Coming eventually: Comcast, race-baiter Tony Zirkle, and campaign ads

WWW--There will be mud, in the face, and in the direction of Zirkle and Comcast.

Why we should be happy that the racists are out of the closet

WWW--There's a theme I keep coming across with some of my compatriots on the progressive left, and I think that it's unnecessary: the fear of traditional American racism coming out of the closet. These people are literally the lunatic fringe now, but they're white and they're loud, if not proud (OK, they're that too, just without any basis). The problem--mainly--is our reaction to them, and reaction in itself is the problem, there's too much of it. We need to be more proactive about these people rather than reactive, and that's not an endorsement of Scientology. That's why I support the legal actions of the SPLC and its director, Morris Dees. His targets seem to understand intuitively, as some of the mentally ill do, that he's got their number and that he's using the proper cure. This provokes very dramatic responses.

Just looking at the words behind the anagram tells you where they're coming from at the SPLC: The Southern Poverty Legal Center. I have had great admiration for Mr. Dees and his work for ages, and the key to his work and that of his great staff has been in tracking these groups and bringing them to the attention of the public while going after the very worst, the most dangerous of them, in the courts rather than in the streets where they're only going to be emboldened by physical attacks. Hate movements thrive on the victim mentality, but we should also remember that these folks are victims in their own right, frequently victims of poverty that breeds this form of mental dysfunction. Dees knows that this isn't simply a Southern problem, but an American one, and while it is a bit alarming that these groups have grown in numbers since the election of a black president, it's also a reason to be thankful for the fact that we have one. They're out of hiding and easy targets again, just as they became so in the 1960s. They were always out there, their number haven't really grown.

The Civil Rights movement of that decade (really beginning in the mid-1950s and cresting roughly ten years later) brought the flat-heads out of the woodwork. The ranks of the KKK swelled as they had with the great influx of European immigration during the 1920s and "White Citizens Council" offices sprang-up everywhere...and they lost, badly, to the civil rights workers and activists because history and moral authority weren't on their side. Crucially, the federal government was pressured into action and the FBI unwillingly had to conduct a barely submerged war on the Klan and other hate groups. Indeed, non-violence proved to be a vital tactic, but so too did African-American groups like the Deacons for Justice and the original Black Panthers in the South with their militancy and their rifle clubs, meant to protect black communities from terror tactics. But the real fight was won in the legislative arena and the courts and the laws are still on the books to this day and aren't likely to be rolled-back anytime soon. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, however.

In the 1990s, the late Stokely Carmichael, one of the founders of SNCC and one of the central players in the rise of black nationalism said that the problem had become deeper, that racism had "gone into hiding" and was therefore harder to combat, and he was right. Racism became institutionalized and very much a phantasm, a free-floating force that was almost impossible to pinpoint, let alone to fight with traditional methods. That has changed now that the loons have come out of the woodwork and are now shooting their mouths off, not to mention committing some very heinous acts of violence again. But that's what people do when they're desperate and feel they have no other options. They'd better enjoy the fun while it lasts, because it's not going to for very long.

In other words, they feel very threatened in their racist beliefs and identities, and that's a good thing since those culturally pathogenic personalities can ultimately be isolated and marginalized out of existence. These small, reactive faux-personalities--once again--intuit this and that's when the fear comes, when the ego externalizes its innermost and darkest tendencies. The shadow side externalizing itself can be dealt with by civil society more easily. Now they're visible targets, even their goons they've embedded within the military. But we tend to take these revelations the wrong way, we react, and we become part of the fear. This is a mistake. We know who they are now, we have their number, and it's time to go round-'em-up when they misbehave. We can also make sure that they never come into being by fighting for social and economic justice. Poverty is a breeding ground for this kind of faux-personality.

A recent cross-burning in my community has had some alarmed, but I'm not especially worried. As much as I have a problem with the FBI on other issues, they're good at criminal investigations like this and they're likely to find out who was behind it. When-and-if they do, the perpetrators are going to be dragged into court and could face real jail time if not civil penalties, meaning heavy fines that have shut them down in the past. We should also keep in mind that not all rabid racists are poor and that this is a pathogenic cultural stream predicated on keeping things as they've been in America since the beginning: oligarchical and unequal. The name Tony Zirkle should come as a good example of the privileged racist flake.

Economic elites must become racists by-definition in order to hold onto that power, something that they're more-than-willing to do. The reality is that they're more frightened of the rest of us, these groups, and while it makes them dangerous, they're still marginal. Nonetheless, vigilance and awareness is the key, and now we have the added advantage of visible targets.

"The Underground Railroad never happened."

Michiana--Of course it did, and it was more widespread than bigots and racists here in Northern Indiana would care to admit.

Whether the local Klaverns around here or foaming-at-the-mouth racists like attorney Tony Zirkle want to admit it or not, a lot of people around here were involved in the hiding and ferrying of runaway slaves into Canada and other "free" states that wouldn't cooperate with slave hunters in returning the "property" of slaverholders in the American South and the border states.

My own father--not exactly someone I'd ever refer to as racially progressive in any sense--even had to admit this to me. During the 1970s, he did a lot of work on construction sites throughout Michiana as a civil engineer (the area I live in was once part of Michigan, and the borders might be contested again soon, another story for another time...) and he and his coworkers found several sites that were part of it, even tunnels that weren't on any map, completely unknown until their discovery by the construction crews.

But besides being a nexus for the Underground Railroad, Michiana has also been yet another place where local folklore once flourished. In 2005, folklorist Carl Lindahl visited the Suggs house and Underground Railroad museum, still run by the family of the same name up in Vandalia, Michigan, right outside of the city of Niles.

Lindahl's article is about a collection that was released at the time, but his observations about the Suggs patriarch J.D. Suggs and the legacy of certain folklore collectors from the last century are interesting ones:

Much more commonly, however, I emerged from the listening experience with enhanced respect for the collectors and for the positive bonds they had forged with the storytellers. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of this sort was Richard Dorson. Dorson has been roundly (and rightly) taken to task for many of his statements about the nature of African American narrative, especially his contention that it was a “borrowed” tradition —adapted from European sources rather than being “truly” African American. Such theoretical positions have long been discredited, but they have influenced many folklorists, including myself, to belittle Dorson’s work with African American narrators and narratives. So I was astonished to find that the children of Dorson’s favorite African American storyteller, J.D. Suggs, not only remembered Dorson, but cherished their memories of him. Their father had had a vision of “black and white coming together”—and the Suggs children have interpreted that vision in terms of Suggs “coming together” with Dorson. When I drove up to the J.D. Suggs Underground Railroad Museum and Historical Site in Vandalia, Michigan, I was stunned to find two metal silhouettes —one of Dorson, painted white, and one of Suggs, painted black—facing each other. The silhouettes were fashioned on the model of a photo of Dorson and Suggs that Suggs had carried with him until the day he died. In August 2004, shortly after American Folktales had been released, I attended the J.D. Suggs Freedom Festival at the museum and emerged from my car to find the Suggs family gathered in a circle around the metal cutouts of Suggs and Dorson.
The recordings of Suggs and Dorson reveal a strong mutual affection based on the two men’s common love of story. These and similar recordings from other storyteller- collector teams underline the importance and redeeming quality of fieldwork. We may get it wrong theoretically, our scholarship may sometimes seriously misrepresent our “informants,” but as long as we can record their remarkable performances and deal with them personally, in an atmosphere of mutual respect, we have done something remarkably right. The recorded performances will survive our misperceptions and, through such archives as the AFC, be available for their grandchildren and ours. We justify our existence by prolonging that of the storytellers.
The Archive of Folk Culture is in many ways America’s folkloric memory. There is no substitute for the wealth of oral art and wisdom to be found there. (Lindahl, Carl. "The Making of American Folktales," Folklife Center News, Winter/Spring 2005, Volume XXVII, Numbers 1-2)

God love the common man, the only conscience America's ever had or ever will have, because it's not going to come from above. The Suggs House Freedom Festival is being held today and tomorrow in Vandalia, Michigan. Its main-thrust is racial unity between African-Americans and Euro-Americans and a reminder that the nation most of us has always wanted has always been there, right under our eyes all along, if only we heed the call. Most of us already have in our hearts and minds, the real battleground.

Listing of local events that include the Suggs Freedom Festival (Aug. 8-9): http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090705/INTHEBEND/305029998/1044/Ent

Lindahl, Carl. "The Making of American Folktales," Folklife Center News, Winter/Spring 2005, Volume XXVII, Numbers 1-2: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/news/news-text-winter-spring2005.html

Dear Congress...

Viddy well, brothers (and sisters--kick out the jams), viddy well: Go fuck yourselves. I'm hardly alone in this sentiment. You've read the polls, you know why, and you won't change. Therefore, you've got to go, and go many of you will in November. You're complicit in the ruination our country.

That means you too, Joe Donnelly. Your campaign people were actually stupid enough to call my home to ask if I'd volunteer to help in your reelection. What?! For a meat puppet, human compost-heap like you? A sell-out? A twit? A yes man? Disappointed? Civility? You won't listen to the will of the people, you don't deserve any, you stupid asshole, you petit bourgeois businessman (that was the first obvious sign-of-trouble).

Nope, I knew you were a liar and cheat before you ever beat that other idiot, Chris Chocola, another former politician you resemble in behavior. And Tony Zirkle is horrible, but at least we know what to expect out of him every single time: the same as from you, so we don't vote for him if we're sane.

You've got to be fucking kidding me, Joe, I want you gone, forever (and that's a mighty long time, but there's something else--the afterworld...). You didn't get my vote in the primary, and I'll vote against you in November.

I'll also encourage my friends and family to do likewise. Rocky & Bullwinkle might get that vote, or even Madonna, but whoever it is, it's going to beat voting for your two-faced husk. Go away, fuck-off. Take this incumbent away, it is wrong.

OK Indiana, you upset my expectations with the primaries, but I was still right.

Indiana's 2nd District--Say what you want, but Indiana and my own voting district has miraculously made me proud. OK, it wasn't all that miraculous: even racist Hoosiers know that Clinton isn't going to fix anything, and that we're going to get more of the same from her and the McInsane, that guy with a hair-trigger temper and a yen for making Beach Boys songs into hymnals for bombing Iran. The difference between George W. Bush, Hilliary Clinton, and John McCain is: nada, zip, zero.

The good news:My own district, and the county I live in (St. Joseph) voted predominantly for Barack Obama. That's saying something, as this isn't a particularly enlightened region--Michiana--but we've got the nuts outnumbered, an obverse to the 19th century when Abolitionists who ferried runaway slaves through here were the minority. Attitudes have changed significantly, and we're moving in a better direction. It hurts to write this again, but we're improving as the WWII generation dies-out. So the wheel turns, the real meaning of "revolution."

Predictably, National Socialist (GOP) candidate Tony Zirkle (see article below) lost in the primary race, but received an appallingly-high vote of nearly 6,000. It takes a very motivated racist to vote for someone as clearly insane as Zirkle, but we have them outnumbered. They're a fringe-phenomena, and it's enjoyable to watch the candidate waste his own money with his personal lost-cause of theocratic white supremacy.

Emigrantes mexicanos, tengai cuidado! Tony Zirkle es un abogado que no actuará en el mejor de vuestros intereses, el es contra los emigrantes!

Hilliary Clinton received just a barely 2% margin-of-victory over Barack Obama, which is considerably less than her "victory" in Pennsylvania. It's not going to be enough for her to prevail. We can thank her and the mainstream media for the paltry 2%. They hammered-home the Rev. Wright story again-and-again, going well beyond "heavy rotation." If it seemed like the GOP echo-chamber, that's because it was.

The Indiana count: At this writing, candidate Clinton holds 643, 442 votes (51%), while candidate Obama holds 629, 029 (49%). Clinton has garnered 37 delegates, while Obama has earned 33, but today Obama received the superdelegate endorsement of George McGovern. This comes from CNN, with 99% reporting. That's hardly a victory for Senator Hillary Clinton at all. It doesn't help her overall, and today we're hearing that she's dipping into her massive savings for $5.6 million as a "loan" to her campaign.

How does one loan oneself money, and is she good for it? Thank heavens for stupid girls, because stupid girls vote Clinton everyday. We're the state of Eugene Debs and New Harmony. It's just that we keep trying to forget. How did I vote? Obama. Rep. Joe Donnelly got no vote, and never will again for standing with President Bush on Iraq, and for helping block impeachment.

Donnelly needs to go, but there's no viable Democratic or third party candidates running against him (take that, Steve Francis). The one Republican who was for a withdrawal from Iraq (his name was Roush) lost along with Tony Zirkle. I would have voted for Mr. Roush over Joe Donnelly any day.

Indiana's Election results as of 3:38PM: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#IN

No, it's not Urkle: It's mad dog, race-baiting Tony Zirkle!

Indiana's 2nd District--Expect much more on this individual, Tony Zirkle. Who is Mr. Zirkle? You could not make someone like Tony Zirkle up, only the human condition could. It would be too polite to refer to him as a confirmed whack-o, or that he's decidedly racist. Zirkle's law office (one of five he purportedly owns and runs) is located in Crown Point, Indiana, a place that would be essentially unknown were it not for John Dillinger's clever escape from the County Jail with a wooden-gun.

Zirkle compromises the worst that Indiana has to offer the rest of humanity, forget the rest of America. On Sunday, The South Bend Tribune--our one newspaper--asked all of the runners for seats in and representing Indiana, some interesting questions on current issues.

Each of the runners' political affiliation, educational background, political experience, and even age, were laid-out nicely. First, we got a lot of hot air from soon-to-be former Republican Governor Mitch Daniels (aka "Scarface," Bush's economics adviser in the first term, hint-hint), and some interesting answers from Jill Long Thompson, and James Schellinger, both Democrats running against the incumbent governor. Not a bad piece, and all done from questionnaires sent to each candidate.

Democratic Representative Joe Donnelly's answers about Iraq--and nearly everything else-- were disappointing as usual, and there appears to be no viable Democratic candidate to replace him in this district...but that's where the GOP's runners come in, at the tail-end of the piece.

Of all of the candidates for the 2nd District of Indiana's representative seat, Joseph Alan Roush wins the award for the most human and progressive platform on every issue he was questioned on, including Iraq--he wants a full-withdrawal. Immigration? he wants an end to NAFTA, and doesn't blame migratory workers and illegal immigrants. If Roush actually makes it further, it will be because of a progressive platform, and not because he's a Republican. It's doubtful Indiana's GOP will be giving him much support.

But this makes Roush a more reasonable candidate than the boorish Joe Donnelly, a man who won't be getting my vote anytime soon. The rest is fine-print, see for yourself. But then...then (brace yourselves), there's Tony Zirkle:

Tony Hvfvgpd Zirkle

Address: Homeless [Ed.-?!]

Political affiliation: Republican -- Original Intent [Ed.-?!]

Occupation: Attorney

Education: U.S. Naval Academy; Georgetown University, B.S.F.S. International Economics; Andrews University, B.A. religion & economics; Indiana University Bloomington School of Law, J.D.; Andrews University Theological Seminary, master's in divinity candidate (two tests remain to completion)

Political Experience: 1988-1989 -- Indiana state president, Future Business Leaders of America; 1989, 1990, 1992 -- class president, U.S. Naval Academy.

Ran as a Republican for the following offices [Ed.--And blessedly failed...]:

2000 -- Indiana House, District 8

2002 & 2006 -- St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor

2004, 2006, & 2008 -- U.S. House of Representatives, Indiana 2nd District

Age: 38

What's the best solution to the conflict in Iraq?

The best solution? Stop glorifying adultery by enshrining neo-Baal porn worship in the heart of the First Amendment. Porn-adultery appoints "terror" to us. Lev. 26:16. Remember, slave-raping extended the Civil War. [Ed.--The meaning of this answer escapes me entirely, but perhaps Mr. Zirkle should try his hand at writing science fiction some time in the near-future, he's got a wild imagination. At-minimum, the candidate appears to be sexually-obsessed. One has to wonder if he's ever seen a prostitute or a mistress...]

Describe your position on illegal immigration.

If we want immigration fixed, the absolute critical issue is to secure local concurrent jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws with no bond holds. I would compromise on almost all for that. [Ed.--It should be noted here that Mr. Zirkle represents illegal immigrants. One might ask him how many clients he has achieved exoneration for.]

Explain your position on the rising price of oil.

We need a LaPorte County U.S. Civil Service Academy where the master's and doctorate students and researchers will have an unobstructed key to the patent office for energy technological development. [Ed.-?!] ("Candidates Seek to Challenge Donnelly," The South Bend Tribune, 04.27.2008)

And there it is, Tony Zirkle. He has a presence on the Internet, making a real spectacle of himself regularly there (and in courtrooms). Google his name sometime. You're bound to be offended, but always entertained.

Yet the fear will remain that there are creatures bearing his name: race-baiter, religious nut, and all-around opportunist and grouser, Tony Zirkle. Dr. Seuss could never had made you up. He didn't do nightmares (much). And here I didn't even mention that Tony wants to bring back the guillotine, and a segregated United States that closely resembles the version the Aryan Nations would prefer. Then, there's the birthday party for Hitler that he attended recently with some armband wearing friends. Tony Zirkle: how the other 1% lives.

"Candidates Seek to Challenge Donnelly," The South Bend Tribune, 04.27.2008: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080427/NEWS07/804270385/-1/elections

Tony's Scary, and he keeps scarier company...I think: http://wonkette.com/politics/tony-zirkle/tony-zirkle-keepin-it-scarily-real-168906.php

Tony at a birthday party for Adolph Hitler: http://nwitimes.com/articles/2008/04/23/news/top_news/docf6a35b9d5a72e89d8625743300832e52.txt

"Worst Campaign Idea Ever?": http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=12532