Day Without A Right-Wing Wack Job
When I used to complain to my mother about my older brother's verbal taunts, she usually told me to just ignore it; it was my strident reaction that made him want to mess with me. I now tell my son the same when his little sister deliberately pushes his buttons. But we (somewhat rational) journalists are pathologically unable to grasp that simple truism and ignore the taunts of the bullies that populate right-wing cable and radio.
Truth is, our whole culture is addicted to meaningless controversy, and by god, it drives Web traffic like nothing doing. So when Obama is attacked by crazies who insist he lacks a birth certificate, when Glenn Beck jokes about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, when Fox lights up with claims that the Democrats want to euthanize the elderly, when Rush and others equate the president to Hitler, the journobloggers are all over it. Anytime I'm drawn to comment on this stuff, though, I have to admit some level of ambivalence. I still remember being annoyed years ago when one of Bill O'Reilly's antigay tirades about San Francisco made A-1 in the San Francisco Chronicle. Didn't the editors get it? To steal from the first Terminator movie: That's what he does. It's all he does. O'Reilly baits people, and they respond, and then he sells more books. Even 2 Live Crew, a feeble act that made millions in the 1990s off an obscene-lyrics controversy, understood that game. (Of course, fanning the O'Reilly flame probably sells more newspapers, too. And god knows, they need all the sales they can get. Evidence here.)
okay, i am torn by the protests that are being embraced by the radical right in this country. on the one hand it is truly offensive and they are being covered as if they represent a large portion of the opposition movement. if anything they are successful in inciting the media and hogging the camera. but, should they be banned and ignored? well, banning them would be a violation of their first amendment right to assembly. ignored? this is where it gets sticky for me. during the bush years an anti-war protester could have firebombed the cnn bus and the camera would never have been turned in their direction. the opposition was simply ignored. i am of the opinion that that caused a great deal of pent up frustration which worked to the advantage of the democrats in the last two election cycles. as for these extreme right wing nuts, they do not exist in a vacuum. i have been to the hog roasts and the vfw late night bar discussions. to shock and pontificate is part and parcel of the social conservative dna. any level of encouragement can with certainty start a fist fight over the smallest of perceived slights. we cannot ignore them and there must be a place in the discussion for the venting and vetting of the extremes of differing points of view. however, and this is a big caveat, this cannot be the level of public discourse. we walk a fine line between inviting another oklahoma city by silencing these factions and insuring the political success of thuggery and vandalism by giving them the hot and intoxicating glare of the national spotlight. it is ripe recruiting ground for the malcontents out in aryan land right now.
by Kilian Melloy
EDGE Staff Reporter
Wednesday Aug 12, 2009
The Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, which is principally made up of Rev. Fred Phelps and his extended family, is mostly known for its anti-gay rhetoric and its picketing actions, which take place across the country and target everything from high school productions of "The Laramie Project" to the funerals of U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Phelps crew say God is punishing America for not persecuting gays stringently enough, with the deaths of our troops the proof of the Almighty’s displeasure.)
But the Westboro congregation have other targets as well. The group’s picketing of Jewish institutions in New York City on Aug. 11 served as a reminder of that fact.
An Aug. 12 article at The Jerusalem Post recounted that the Phelps congregation showed up, famously offensive placards in hand, to picket Temple Shearith Israel, the Jewsih Community Center, and other places that serve Jewish New Yorkers.
When the clan picket, they are often met with counter-demonstrations, sometimes in the form of jubilant parties that celebrate gay culture. Other times, however, the local community do their best to avoid or ignore the congregation.
The Jerusalem Post article noted that Rabbi Joy Levitt, the JCC’s executive director, encouraged the latter approach.
However, Levitt was clear that silence did not, in this case, amount to consent.
"Our communication remains the same," Levitt stated in an email.
"The JCC in Manhattan does not welcome this group’s message or actions in any way."
That said, "Our best and only response is to conduct business as usual."
Though the Phelps crew usually make headlines for their anti-gay street preaching, "They have ramped up their protest in front of Jewish institutions," the article quoted Deborah Lauter, who serves the Anti-Defamation League’s as director of civil rights, as saying.
Noted Lauter of the Westboro congregation, "They’re definitely, unequivocally anti-Semitic and they always have been."
That doesn’t mean that the Phelpses have abandoned their anti-gay preaching: indeed, on Aug. 7 the congregation picketed a Texas jail, claiming that a mother who allegedly murdered her newborn did so as the result of gays not being persecuted in America.
News station Q101.9 at its Web site, Q News reported that the group claimed the mother, Otty Sanchez, who is accused of beheading her three-week-old infant, was "the daughter of your doings."
Even though the Jewish community had been encouraged to ignore the Phelps clan, some individuals saw it as necessary to demonstrate in turn, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The article quoted counter-demonstrator Ina Gail Goldberg as saying, "As a Jew, as a community member, as someone who highly values diversity and as a human, I felt it was important to come to show support" even as the Phelpses were picketing the JCC.
Bob Lamm, another counter-demonstrator, declared, "I’m here to stand up against bigotry, anti-Semitism, homophobia, against any other form of bigotry."
Added Lamm, "I think it’s essential that Jews stand up against them."
Indeed, as reported by The Deseret News in a July 28 article, the group’s actions at a previous demonstration at the JCC, two weeks earlier, went beyond waving palcards bearing slogans like, "God Hates Jews."
Members of the Phelps clan dragged an American flag on the ground and stepped on an Israeli flag, going so far as to use the Israeli flag as Kleenex.
Those provocations resulted in a loud volley of obscenities, reported The Deseret News, but that did not, in itself, model tolerance, or even reasoned disagreement.
Reported The Deseret News item, "Since being obnoxious does not violate the Constitution, and since these people were clearly beyond reasoned argument, and since there were only three of them, you might have thought that a wise response would be to ignore them.
"That’s what officials at the community center had sensibly urged," the article added.
"But a cluster of New Yorkers, 20 people or so with nothing better to do, gathered to taunt the Topekans" during their July demonstration, which the article reported was carried out by an adult female and two juveniles, also females.
"They did so in a manner that makes New York an inspiration to the world," the article went on. "They shouted sexually charged vulgarities.
"A teachable moment it was not," the article lamented. "Free expression had been reduced to distasteful simultaneous monologues between the bigoted and the crude."
The article went on to note that the Phelps clan is far from alone in its faith-based hatred of homosexuals.
Indeed, a publisher called Choice Books published Christian books such as "Emergency Prayers" and "500 Questions & Answers from the Bible," which, the article noted, denounced gay intimacy, likening it to "cancer" and calling it "detestable."
A local newspaper responded to complaints from two women about the books, which were stocked at CVS drug store, by calling them examples of "hate speech," The Deseret News reported.
CVS took the books off the racks, with spokesperson Michael DeAngelis telling The Deseret News, "We are committed to building an environment of inclusion and acceptance that values diversity across all areas of our business."
But even that action had repercussions from the political left: a local activist, Michael Meyers, who heads the New York Civil Rights Coalition, spoke against the removal o the books from CVS stores, saying that what was needed was to "oppose inane attempts to silence people and to suppress ideas or to ban books that disagree with us."
Added Meyers, who wrote his comments in a letter to the same local paper that had decried the hate books, Chesea Now, "The tired canard of ’protecting’ our children from ’hate speech’ is exactly the cry of those who have long opposed positive social and cultural change."
The Phelps congregation has often been challenged for its hate speech-filled street preaching, but has usually prevailed by citing its Constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression.
Meantime, the local communities the Phelps crew impacts continue to wrestle with appropriate responses: to ignore them, to counter-protest them, or to throw a big, gay party and make a day of it.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
Posted on Wed, Aug. 12, 2009
KC steps back from law banning funeral picketing
A City Council Committee recommended today that the city repeal its ordinance against funeral picketing despite council outrage over the Fred Phelps family’s picketing of military funerals.
The council’s Public Safety and Neighborhoods Committee endorsed repealing the city law because recent court rulings have struck down other cities’ funeral picketing restrictions. Kansas City has also been threatened with a lawsuit arguing that its ordinance is an unlawful infringement on free speech rights.
The full council will consider the repeal later this month.
Assistant City Attorney Bill Geary told the committee that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has found that the speech of the Westboro Baptish Church and its members is protected by the First Amendment, and that the church’s right to free expression is given greater weight than the rights of persons to mourn the loss of their relatives in the military.
Council members said they consider the funeral picketing to be despicable and hateful, but they recognized the city law as currently written would not withstand a legal challenge. They said they didn’t want the Phelps family to benefit financially by winning a lawsuit against the city.
But they also directed the city attorney to explore other ways of writing the law and said they would explore ways to get state law changed in a way that would pass legal muster.
“We need to try everything we can,” said Committee Chair Cathy Jolly.
| Lynn Horsley, lhorsley@kcstar.com.
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