Roseanne, Samantha Bee, NOFX, and the Lenny Test

I hadn't heard Planet of the Apes used as a slur since Spike Lee's 1989 Do the Right Thing. 

Roseanne has apologized for the tweet that prompted ABC to (wrongly) cancel her show. And she's indicated the fan encouragement she's received has inspired her to continued television effort.

She did concede wrong, did apologize. Shouldn't that sort of turnaround be accepted, if not celebrated as a victory for the right thing?

Meanwhile, those howling about Roseanne while high-fiving liberal celebrities of foul tongue are selective moralists of a contemptible variety. There are great differences between Roseanne's case and others.

Roseanne made a vile comment on her own time, on her personal Twitter feed, and promptly apologized.

Nonetheless, ABC fired her.

During a recent segment of her TBS Full Frontal show, Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt."

Unlike Roseanne, Bee exclaimed her slur on channel time, on her cable-broadcast television platform, and apologized only after an uproar ensued.

TBS has remained silent.

I'm a longtime Lenny Bruce fan, so I always give such comments the Lenny Test: If he'd said it in the 1960s, would I find it funny, or at least acceptable as an edgy observation? 

In these cases, no. Roseanne's tweet had no redeeming value. There is a terrible historical record of linking blacks to apes. Roseanne surely is smart enough to understand such comparisons should be avoided, even if echoing odious precedent is not the speaker's intent.

The bratty Bee's potty-mouthed name-calling wasn't humorous even in a risky way. It just reeked.

******

I've been a Ramones fan since their 1970s debut. Their songs about mental illness, pinheads, cretins, and shock treatment were outsider-funny, pop/punk gems. But they wouldn't find mainstream favor in prim PC circles.

And many psychobilly bands I follow deal in ghastly and grisly lyrical themes of cheap horror movie tenor. They are far more 'objectionable' than anything Roseanne ever tweeted.

When considering creative works, whether songs, books, films, or comedic monologues, it's crucial to remember that reality and fantasy are distinct. Merely because an author conceives of something doesn't mean that they in reality sympathize with it.

To raise an extreme example: Mary Shelley's having written Frankenstein didn't indicate that she thought digging up corpses and stitching them together was a good thing in real life.

This is why I find unconvincing conservatives critical of pro-gun control celebrities who star in ammo-flying action films. There is no conflict. Reality/fantasy. Al Gore circling the globe in private jets to speak at green events -- now, that's conflict. Reality/reality.

******

The band NOFX just lost tour sponsorship after making onstage jokes about the Las Vegas massacre. They've learned that rebelliousness and domestic suitability are mutually exclusive. 

As I noted earlier, I'm a longtime fan of the Ramones, as well as many 1970s punk bands like the Dictators, Dead Boys, and Sex Pistols.

None of them were mainstream, or compromised toward mass acceptance. (Some might have, had that been a reasonable possibility, but that's another conversation.) They truly were bad boys, uncaring about propriety and mannerly standards.

NOFX apparently wanted to be both outside polite society and beneficiaries of its corporate patronage. They've now learned that's not possible.

Storm-warning Iowa newspaper sides with lawbreakers

Iowa's largest newspaper is the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register. Notoriously opposed to President Trump and the Make America Great Again movement, it churns article after editorial after guest essay characterizing illegal immigrants as nobles unjustly battered. 

For their part, federal law enforcement officers are derided as brutish oppressors who've invaded innocent milieus to tear piteous loved ones asunder. 

Raids conducted by ICE agents are likened to natural disasters against whose ravages the imperiled must coordinate safeguards.

That 'dangerous weather approaching' tone found representation in a May 25 piece on the Mount Pleasant, Iowa raid: "With immigration raids on the rise, Iowans prepare for the day 'ICE comes to town.'"

The article opened with a dramatic description more appropriate to heroic medical personnel who'd rushed life-saving technology to a tragedy-stricken scene:

Immigration attorneys and social service agencies were on the ground within hours after U.S. Immigration and Customs officers raided the Precast Midwest Concrete plant here on May 9 and arrested 32 workers.

"Workplace raids have increased dramatically in 2018," the Des Moines Register writer hyperventilated just paragraphs later. "Advocates in Iowa are starting to prepare for them the same way emergency responders ready for natural disasters."

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2018/05/25/iowa-immigration-raid-mount-pleasant-ice-trump-west-liberty-ottumwa-illegal-arrest-postville/623080002/

A reminder: Under discussion was not a tornado, flood, or mysterious succession of sinkholes, but American officers upholding duly-passed citizenship laws.

The Des Moines Register's approach to this is symptomatic of a larger article of faith common to many anti-Trump elements.They reject the rule of law that ensures order and portrays Constitutional intent.

All countries have legal and moral rights to maintain borders and standards for citizenship. Sentimental tableaus depicting individuals whose particular cases aren't served by given statutes do not make those laws illegitimate or inhumane, and certainly not deserving of eradication.

The guaranteed rights of legal citizens should be of greater importance to media types than the opportunistic pursuits of non-citizens whose presence on U.S. soil demonstrates indifference to our laws.

Some despise a truly American America

Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. recently wrote off President Trump's supporters as uniformly biased and without reasons to advocate for the commander in chief save for the foul animus Pitts insultingly imagines swells our hearts.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article211963789.html

In a silly and feckless attempt to substantiate his slur. the columnist shared several emails he had allegedly received. All dripped with venomous, un-American racism and contained numerous misspellings. 

Of course, even were they authentic, a handful of hate notes hardly represents the more than 60 million of us who championed the Trump campaign. 

Besides, anyone of any persuasion can locate a few nasty online messages. Doing so establishes nothing save for the senders' unpleasantness and the rebroadcaster's argumentative frailty.

Pitts also defended his earlier declaration that communication with Trump voters is fruitless and beneath him.

Of course, Pitts was wrong. Americans should maintain conversations on issues that impact all of us. By hearing disparate perspectives, we can expand our understanding of experiences not our own and reach more fully representative, fair, and accurate views. 

We citizens are all in this together, after all. But Pitts would divide us from each other, segregating compatriots in hostile camps.

Philosophical disagreement, no matter how heated or profound, is not legitimate cause for isolation or considering all of different opinions dreaded Others (to borrow a voguish Left-speak term).

The following italicized paragraphs come from a recent essay of mine; they are apropos, here:

I listened as my mother remembered the American mood during WWII. The robust sense of national identity, the plucky 'We're all in this, together' spirit that impelled home-front efforts like rationing and scrap metal drives that made possible our eventual triumph over fascism.

Americans then were proud of this nation, and proud to be citizens of it. I found myself wishing much more for a return to such 'We are one' patriotism than for the utopian vision of globalism.

Regardless of demographic differences, Americans of that era saluted Old Glory, honored the National Anthem, and were contemptuous of all within or without our borders who meant harm to us and our national sovereignty.

Faith that the indivisible America of my mother's recollections should again rise, and mature reconsideration of my rosy-dory misjudgments, led me to conclude that change was only logical...

I became a Trump supporter in 2016 and wrote essays promoting his candidacy in numerous Iowa newspapers and online venues. I caucused for him in February 2017, and that November joined the tens of millions of Americans who surged to general election polling places nationwide to buoy him and our America First movement to Pennsylvania Avenue.

As his unfortunate end neared, civil libertarian columnist Nat Hentoff, for decades a promoter of Democrats and outspoken on issues like freedom of speech, racial equality, and defendants' rights, wrote that he was inclined to cast ballots in favor of Republican presidential candidates over Democrat ones. 

He reasoned the former was more likely to protect the Constitution whose guarantees he'd long advocated, whereas the latter seemed increasingly radical and set on shredding its important guarantees.

When Donald Trump -- first as candidate, then duly elected president -- pledged that together we would 'Make America Great Again,' those of us siding with him understood exactly what he meant. 

Economy: The United States was once an economic powerhouse. Steady employment was common, as were home ownership and "Made in the USA" assurances. Citizens generally didn't want for productive occupation, good paychecks, and the secure feeling that their nation was strong, their futures secure. 

We wanted that back.

Military strength and readiness. "The Yanks are coming," assured George M. Cohen's WWI-era classic. "And we won't come back, 'til it's over, Over There!" In recent years, US fighting forces were so decimated, their mission so sidetracked by social-engineering fads, that foreign enemies weren't concerned about 'The Yanks are coming." 

They again are.

Constitutional principles: These had been under attack by Democrats and their street-riotous footsoldiers. Traditionally supported by classical liberals, guarantees to untrammeled speech (even that which others might find disagreeable) and defendants'  rights (including to the presumption of innocence) enjoyed new and resounding advocacy.

We're bringing back Jeffersonian belief that Constitutional rights are God-given and inviolable. 

National sovereignty: America is not an ethereal ideal subject to alterations as befit shifting generational fancies. Our country is a physical place, with founding principles and an enduring Constitution whose precepts are deeply engraved. It is perfectly legitimate for any country to establish citizenship standards and maintain borders.  

We insist only on that same sensible authority. 

Pitts and those of his ilk would shame opponents with the nasty fiction that paying attention to legitimate matters like national sovereignty and cultural character is of a piece with unAmerican racial hatred. For political advantage and seemingly unencumbered by decent conscience, they attempt to surfboard toward power atop the long-past suffering of others. 

But their dirty trick no longer works. America is back.

Those who can, sit in the Oval Office. Those who can't...

                                          Source: Greenville News

Yvonne Mason is a retired South Carolina school teacher now living in Atlanta. As The Hill reporter Josh Delk related today, Mason wrote President Trump asking him to meet with parents of Parkland students. 

("Retired English teacher corrects letter from Trump and sends it back to White House" 
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/389517-retired-english-teacher-corrects-letter-from-trump-and-sends-it-back)

The idle instructor was horrified to find the White House response contained several misspellings and even incorrect capitalizations. Apparently having nothing constructive to do with her hours, Mason corrected them and returned the White House letter.

"Mason acknowledges the letter was probably written by a staffer," conceded Delk. 

But never mind that inconvenient reality -- presented was another opportunity to belittle Trump. And doing so, even for the flimsiest of reasons, is all the rage in unpleasant quarters.

Delk's The Hill article was inspired by a piece in South Carolina's Greenville News, which bills itself as "Part of the USA Today network." The writers at USA Today, of course, seem to never miss a chance to attack America's president.

("Retired high school English teacher corrects President Trump's letter, sends it back to White House" https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/education/2018/05/25/retired-teacher-corrects-president-trumps-letter-and-sends-back/634517002/)

Disclosed in the South Carolina newspaper, but not by The Hill, was that Mason "is a rhetorical activist, writing letters, emails, and faxes to local, state, and federal officials." 

According to Greenville News writer Paul Hyde: "A recent project had Mason, a current Atlanta resident, penning a postcard every day to Trump."

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/education/2018/05/25/retired-teacher-corrects-president-trumps-letter-and-sends-back/634517002/

Honestly, I felt reluctant to criticize Yvonne Mason. She's retired, and so what if she's a bit of a crank? She's not hurting anyone. 

An argument could be made here for many fine hobbies, none of which necessitate pestering those legitimately occupied and surely uninterested in the counsel of curious characters.

Addendum: "15 Famous Thinkers Who Couldn't Spell," an article on the Graveyard Shift blog, cites various illustrious examplars at whose memories would-be Yvonne Masons can scowl and brandish rulers. Included are William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austin, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill.

https://www.leelofland.com/15-famous-thinkers-who-couldnt-spell/

Fake News on demand

When considering Fake News, don't overlook demand as an incentive for its shoveling.

"Jared Kushner laughed as Trump used made up Hispanic names to discuss immigrants committing rape, murder: report" was a 3-paragraph, May 25 Newsweek.com item summarizing a Washington Post story run earlier the same day.

http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-laughed-trump-immigrants-944295

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/were-closed-trump-directs-his-anger-over-immigration-at-homeland-security-secretary/2018/05/24/4bd686ec-5abc-11e8-8b92-45fdd7aaef3c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5027b9d34ecb

The Newsweek item cited no source other than the Post. That paper, in turn, had also not named a source in its original report. Post writers Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff claimed unnamed "administration officials" had provided them the damning account.

(Newsweek and the Post did at least mention a White House denial that Trump had used invented names.)

Readers were asked to accept as verity the recounting of a supposed incident by anonymous sources whose credibility and motives they couldn't judge. Even the existence of those alleged witnesses wasn't certain. 

Any reasonable person would require more before buying into the story. 

But reason was of no consequence to prejudiced haters of the president. The story portrayed Trump in a negative light, and that was all they required. They hied to social media, irresponsibly spreading the dubious tale as far as possible.

Nor were unprincipled rank-and-file partisans alone in the dirty work. The unsourced and questionable Post story was given further broadcast by outlets including Esquire, the New York Post, Think Progress, and Alternet. 

(Even had the alleged bandying about of false names during a private meeting actually occurred, the choice of Hispanic-sounding ones would have been logical given that Mexican criminal illegal immigrants were the subject of discussion. In that context, the name 'Sven Gondelblum' certainly doesn't ring as appropriate.)

A great deal has been said about Fake News. Consider, in addition to the dirt it does to the concept of legitimate journalism, the swinish demand factor that encourages it. 

There is an audience for Fake News calculated to hurt President Trump. And its scrambling zealots don't give a damn about accuracy, fairness, or truth.

The legitimacy of change                               

The only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals
- Ralph Nader

I once thought that early 2000s Nader quote clever, a pithy encapsulation of a large truth. But I now know it to be flawed.

Nader's words assumed a person's early ideas were correct and reflected their best character. Any later altering or even abandonment of them as life was experienced, priorities shuffled, and additional lessons learned was cast as negative diminution.

To those secretly entertaining 'uncharacteristic' political values and inclinations, I say: Come on in -- the water's fine.

I was among those who founded the Iowa Green Party and I also served as its first media coordinator. I labored to ensure our candidate Ralph Nader's position on Iowa's ballot, even traveling to St. Louis, Missouri's George Washington University to join protesters on the night of one Bush v. Gore debate. ("Let Ralph debate!" was our rallying cry.)

I later served as Iowa coordinator for Nader's 2004 independent presidential campaign.

Prior to my Nader and Green Party work, I'd been a loyal Democrat. I voted in the Marshall County, Iowa caucus and drafted a plank condemning anti-gay bigotry. Later a resident of Black Hawk County, I submitted anti-execution platform language.

I had also worked the phones for various Democrat candidates, including Sen. Tom Harkin and Bill Clinton. And I'd done volunteer work for NARAL.

I assumed -- perhaps naively, but preferring to believe the best of people -- that most Americans shared patriotic sensibility. And that we then we went in different partisan directions based from that common floor.

The progressive siren of sharing wealth was attractive, as I desired comfort for all. Like many, I suppose, I'd cast my lot with progressivism to ensure freedom from want.

But as I learned more about similar political experiments elsewhere in the world, both historical and contemporary, and their failures to make good on sunny-sounding theoretical promises, I understood that progressivism would surely likewise fall to ruin in America.

It would produce more suffering than it eliminated. The road to Venezuela is paved with good intentions.

I came to understand that universally equal wealth was neither practically possible nor truly desirable. Controlling mechanisms intended to cultivate it would reward under-performers and rob them of chances for individual successes.

It also would hinder those inclined toward greater effort.

Beneficial innovations and realizing the greatest good for the greatest number, I came to understand, could only be got within a system that offered equality of opportunity, not one that enforced cookie-cutter outcomes that never really worked.

I listened as my mother remembered the American mood during WWII. The robust sense of national identity, the plucky 'we're all in this, together' spirit that impelled home-front efforts like rationing and scrap metal drives that made possible our eventual triumph over fascism.

Americans then were proud of this nation, and proud to be citizens of it. I found myself wishing much more for a return to such 'we are one' patriotism than for the utopian vision of globalism.

Regardless of demographic differences, Americans of that era saluted Old Glory, honored the National Anthem, and were contemptuous of all within or without our borders who meant harm to us and our national sovereignty.

Faith that the indivisible America of my mother's recollections should again rise, and mature reconsideration of my rosy-dory misjudgments, led me to conclude that change was only logical.

I'd had an epiphany.

Issues that had been important to me through Democrat, Green Party, and Nader days remain so, though with maturation has sometimes come reconsideration. I am now pro-life, for instance, having altered my opinion as new medical findings and my return to Catholicism dictated. 

I remain a staunch opponent of executions. (On that, I disagree with President Trump.)

Freedom of speech had for decades been my primary passion, and an article of faith among classical liberals. But given Resistance-Age Democrats' mania for speech codes, legal restrictions on 'hate speech,' stifling of public speakers, and media-advertiser boycotts calculated to silence perspectives their interest was clearly no longer mine. 

I became a Trump supporter in 2016 and wrote essays promoting his candidacy in numerous Iowa newspapers and online venues. I caucused for him in February 2017, and that November joined the tens of millions of Americans who surged to general election polling places nationwide to buoy him and our America First movement to Pennsylvania Avenue.

As his unfortunate 2017 end neared, civil libertarian columnist Nat Hentoff, for decades a promoter of Democrats and outspoken on issues like freedom of speech, racial equality, and defendants' rights, wrote that he was inclined to cast ballots in favor of Republican presidential candidates over Democrat ones. 

He reasoned the former was more likely to protect the Constitution whose guarantees he'd long advocated, whereas the latter seemed increasingly radical and set on shredding its important guarantees.

There's nothing shameful in admitting you've miscalculated. Changing opinions when the superiority of contrary reasoning becomes manifest is healthy. It indicates intellectual honesty and openness.

Re-evaluation of ideals is not erosion. But obdurate refusal to amend assumptions as appropriate is foolish.

Oregon pro-Trump student voice quashed by SPLC-linked assistant principal

(Vice-principal Amanda Ryan Fear, Liberty High School staff photo.)

On Monday, Gateway Pundit writer Brock Simmons told of an Oregon high school case involving official stifling of student political speech.

Liberty High School Assistant Principal Amanda Ryan Fear suspended senior Addison Barnes for wearing the shirt shown below (photo from the Gateway Pundit):

The class to which Barnes wore the shirt was to discuss immigration. The teacher had previously mounted a poster advocating open borders; the student wanted to express a contrary perspective. 

Initially, Fear gave Barnes the options of covering the message or leaving school for the day. He chose the former, but later decided to assert his speech right and display it openly.

Local KOIN 6 reported that "Fear sent a security officer to the classroom to remove Barnes and take him to her office, where she threatened him with a suspension for 'defiance.'"

Following the school's censoring of his political message, Barnes filed suit in Federal District Court. According to Gateway Pundit, he is represented by Oregon House Minority Leader Mike McLane. Barnes alleges that his First Amendment rights were violated and his speech suppressed.

("Student sues high school after being suspended for wearing pro-Trump shirt." 
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/05/student-sues-high-school-after-being-suspended-for-wearing-pro-trump-t-shirt/)

Prior to this, Assistant Principal Fear presented herself as supportive of free student speech. She occasionally blogged for the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance website, where she stressed the importance of untrammeled student expression.

In 6/14/2011 post The Power of Listening, she wrote: "Our kids are crying out to be heard, and unfortunately those cries often result in disciplinary referrals." 

Fear related a past experience with a student. Her inclination then, and the one she urged that her readers follow, was to learn the students' background and what in it accounted for his behavior.

(Did she ask student Barnes what opinions of his prompted his shirt message?)

By her Teaching Tolerance account, she had paid attention to the troubled student's words. She'd found in them greater understanding of him and his reasoning. 

"But what about all of the other students who show up in my office?" Fear asked. "Will I have the courage and patience to listen to them? Will the other adults in my building?"

(The Power of Listening 
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/the-power-of-listening)

Thoughts For a New Teacher was a 1/10/2012 Teaching Tolerance post by Fear. She listed 10 lessons for beginning educators. 

In #2, she wrote: "Understanding different perspectives is where true learning takes place." #4: "Your job is to like your students, not the other way around. Be their most ardent supporter." #8: "Really listen to your students. Their stories will astound you." #9: "Create opportunities for students to have an authentic voice in your class. Support them as they exercise their voice in the school."

(Thoughts For a New Teacher
\https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/thoughts-for-a-new-teacher)

Of course, none of those fine things -- listening to a student, liking and supporting them, divining their backstories, encouraging their individual expression -- were reflected in the assistant principal's suspension of student Addison Barnes for wearing a t-shirt promoting the president of the United States.

The crazy thing is this: Liberty High School Assistant Principal Amanda Ryan Fear may truly believe there is no conflict between  her advocating free student speech on the SPLC's Teaching Tolerance website and the very real intolerance she demonstrated by punishing student political expression with which she might disagree.

This all reminds of the 2016 University of Missouri incident in which Assistant Professor Melissa Click sought "some muscle" to block a reporter from observing public-area actions.

But the problem is larger than a Fear or a Click. It is of academics so smugly certain of the superiority of their philosophies, and so convinced that principles like freedom of speech and tolerance are exclusively theirs, that they believe themselves incapable of contravening them. 
.
Even when they do.

"One of my concerns is, this is going to put me in the way of slings and arrows!"
Indiana Judge Sarah Evans Barker's 2016 words now haunt her

                            credit: in.gov


On Thursday, Breitbart's Warner Todd Huston told the ugly tale of Indiana Judge Sarah Evans Barker. An illegal alien named Juana Loa-Nunez had been arrested after allegedly driving her car into a church daycare center and seriously injuring a teacher.

Judge Barker ordered the sheriff to release the prisoner, despite there being an active ICE detainer. ICE was not even notified. 

To the surprise of exactly no one, Loa-Nunez vanished.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/05/12/federal-judge-releases-illegal-alien-rammed-car-daycare-center/

Judge Barker does have some relevant history on the subject of immigration, and has gone on record as hostile to President Trump, as well.

In 2016, the New Yorker ran a piece by Alex Kotlowitz titled: "A federal judge has a message for naturalized citizens (and Trump)." It recalled Judge Barker's venomously partisan declaration to new Americans at a swearing-in ceremony held the previous month.

The judge had addressed her comments to a mere 68 listeners. They were published in the Indiana Lawyer, whose reported readership is only about 6000. 

She may have felt emboldened by that small-pond audience. But now her words have returned to haunt her.

Some excerpts:

In light of the turbulent events in recent weeks, which played out as part of the political campaigns, and were characterized by some really ugly, divisive, and demeaning words and hate-filled, violence-tinged name-calling, your responsibilities as new citizens have become more important than ever...

The harsh words that have been spoken over the last few months were indefensible and unkind, testing the strength of the ties that hold us together as a country. I imagine that many of you, in particular, felt the sting of these attacks and heard them in personal terms...I can't defend or excuse such attacks -- I, too, felt their sting and regretted the fear that they engendered -- but today, as we gather on this special day, I hope maybe I can restore your hope and calm your fears and renew your sense of confidence.

Barker then seemed to hint at a dug-in Deep State willing and able to continue on its preferred course, indifferent to popular will. 

Our institutions of government are strong and our society is much bigger and greater than any small group of people who have chosen to test our stamina.

"Small group?" Trump was the choice of over 63 million voters and easily carried the Electoral College. 

Fie on that, spat Judge Barker.

Kotlowitz relates that during his subsequent phone interview with her, Judge Barker said there was no need to name Trump in her remarks. "I'm pretty sure my audience knew what I was referring to."

"One of my concerns is, this is going to put me in the way of slings and arrows," she conceded.

Well, here we are.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-federal-judge-has-a-message-for-naturalized-citizens-and-trump

Immigration raid Fake News from Iowa's Des Moines Register 
'Criminals good, laws bad.'

Skewed reporting leaves readers with false conclusions. Accounts that misrepresent events or topics disserve readers who rely partly on media to inform their world knowledge and who, potentially, direct national, state, and local governments through the electoral process.

A slanted presentation can be effected in various ways. One method was this morning demonstrated by Des Moines Register reporter Mackenzie Elmer. 

Elmer's report was titled: "Dozens rally in Mount Pleasant day after ICE arrested 32, mourning families torn apart and demanding answers from local police." Unsurprisingly, that hysterical headline's perspective bias was reflected throughout the article itself. 

Appearing with the article online were 20 for-sale photos. Some depicted protesters waving placards with such treacly slogans as the Hillary-influenced "Community rights are human rights" and "Keep Families Together." 

(Endorsers of that last never acknowledge that it was illegal immigrant parents who made the original choice to place their families at risk of disunion. That they are exempted from later censure and enforcers of democratically enacted laws are portrayed in sinister lights is ridiculous.)

Elmer quoted ten opponents of the raid and of immigration law enforcement. These included residents whose relatives had been caught, a store owner, a law professor, and an Obama-era ICE official.

No person advocating that immigration laws be obeyed was quoted. Not even one.

The message implicitly communicated by Elmer was that violators of law are sympathetic and merit public heed. Those who believe in law enforcement, though, are enemies of human decency and deserve disregard.  

Elmer did quote the Mount Pleasant police chief. But his words belong in the neutral column. The raid was "part of my job," he said. "This wasn't our decision."

Hardly a sturdy declaration of support for upholding law. 

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2018/05/10/mount-pleasant-immigration-raid-illegal-immigration-iowa-raid/598598002/

Arguing that existing immigration codes are broken and need future reform doesn't justify disobeying laws presently on the books. Nor is intentionally presenting only one side of a story fair to the parties involved, readers, or the larger public interest.

The confidence man in the mailbox

Charlatans who pile private bounty by exploiting others' decent passions merit merciless condemnation.

Since its 1971 founding, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center has spotlighted repugnant hate groups. The organization won multi-million dollar judgments, driving bigoted foes into deserved despair.

It is good news that hate groups have today largely vanished. 

The SPLC should be pleased by its increasing obsolescence. Wasn't the disappearance of hate groups from the landscape a hope, all along?

Rather than celebrate and close its doors, though, the SPLC contrived new pulse-quickening causes.

Radical Islamic adherents beheaded and burned alive 'heretics,' and imprisoned, oppressed, and tortured women and gays. But the SPLC did not consistently decry Dark Ages foot soldiers, instead lobbing mouth grenades at Trump and his base for supposed anti-Muslim sentiment.  

Radical Islamic vows to overturn Constitutional protections, establish Sharia Law, and despoil our culture of enlightenment and equality certainly gave reason for rock-ribbed SPLC denouncements. 

Or, at least, so logic would dictate.

More SPLC opportunity came with the spread of radical Islam-sympathetic Antifa / Resistance terrorism. The fascistic effort scorned Americans' rights to speak and assemble, as well as to express themselves democratically..

But the SPLC refused to condemn either it or calls for statues' pull-downs, that buildings and boulevards be renamed, or other Cultural Revolution-type agitations for historical revisionism. 

Just as the ACLU had in 2017 rejected matter-of-principle free speech defense, the SPLC chose to stand at the side of Leftist intolerance.

It further recreated itself as a feminist foghorn. No cross-burnings outside Gloria Steinem Manor had been reported, but that was irrelevant. SPLC crusaders ignored the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, they galloped across cable news sets as lance-hefting White Knights for Third Wave feminism.

Indictments of the Southern Poverty Law Center have for years turned up, even in non-conservative outlets like the Progressive 

magazine, Harpers, The Huffington Post, the Nation, and 

Counterpunch.

The article "Poverty Palace: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Got Rich Fighting the Klan," was in 1988 produced by John Egerton for the Progressive. 

By his telling, the organization rode the anti-hate crime cause as a vehicle for enrichment and aggrandizement. Co-founder Morris Dees had realized a lucrative fundraising operation, one that churned contribution appeals that waved as scary banderole the specter of on-the-march hate.

The SPLC claimed creditable accomplishments in and out of courtrooms. But many dated from the groups' early years. Direct mail solicitations exploiting those only cheapened them.

In 2017, the Washington Free Beacon's Joe Schoffstall reported that:

"The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its 'hate group' designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show.

"Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of 'fighting hate and bigotry' using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy.

"The SPLC has turned into a fundraising powerhouse, recording more than $50 million in contributions and $328 million in net assets on its 2015 form 990...SPLC's form 990-T, its business income tax return from the same year, shows that they have 'financial interests' in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda."

Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of California-based nonprofit consulting firm Pacific Human Capital, was quoted by Schoffstall: 

"I've never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts. My impression based on prior interactions is that they have a small, modestly paid staff, and were regarded by most in the industry as frugal and reliable. I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with.

"It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas," Casil added. "I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based nonprofit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts." (Schoffstall / Washington Free Beacon "Southern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions In Cash To Offshore Entities" Aug. 31, 2017)

For Dees, avarice was hardly new. When in college, the future SPLC founder joined with fellow student Millard Fuller to form the Fuller and Dees Marketing Group. The two hawked cookbooks by direct mail. Other postal-routed products included birthday cakes, rat poison, and tractor seat cushions. 

Fuller recalled: "Morris and I, from the first days of our partnership, shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money. We were not particular about how we did it, we just wanted to be independently rich. During the eight years we worked together, we never wavered in that resolve." (Rosslyn Smith / American Thinker "Southern Poverty Law Center's Lucrative 'Hate Group' Label" Aug. 20, 2012)

A DiscoverTheNetworks.org profile of Dees revealed that in 1961, he and Fuller "served as defense attorneys for a white racist who had viciously beaten a journalist covering Freedom Riders in the South." The pair "had their legal fees paid by the Ku Klux Klan."

Fuller would reorder his priorities. Later a renowned anti-death penalty attorney, he sold out to Dees in 1965. Fuller donated his profits to charity, and went on to found Habitat For Humanity.

In his 1991 book, Shades of Gray (Louisiana State University Press), Egerton quoted the SPLC founder: "A lot of  groups we work with in litigation on social issues are poor, themselves, living hand to mouth. Sometimes they're a little envious of us. I'm sorry they feel that way, but I can't do anything about it. We just run our business like a business. Whether it's cakes or causes, it's all the same thing."

Dees was in 1998 inducted into the Direct Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. Discover The Networks recorded his boast: "I learned everything I knew about hustling from the Baptist Church. 

Spending Sundays on those hard benches listening to the preacher pitch salvation -- why, it was like getting a PHD in selling."

In the Feb. 8, 2001 Nation edition, JoAnn Wypijewski wrote: "No one has been more assiduous in inflating the profile of 

America's [hate] groups than millionaire huckster Morris Dees, who in 1999 began a begging (fundraising) letter, 'Dear Friend, The danger presented by the Klan is greater now than at any time in the past ten years.'"

But, as Discover The Networks pointed out: "To put Dees' claim in perspective: the Klan, by that time, consisted of no more than 3000 people nationwide - a far cry from the four million members it had boasted in the 1920s."

Stephen Bright is another SPLC critic. An acclaimed anti-execution attorney, author, and director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, he rejected by letter a 2007 University of Alabama School of Law invitation to a Dees event:

"I also received the law school's invitation to the presentation of the 'Morris Dees Justice Award',' I decline that invitation for another reason. Morris Dees is a con man and fraud, as I and others, such as U.S. Circuit Judge Cecil Poole, have observed and as has been documented by John Egerton, Harper's, the Montgomery Advertiser in its 'Charity of Riches' series, and others.

"The positive contributions Dees has made to justice - most undertaken based upon calculations as to their publicity and fund-raising potential - are overshadowed by what Harper's described as his 'flagrantly misleading' solicitations for money. He has raised millions upon millions of dollars with various schemes, never mentioning that he does not need the money because he has $175 million and two 'Poverty Palace' buildings in Montgomery. He has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people - some of moderate or low incomes - who believe his pitches and give to his $175 million operation. He has spent most of what they've sent him to raise still more millions, pay high salaries, and promote himself. Because he spends so much on fundraising, his operation spends $30 million a year to accomplish less than what many other operations accomplish on shoestring budgets."

In a 2000 Harpers essay, Ken Silverstein noted that after the 1965 dissolution of the college-era Fuller-Dees partnership, Dees "bought a 200-acre estate appointed with tennis courts, a swimming pool, and stables." 

Silverstein later wrote: "Today, the SPLC spends most of its time - and money - on a relentless fundraising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate." (Silverstein / Harpers "The Church of Morris Dees" November 2000)

Counterpunch co-editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair in 2009 termed Dees the "arch-salesman of hate mongering." 

According to their essay, Dees enriched himself by "[S]elling the notion that there's a right resurgence out there in the hinterland, with massed haters ready to march down main street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm, and a bible under the other."

They added "Since 1971, U.S. Postal Service mailbags have 

bulged with [SPLC] fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depiction of a hate-sodden America." (Cockburn, St. Clair / Counterpunch "King of the Hate Business" May 15, 2009)

In 2010, Silverstein dismissed the SPLC as a "bogus 'civil rights organization' whose chief (and wildly successful) mission has been to separate wealthy liberals from their money." (Silverstein / Harpers "Morris Dees: A Life Fighting Poverty" April 12, 2010.)

For years, I studied American hate groups. I read of rallies, mailings, murders, public access television and shortwave radio broadcasts, fire-bombings, the Turner Diaries, fertilizer bombs, and efforts to establish segregated homelands.

I also learned of bizarre supposed justifications for racial

separatism and supremacy, including Christian Identity and the Cress Theory.

Eventually, I viewed the world with a wider lens. I found perceptions that seemed sound when interpreted from within a solitary interest-group bubble stand evident as legitimately complex, once one has left that distortive circumstance.

Following the 1999 World Trade Organization protests, I found in my mailbox a three-alarm SPLC fundraising appeal. It warned that

malicious far-right elements infiltrated those actions.

I was then an Iowa Green Party organizer, and knew many who opposed the secrecy-shadowed and undemocratic WTO. Obviously, I didn't know every participant, but I did have knowledge of the movement's ideological sensibility. And I knew that it wasn't anywhere near the hate neighborhood.

Cynically, but not unwarrantedly, I suspected perhaps the SPLC was test villifying the anti-WTO movement in hopes of expanding its contribution base. Searching out a new bogeyman.

I was reminded of a passage from Egerton's 1988 Progressive 

article:

"The Klan thing is winding down," SPLC founder Dees had said. He added that his group's fundraisers were "looking at some new areas, including in education. Who knows what the SPLC will be doing a year from now?" (In fact, the organization's classroom-angled Teaching Tolerance program would later be launched.)

Nothing substantial from the SPLC followed that initial WTO alarm, though. Threat levels apparently correlated to contribution potential.

I became troubled by mainstream news media's uncritical embrace of the private and unaccountable group. Talking heads regurgitated that organization's pronouncements as if they were sacrosanct.

So timepiece-certain was reporters' resort to the SPLC that whenever alleged hate crimes were in the news, one could be certain that organization spokesman Mark Potak would within moments appear on camera to dispense scarlet boilerplate.

Journalists discounted speakers and organizations by observing they had been 'listed by the SPLC as a hate group.' I wondered who had decided that judgments issued by that private, for-profit organization were of the same beyond-skepticism quality as, say, Newton's law of gravity.

Some who toil within the SPLC's pricey walls, souls within whom the spark of integrity flashes yet, may do so with pure ambitions. They should not be held blameworthy for organization leaders' political prejudices and perverse dollar lust.

But the possible former in no way excuses the contemptible latter. 

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