As if we haven’t heard enough from him this week (“Once you get enough people on the government’s ‘tits,’” and “Obamunism”) The Union’s “columnist” and hard-right political activist George Rebane has stooped to calling me a “sleazebag,” “leftwinger,” even publishing one-year-old, surreptitious photos of me standing on the street and laughing at my, well, “capacity” — all in a single post on his blog.
“Sleaze bag?” Why that’s almost as bad as calling somebody a “raghead,” another one of George’s words. But honestly, photographing and publishing somebody at close range without asking them is sort of creepy.
And this from a “doctor,” (Ph.D) no less. How educational!
As for the substance (no pun intended), this overt name-calling isn’t going to change any outcome, including these:
•George said he voted for Sue McGuire, not Nate Beason, in the District 1 Supervisor race. “Voting for Sue McGuire and Doug LaMalfa,” his post read.
•George tried to downplay the outcome.
It seems to peeve George and his pals Russell Steele, Todd Juvinall, RL Crabb (a cartoonist for The Union, who even drew one about me) etc., to no end that I never level the same criticism to “the other side.”
I don’t need to. They proved my point again — the problem in the community is a small, vocal faction of the hard right (not moderate Republicans, Democrats or the far left). They are incorrigible, and for years, many conservatives — and the management of The Union newspaper — have just looked the other way.
It’s embarrassing to be a Republican in this community, at least some of my GOP friends think so.
It’s time to change all this.
After all, do you know ANYBODY from the “other side” who acts like this group of people? Drawing a cartoon in a newspaper about a blogger (“inside baseball,” at best)? Calling somebody a “sleaze bag” in a blog by a newspaper columnist?
I don’t.
If I was the manager, I’d just tell them to ignore it — or fire them for poor judgment.
After all, I’m a decline to state voter who has voted for Republicans and Democrats over the years. What if I really was “very liberal”?
Is this what Peter Van Zant and Izzy Martin (who are very liberal) put up with from the local hard right? Did Tom McClintock set an example for the hard right by saying it was time to get rid of the “left-wing” clerk recorder, or telling people to “agitate”? Is this a strategy? Is somebody going to start sending more unwanted magazine subscriptions to my house?
I’m sorry that novelist Tom Wolfe can’t come to this community and write about certain elements of it. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Jeff, just remember:
BS= Bull S#+€
MS= MORE S#£+
PHD= PILED HIGHER AND DEEPER
When I read it to my son, he was surprised that Barry Pruett was one of the commenters. He met Barry the other day at the Lacey J. Dalton concert.
Jeff,
I sympathize with your position. God knows I have tried to find common ground with the fearsome foursome and have had a little success with a couple and no success with the other two. Actually Barry has toned down his blog and comments considerably, which is nice to see. Kim P is such a nice lady I can only imagine she would only marry a nice man. Although I disagree with Russ on most issues I appreciate his approach. George believes he is the smartest guy in the room even if he is in a room filled with Nobel Laureates, it promotes a very closed minded hubris. Now Todd, most people tell me he is a decent man in person but his online persona is one that have no patience and cannot tolerate. I find that his online persona has that effect on most people, except Walt.
Ben, we enjoyed this conversation the other day. Without knowing it was me, Todd agreed with me on a couple of occasions but if comments aren’t 100% his way, it’s just as people are saying here. I’ve seen Kim’s posts in here and she comes off as a very polite lady.
Ben,
Be careful out there! We are chronicling change in our community and it ain’t pretty!
Jeff,
I generally don’t take it personal because I don’t know them and they don’t know me on a daily level. All we know about each other is we don’t generally agree on politics. For the most part I get along with everyone.
Jeff,
Let me finish my thought. BUT if I had done to me what they have done to you my level headed response would be much different. I know you have shared some things done to you and I bet there is much more. I have never experienced something like that and don’t know exactly how I would react.
Bill Clinton nailed it in his recent speech:
http://sierrafoothillsreport.com/2012/09/05/clinton-never-learned-to-hate-them-the-way-the-far-right-seems-to-hate-our-president-and-a-lot-of-other-democrats/
One of the things that many people experience when they first move here from a big city is that everything is personal. This is not a place where you go to the grocery store every day for ten years and never see the same person twice. Here, you go to the grocery store your first day, and on the second day you see all the same people!
This is why I am still here. I love this about Nevada County, but it is not without its challenges. The only thing I can suggest is that if you have an initial rub with someone, to give it another try. At least one more try anyway. I think George and Jeff should have coffee, one more time. Hell, I’ll even volunteer to facilitate.
If after a second meeting the thing is still irascible and intractable, then the heck with it. But in my view, everything is always worth a second look. My 2 cents.
Michael,
I just go to another grocery store for a while. There are a half dozen of them around town now. We need to hold people accountable for behavior that crosses a line.
Jeff,
I totally agree. And you have to find those people and make sure you have the right ones.
What happened with the investigation about who was sending you magazine subscriptions? I thought that was horrible and childish, plus it’s mail fraud and identity theft. Must be prosecuted.
I’d also like to know who left the animal head on the steps of the Democratic Party headquarters back several years ago. That must have been some kind of a crime.
OTOH, I’m also talking about vitriol in the blogs that really doesn’t cross a line. It’s just boring, rude, unattractive and unfortunate. I’ve engaged in it as well, I’m not pointing any fingers believe me.
But there’s just something a lot different when you sit down with someone to have a cup of coffee together, or share a meal. That’s all I’m saying.
Michael A.
Michael,
I never had a cup of coffee with George Rebane. Since you brought it up, that’s another one of his lies. But let’s cut to brass tacks: These people don’t have anything to contribute. I mean, come on, picking up your “community” newspaper on Saturday morning and there’s an article below the masthead by a hard-right wing activist about “Obamunism.” Consider all the other choices you could make as a local publisher. Then when you question the newspaper’s judgment and George’s lack of specifics, he calls you a “sleaze bag.” What are our community standards? It’s the stuff of a Tom Wolfe novel.
Here you go, proof that Obama is planning a post election invasion of Canada. President Obama plans to invade Canada in collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood and impose sharia law, in order to divert attention from his foreign birth, millions of new illegal immigrants crossing our southern borders, open the door to raising taxes on everyone in the United States, and the US joining a global governance pact that will impose Agenda 21. Can’t you insipid, intellectually challenged, lazy, communalist, muddle headed liberals see it? Why won’t the Obomunists answer questions about their planned invasion of Canada? Why won’t the Obomunists talk about who they are meeting behind closed doors to coordinate this attack? Why are the domestic security agencies buying old copies of “Canadian bacon”? If they didn’t have anything to hide why would they refuse access to the records of these secret closed door meetings? Why are the training planners to say “prooject” and “aboot”? Isn’t it clear? It’s so they can expand Canadian socialist community planning ideas in the US! If you don’t react now and elect MITT ROMNEY your world, your rights, American, the entire capitalist system will collapse (and they will defile your women).
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/obama-administration-denies-plan-to-invade-canada-135992.html
In the new America if you don’t believe this you are just f^(#ing inferior to the big brain of Nevada County!
Steve, that sounds about as credible as a Twilight Zone plot laced with obtuse rhetoric. Somebody must have gotten a hold of the brown stuff at Woodstock. Excellent comment!
We could certain out conspiracy think them if we really tried!
When these local hard-rights use words like “sleaze bag” and “raghead,” they’re talking to each other using ugly language that reinforces their sense of camaraderie, but they’re saying nothing of value to anyone else.
By this pathetic style of discourse, replete with nasty and mean-spirited ad hominem attacks, they’re revealing a great deal about themselves and their desperation and their weakness: As their relevance wanes, their rhetoric becomes more virulent.
What I found most striking in Rebane’s recent silly “Obamunism” column was its intellectual pretentiousness. For example:
“Obamunistic practice is predicated on the supremacy of the executive branch of government. The legislative (Congress) and judicial (Supreme Court) branches are relegated to supportive roles that facilitate the fundamental transformation to proceed apace. Delay or recalcitrance by either will be handled through preemptive executive orders and innovative regulatory interpretations of existing laws.”
What’s going on here?
Are all of us readers so intellectually inferior to the writer that we need to be told that Congress is the legislative branch and the Supreme Court is part of the judicial branch?
Wow, he must be a professor or sumpin.
Aside from the silly conceit of the original premise (a communistic mass movement named after Barak Obama), Rebane seems most intent on using words that were no doubt worth $1000/each in the 19th century, but do little today to convey much except the high-opinion the speaker has of himself (“apace,” “recalcitrance” … “ruminations” for that matter, but I digress).
If clarity and plain-speaking is not the goal, then what is the goal?
Perhaps the goal is to impress us with the writer’s intelligence?
For all these reasons — its mean-spiritedness, its nasty rhetoric, its tired ideology, its laughable self-importance , and especially its irrelevance — I rarely read anything written by the local right, and get a sense of it only when I hear about it on this blog.
I find my life is tremendously enriched — and certainly more peaceful — by this absence.
Jeff, this was posted on my facebook this morning: When people cut you down or talk behind your back, remember, they took time out of their pathetic lives to think about you”.
We’re chronicling real change in our community and it ain’t pretty! A lot of people are real mad that Obama is our president too.
My guess is they’re going to be a lot madder after election day. My husband is no fan of Obama or Romney but in keeping his eyes open he stated that Obama has this one.
I’m starting to think “Earl Crabb” is a little thick:
Your objections to certain Dem policies are well documented, Steve, but we’re not talking about you. If you’re going to provide a forum that claims to be in the middle, then you might want to include some of the excesses of the liberal end of the spectrum,of which there are many. JP’s site is as one-sided as Rebane’s, but he won’t cop to it. Therein lies “the rub”.
I’m a Decline to State who has voted for Republicans and Democrats over the years. My perspective is one of a “political moderate.”
But I often find the local “hard right” obnoxious and hateful, just like Bill Clinton put it. Nowadays, I don’t see those same “excesses” on the hard left in our community. Even conservatives I know shun these people.
Not the “RQC” please. Or the “Nevada City council.” That’s yesterday’s lettuce.
The “rub” is that people like Crabb don’t know how lunatic some segments of the community look like to relative outsiders, I guess because they’ve operated within it for so long. It’s terribly sad.
We don’t always agree on everything (who does?) but you do come off as rather open-minded, fair, and balanced. Isn’t that what those of us in the middle strive for?
I wonder which blogs director Sam Bacille would align himself with if he moved here?
A few months ago I commented on how ugly the discourse from the hard right is, here in Nevada Co. I had moved from Orange and San Diego Cos. both bastions of conservative strength, where, in general, I didn’t see such rancor–except from a co-worker.
Many comments made here today are bull’s eyes. Having a PhD gives one credibility in a certain area but not ownership of the universal truths. Much that comes from his blog proves this point.
I see those right wing blogs as ego driven, fulfilling some psychological need to be recognized as the most outstanding and smartest guy around because of a number of personal failures in their personal life. The worst offender, IMO, is dragon breath, who tosses around insults like rounds rocketing from the barrel of an 50 caliber machine gun. Hardly the tone of dialogue one expects after reading the short biography.
I speak my mind, post here some, rarely on the other blogs. On them It’s like playing poker; never ending. I feel like I can’t quit if I’m ahead–which would never be danced anyway– or behind, so I just don’t get involved often. I have mentioned my following the evangelical movement since the early eighties and have stated they amount to about 25% of those that vote; discipline, organized, dedicated, etc. I could add more adjectives, but I’ll say this instead; The Texas GOP favored and enacted eliminating the standard of ‘teaching critical thinking skills’ from the Texas BOE approved curriculum. Such skills interfered with parental authority, so the (un)reasoning went. The glorification of ignorance and demeaning of expertise and reason is very popular and widespread. Romney and Ryan present a real threat; Bush gave us two wars and much more debris to deal with.
But even evangelicals quarrel over doctrine and are quite prepared for uncivil behavior, such as being warriors and killing unbelievers. As Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV writes on the jacket of ex-JAG. M.L. Weinstein co-written book: With God On Our Side. He comments, it “Is the story of one man’s willingness to stand up for the Constitution of the U.S. Arrayed against Weinstein are . . .a force of evangelical crusaders, Intolerant of the diversity of our society and willfully subversive of our national security interests.”
And so it goes. It’s not just me, many of our present day thinkers recognize the dangers within the coalition of Republicans, Tea people and evangelicals. The differences are bound to lead to distasteful dialogue.