You can’t make this stuff up! I’m in London, attending the London Literature Festival, visiting some friends and sightseeing. This morning (local time), I was catching up with the news back home, and I stumbled across this item in the Nevada County, CA, blogosphere:
“It appears the Union has banned me from commenting online for 30 days,” Todd Juvinall, local right-wing activist, blogger and former county supervisor (yup, he was), writes on his blog “SierraDragonsBreathe.com” (sic) under the headline: “The Grass Valley Union bans free speech”
Imagine that! Of course it’s all The Union’s fault, Todd tells us.
“I am like Trump in that if you attack me I hit back twice as hard. Hit as in comments and words. … The results are they banned ME! You cannot make this stuff up. So I will use the FB groups and connections to get the conservative messages out as best I cam (sic).”
You go Todd!
Todd’s conclusion: “This opened my eyes more to the bias that exists even in our little paper that I have subscribed too (sic) all my life as did my parents. All because the Editor has no balls to defend his own paper from liberal attacks.”
I sometimes comment at TheUnion.com, and I do notice a preponderance of personal attacks and outlandish remarks. It’s the same few people — again and again.
Of course, being editor of The Union is like being a “bouncer in a bar,” a former editor John Seelmeyer once told me — and I couldn’t agree more.
To borrow an expression from Todd: What a hoot!
(Note: Please be judicious in commenting here, and no personal attacks. I don’t want to monitor this while I’m on the road). Cheers!
Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report 
“I am like Trump”- Todd Junivall
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: “Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?”
The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters – the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don’t…
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.”
That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.”
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you chirped, “He sure knows me.”
That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, “That’s cool!”
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?”
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.”
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!”
That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!”
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!”
That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.”
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!”
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!”
That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.”
That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!”
That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids. has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas – he explains that they’re just “animals” – and you say, “well, ok then.”
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.
What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2018, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable.
Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are *less* flattering.
Chip, I believe this may be the best response I’ve seen. Not to mention crude “manners” toward women. Then there are those who hit first, get what they deserve, then “hit back twice as hard” without acknowledging they started it in the first place. Thank you Chip!
Thank you to the Union for taking a stand for decency.
I second that!
I continue to find it humorous, particularly in light of your recent post about Salmon Rushdie, an author whose work I enjoy and admire, that Todd and his “friends” still can’t differentiate between protected free speech and unprotected public speech.
The first amendment protects the public from government restriction on speech but not restrictions by private parties or businesses unless they are working on behalf of the government. The Union is a private business and has every right to set standards, and its about time they stepped in and set this one; the question really is will they implement this one equally.
For a crew that is largely self declared “constitutionalists” they sure dont seem to understand the portions of the constitution their ideology finds inconvenient.
I hope The Union does finally establish a standard because social media attached to articles can be a very good way to stimulate public discussion about important issues, and that should be part of the role of a local paper. But for standards to work the content must be curated and I doubt they have made a commitment to finally curating their content, it’s expensive, time consuming and thankless.
Good to know that The Union listens, on occasion. There’s been a few of us that have spoken of too much Todd. He seems to believe that those with the most posts, win.
Here, a song I remember driving around with my buds in Chicago, this one is for Todd.
Humble Pie – 30 days in the hole
Thank you for the memory. Good song
And then there’s Todd Juvinall, spending his weekend getting in a verbal fist fight with a troll on Rebane’s blog. Go figure!