Nassau Poetry Incident Still Smoldering

The Nassau poetry flap that gained national attention grew uglier when Paula Camacho, the chairwoman of the county's poet laureate committee blasted Stephen Cipot, the Republican appointee to the panel for sabotaging the panel's selection of Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr. to be poet laureate. Camacho called Cipot a "sniveling, coward of a man" and accused him of helping legislative Republicans shoot down the poet laureate nomination.

Meanwhile, Minority Leader Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa) called the hours spend debating Wheat's fate, "... time wasted."