Fred Ferrell: Just a good old boy?

Many of the residents of former Missouri Agriculture Director Fred Ferrell's hometown don't see him as being guilty of sexual harassment, according to an article by Virginia Young in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

At Ferrell's farm office, his longtime secretary, Pam Whittington, said her boss used to call her a "show dog."

"That's just a term for, 'You look good today,'" Whittington said.
At the farm loan cooperative where Ferrell was board chairman, Della Hubbard said Ferrell sometimes hugged her and kissed her on the cheek "in front of the whole board."

"He was congratulating me," she said.

Ferrell, of course, was fired by the governor (nine months after he should have been) for sexual harassment, for making remarks about wanting to see workers in a wet t-shirt contest, for making remarks that women should not be in charge of men...all of which were thoroughly documented in a Missouri Highway Patrol report. Also, those who supported Ferrell in the report appeared to have had some coaching in their remarks since nearly all of them described him in the exact same words.

Not all of the people in Ferrell's hometown see him as some representative of long-ago southern gentility, however:

Julia Warren is at least one woman in Charleston who believes Ferrell has only one person to blame: himself. Warren, 81, built a motel in town and ran it for 20 years. She was furious to hear about the "show dog" term. "The women here run the town," she said. "They're top dog."