Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

1st. Lt. Geoffrey J. (Jason) Fahringer and parents, Kathie and Geoff Fahringer.

Don Farmer/Special to the Eagle

Chopper and crew.

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Return in style

First Lieutenant Jason Fahringer and his Blackhawk helicopter crew visited Marco and Naples recently and they came in the type of chopper they flew with honor and courage in Iraq.

Fahringer has done two tours of duty in Iraq with his Florida National Guard unit, flying Medevac rescue missions, sometimes in the heart of enemy-held areas.

This time it was a training mission, a Blackhawk trip touching base around Florida. There was some excitement at the General Aviation terminal of Naples Municipal Airport when the Blackhawk appeared in the northwestern sky.

Lt. Fahringer’s parents, long-time islanders Geoff and Kathie Fahringer, waited nervously on the tarmac, excited to see their son and his Blackhawk teammates land and taxi slowly through a flock of executive jets parked at the terminal.

Geoff Fahringer is a Collier County deputy sheriff. Kathie is a realtor with Premier Properties on Marco.

After about 90 minutes at the Naples airport, the Blackhawk crew took off and headed for Marco. Here, they circled the island, then headed for Marco’s airport.

They wowed the pilots and others at the airport with a runway approach at about 145 miles per hour and a quick touch and go before continuing the training exercise on to Immokalee and elsewhere across the state.

This was a no nonsense mission, honing skills and local knowledge for Fahringer and his crew. Their National Guard Medevac unit probably would be involved in any rescue efforts needed in this area in case of emergency, such as hurricanes.

In civilian life, Lt. Fahringer is a deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Low crime farewell

As we wish Roger Reinke well in his new post as assistant city manager of Naples, it is timely to repeat the crime statistics on Marco during his tenure as police chief.

Marco now has the lowest crime rate in Collier County. Since Reinke became chief in June, 2001, crime on Marco Island has decreased by 52.5 percent.

We still have way too many cases of DUI, but perhaps the number of DUI arrests is another indicator of our cops doing a good job. Police elsewhere have told me that on any given Thursday through Saturday evening, from about 10 p.m. on, about eight of ten drivers on city streets are impaired by alcohol or drugs to some degree.

I assume it’s not that high here, but in a party place like Marco-Naples, I guess it’s possible.

Who’s in, who’s out?

Marco’s revolving door of governance keeps on going around and around. Police Captain Thom Carr will be acting police chief as of April 18, as Chief Reinke moves on.

Our acting city manager, Tony Shoemaker, may be looking forward to his last day on the job here, a week from Monday — April 7.

Meantime the selection of a new city manager is on track. I’m told the final interviews of candidates are scheduled for April 14 and 15 and the council will choose their favorite on the 15.

One interesting fact about the 11 candidates as of this writing — seven of them have bachelors degrees in political science.

One might note that city manager jobs are not supposed to be “political”, in the old fashioned sense of the phrase, “city hall politics.”

Our recent experiences on Marco, however, make it clear that being politically savvy is a big plus for any incoming city manager. It doesn’t mean he or she would be political, but it would help the person in that job know how to identify raw, power politics when he/she sees it.

Scratch a journalist…

If you want to find a tiny group of like-minded people living and working in a sea of opponents, check out the national press corps.

There you’ll see a handful of conservative reporters surrounded by an ocean of liberals, according to a report from the independent Project for Excellence in Journalism. The findings:

The survey of 585 journalists and news executives at national media services shows only six percent who say they consider themselves conservatives. Two percent were very conservative. By contrast, 24 percent of the journalists identified themselves as liberal and six percent as very liberal.

More than half those surveyed say they are “moderate,” a vague term behind which some fraidy-cat left wingers often hide.

Most significant is the disconnect between the journalists’ political persuasions and those of their readers, viewers and listeners — us.

Other polls show that about 36 percent of the overall population describe themselves as conservative.

So if all these figures are roughly accurate, about a twelfth of the national journalists are conservatives, while more than a third of the American people are conservatives.

This may explain why a lot of national media consumers don’t trust much of what they hear and see.

Such distrust often is well placed.

What’s next, voters lying to exit pollsters? Well why not? Why should CNN, Fox and the other networks know how you voted, at least while the polls are open?

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Don Farmer has been a full-time Marco Islander for ten years and a part-time resident for more than 30 years. He says full-time is better. Farmer welcomes your ideas for column items via e-mail at don@donfarmer.com.