops championing.
In particular, the city's most opinionated orator and pugnacious pundit thinks a clutch of old lawsuits dating to the '80s and '90s - including a run-in with former NDP MLA Paul Ramsey that cost his employer $30,000 - doesn't jibe with a question on the society' application regarding whether a potential governor has "been involved in any issue or controversy that has gone or is likely to go to litigation or public review."
That's not to say Meisner would not make a fine choice for the law society. But telling a Citizen reporter: "If the province was content with my answer ... what gives you then the right to call and ask me about it?" smacks of the craven ass-covering usually offered by the sort of mealy-mouthed apparatchik Meisner made a decent livelihood chewing out.
Long a proponent of the where-there's-smoke-there's-fire philosophy, Meisner's reluctance to talk seems almost oxymoronic. Ben Meisner not - NOT! - talking!? Did the sun rise today?
In fact, we're quite sure, knowing Ben as we do, he came out of the womb with a microphone in one hand and the other ready to start rattling cages. There's reason to believe he interrogated his mom regarding the length of time she kept him in the dark - was nine months really necessary? - and the doctor for not having the decency to warm his hands prior to the birth.
And what exactly did he do to deserve that slap on the bum.
As a matter of fact, it is that irrascible, dogged determination to hunt down and hound politicos of all stripes at all levels of government that helped garner Meisner his self-styled man-of-the-people mantle.
So it was with mouth-gaping, jaw-dropping surprise we heard the inimitable, unprescedented, unbelievable no comment.
Come on Ben, would you accept that from anyone else?
This is the Prince George Citizen and this is one newspaper's opinion.
