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Don’t kiss and tell. Loose lips, they say, sink ships.
Just ask Jack Lauterback, a blogger who doubles as a bartender at local restaurants such as Havana ’59 in Shockoe Bottom, where he chronicled the drinking habits of the City Council president and mayoral hopeful, William J. Pantele, during a fundraiser.
After the post appeared, Lauterback says, he was fired. Havana’s management declined to discuss the incident with Style.
“Even when I was done cleaning the entire bar and closing up the shop, [Pantele] was still drinking with some of his people out on the patio. Needless to say, I was impressed,” Lauterback wrote on Sept. 30.
Craig Bieber, Pantele’s campaign manager, says the candidate didn’t complain to the restaurant. (For the record, Pantele’s alleged drinking habits won an endorsement from Lauterback, who later rescinded.)
“Hey, look. I read the blog post. I thought it was funny and amusing and that was that,” Bieber says. “What happened after that is between Jack and his boss.”
Earlier this month, WTVR Channel 6’s general manger, Peter Maroney, wrote Lauterback asking him to remove statements on his blog about two of his news anchors, Ric Young and Lee Mahaffey, or face potential legal action.
As for the drinking post, Lauterback says he made a mistake. “I was in the wrong, too. I blogged about a customer. I probably deserved to get fired.”
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