Local Leader Attacked By Travel Writer
After speaking out last week against Mayor John Rhodes and Myrtle Beach city council concerning the rights of tourists and Myrtle Beach residents, S.C. leader Skip Hoagland has been stalked and attacked by a travel writer. John Buchanan is the founder and editor of TravelzineMiami.
This travel writer is best known for his previous attacks in the New Hampshire Gazette of former president George Bush and his family. Buchanan alleges the grandfather of Jeb Bush and former President George W. Bush, Prescott Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942. The Bush family have pushed back hard against these allegations. Buchanan and Jeb Bush both live in the state of Florida.
Mr. Buchanan sent out a tirade of email threads to among others, S.C. Governor Nikki Haley, S.C. Senator Mark Sanford, and area business leaders in a rant against Hoagland.
Emails sent out by Mr. Buchanan included statements like the below to Bill McGrath, a national website owner, “Get a life, Bill. I have one. And a good one. I’m a national media journalist, screenwriter, filmmaker and published author. I travel the world for free (been to five continents) for free, thanks to CVB-paid press trips. The only people to ever attack me are Skip and now you. I find that funny. I assume you do not know much about me.But among other things, I have a Hollywood movie out right now I wrote, starring Eddie Griffin and Penny Marshall, called “Going to America.”
Writing to Mr. Hoagland concerning John’s powerful connections to the Miami CVB, Mr. Buchanan threatened Mr Hoagland: “And my final act of revenge upon you will be when I officially launch TravelzineMiami.com in late January for the high winter season, with a full-fledged media/PR launch — supported by the Miami and Miami Beach CVBs and VisitFlorida. As I have told you, I do not see CVBs as competitors. I look to them as supported with grant money and other back-end support. You are an even bigger moron than I thought possible.”
This is not the first time, however, those city councils, Chambers of Commerce, and Convention Visitors Bureaus have gone after Mr. Hoagland. As the city of Bluffton, S.C.’s newspaper reported on March 1, 2016, Hoagland won a S.C. lawsuit against the Bluffton/Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce which requires all S.C. Chambers of Commerce to open up their books on the spending of taxpayer monies. South Carolina Chambers of Commerce receive over $50 million annually in taxpayer welfare. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber alone gets over $25 million annually. All coastal S.C. Chambers of Commerce pooled together as one and are currently appealing this decision.
Below you can see how the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce paid Stephanie Oswald, a travel writer from Travel Girl Magazine to attack our own newsgroup.
The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce then used taxpayer corporate news influence to have this video of falsehoods broadcast as honest news on hundreds of their paid mainstream media news network channels as can be seen below.
Chamber of Commerce Fake News
Our readers will note that once the Chamber attack reports were run, the video was completely removed from these mainstream media news channels. The news items ran in March 2016. In the month of July 2016 over 63 people reported illnesses in that month alone. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce pays the parent news corporations Sinclair Broadcasting, Raycom Media, and Nexstar Broadcasting Group millions anually to promote the Myrtle Beach area. Locally Nexstar owns WBTW, Sinclair owns WPDE, and Raycom owns WMBFnews.
We reached out to Mr. Hoagland for a comment on these attacks.
“It is not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,.. because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
“As I think about my own life, I can certainly say that I have won many more battles than I lost. Those are not egotistical statements. The record simply reflects that,” Hoagland said.
Hoagland supports a group of local merchants who are working to ensure that tourists and local residents enjoy the highest possible quality of life issues that include clean oceanfront beaches.