Scary Alabama Racist Newspaper Editorial Takes Us Back To The Jim Crow Days

Goodie Sutton, my nominee for the most racist newspaper
editor in the United States. 

UPDATE: Saturday, 2/23/19

So, a little karma happened with this story.

Under pressure, this racist loser has resigned. He's still not sorry for the editorial, but I love the deliciousness of this update.

The new publisher, owner and editor of the Democrat-Reporter is a woman named Elecia Dexter.

Oh, Dexter happens to be a black African-American woman.

Dexter says her understanding is that Sutton is actually still the owner of the paper. But regardless, this is definitely an improvement. It couldn't get any worse.

As for Sutton, he says he now has time to, as he says "drink beer and chase women."

Good luck with that, bubba.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Racism is, of course, always bad.

There are different degrees of it, or at least different degrees of what is said out loud by racists.

A small town newspaper editor in Alabama, though, has gone full throated racist, and his words are jaw-droppingly horrifying. The editorial's headline: "Klan Needs To Ride Again"

This piece of, um, literature was recently published by a creep named Goodloe Sutton, who is the publisher of the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama.

As the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser reports, Sutton is unrepentant and stands by his editorial.

Sutton begins with the source of his ire: "Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama."

Um, OK, if you say so.  Then this all turns very dark, very quickly. He blames the "socialist-communist ideology" for all this, and then pretty much applauds the KKK who once "rode through the night to frighten some evil doer. Sometimes they had to kill one or two of them but so what."

Sutton then dreams of the day in which the Klan heads north to "raid the gated communities. They call them compounds now."

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown went over to Linden to interview him about the editorial. During the interview, Sutton said, "If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we'd all be better off."

Brown asked what Sutton meant by that. He suggested lynching.

It gets even more off the rails. Here's another excerpt from the Montgomery Advertiser article:

"'We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them,' Sutton said.

When asked if he felt it was appropriate for the publisher of a newspaper to call for the lynching of Americans, Sutton doubled down on his position. 

'....It's not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communist we're talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?' Sutton asked."

Apparently, it's anybody who disagrees with him. And, to state the obvious, yes he is calling for the lynching of Americans.

Sutton goes on to say that the Klan is not racist and violent, hilariously comparing it to the NAACP.

As an aside, Sutton's newspaper used to be good. In the 1990s, the Democrat-Reporter got national acclaim for reporting on a corrupt sheriff in the area.

However, the Democrat-Reporter gained a reputation for racism and ugliness well before Sutton's recent editorial.  In recent years, readers were treated to headlines like "Homosexuals take black spotlight" and "Slavery was a good lesson for Jews."

I've been complaining that the boorish Trump administration has given racists, bigots, misogynists and the like "permission" to blurt out their awfulness in public rather than keep in hidden.

Sometimes I've been told I've been overstating the Trump influence on the worst of American society. I counter that this editorial bolsters my case. I have always thought there are people as odious as Sutton out there.   However, it seemed that they had largely gone silent, or crawled back into the woodwork.

They're back out. But maybe Trump has done us a favor. Through example, he has encouraged these lowlifes to come back out into the sunshine. Now we know they're there, and I hope we can deal with them more easily.

Point at them at object and perhaps, just maybe, they'll think twice about hurting other people. You can only hope.

New Culture Of Denying Refugees Into U.S. Alive And Well In Vermont

Rutland, Vermont just said no to Syrian refugees,
following the lead of Donald Trump 

My hometown of Rutland, Vermont has been getting national attention recently over the intense debate there over whether to allow Syrian refugees to resettle in that small city.

Vermont has welcomed refugees from a variety of places over the past few decades, but as the Trump crackdown on refugees continues, it's affecting Vermont in a lot of ways.

If events this month prove anything, Vermont might be moving away from its embrace of refugees, too.

The debate over refugees has been pretty loud in Rutland right from the start. Vermont is generally quite liberal, but Rutland is kind of on the conservative side, at least by Vermont standards.

So the idea of Syrian refugees arriving there has gotten both lots of support, and lots of opposition.

Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras had aggressively championed the arrival of Syrian refugees in his city.

Make that former mayor.

Louras  was up for re-election on March 7 - Town Meeting Day - and his principal opposition came from David Allaire, a member of Rutland's Board of Alderman, who was against settling refugees in Rutland.

Allaire trounced Louras in the election. Allaire got 51 percent of the vote to Louras' 34 percent. Other candidates got small margins.

"I got smoked. Clearly I got smoked....It was a good old-fashioned political drubbing," Louras admitted to VTDigger, a Vermont news site. 

Part of Louras' problem was he never recovered from the fact that he was not particularly forthcoming to the public when the deal to bring Syrian refugees was being hashed out early last year.

But I'm convinced, and many others are, too, that just the idea of Syrian refugees in Rutland made many Rutland residents squeamish, to say the least.

Louras also told VTDigger:

"I think it just demonstrates that Rutland is still, as I said during the campaign and even before the campaign, Rutland is still a microcosm for the national conversation on refugees and immigration. I think the vote reflects that."

That Rutland is a microcosm, as Louras suggested, has certainly attracted plenty of national attention.

Breitbart, apparently Trump's favorite news source crowed:

"While Vermont is generally a refugee-welcoming state, the idea of dumping 100 Syrian refugees into this small city in Vermont that is already struggling economically seemed to defy common sense and logic, even to an area that preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump."

Slate, on the other hand, has a completely different take on what's going on in Rutland, and what happened to Louras.

Says Slate:

"The city of Rutland, which went for Clinton by about 13 points, is 96 percent white. Its population is both aging and shrinking - down to 15,824 in the latest American Community Survey estimate from more than 19,000 in 1970. 

In this, too, it represents America: Cites and towns without immigrants are shrinking. Those that take them are growing. This is true even in the quintessential Sun Belt boomtown Houston, whose white population has dropped by 300,000 residents since 1980, even as total population grew by 500,000. It is certainly true of older cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. 

And it's true of small towns, which increasingly face a choice: stay white and wither, or get diverse and grow. 

Rutland is taking the former path."

Which is too bad. As a Rutland County native, this area of Vermont could have a lot going for it. It'll never be the Vermont manufacturing and railroad hub it was during the early 20th century. But, with the rise of rural tourism and arts, a resurgent back to the land movement of sorts, and an internet age where a creative economy can rise, Rutland has potential.

Rutland also doesn't have to look far away to see how an influx of refugees affected another small Vermont city: Winooski.

A couple of decades ago, Winooski was a down-and-out community on the northern border of Burlington, which is Vermont's largest city.

A thriving textile industry in the early 20th century had died out, just as a marble quarrying and railroad industry in Rutland did the same at about the same time.

Frankly, Winooski was a low-income mess, a place nobody wanted to go to. It was a place Burlington commuters got through as quickly as they could to reach their more upper crust suburban homes in places like Colchester, Essex and Jericho.

Then Winooski started welcoming refugees from all over the world. It was at first an economic decision: The Vermont Refugee Resettlement program figured they could house refugees in Winooski, because the bad economy meant rental prices were low.

And so they came. From Vietnam. Serbia. Bhutan, Nepal. Somalia. Other places.

I won't say this created a utopia. The Winooski school system had to struggle with a huge influx of students who had to learn English as a second language. That was expensive, too. There were cultural differences. Fears that the immigrants would take away jobs from people who had lived in Winooski for decades.

But a funny thing happened.  Winooski turned......vibrant.

Oh sure, part of it was because of a big downtown redevelopment project hatched by a visionary City Council and some developers.

However, much of Winooski's new prosperity came from those refugees. I hate to traffick in stereotypes, but many immigrants tend to be entreprenurial. Interesting restaurants, shops and events sprouted in Winooski.

That attracted interest, and other businesses arrived. Most of them were created by locals who are not refugees, like this really cool Winooski barber shop I now frequent. Other businesses opened because of newer refugees.

OK, Winooski, may have a few too many hipsters nowadays, but that's a lot better than the doldrums the community was in years ago.

Winooski is cool. Rutland could be cool, too.

People are afraid of change, that's just human nature. Plus, we shouldn't change things just for the sake of change.

Sometimes, though, we have to overcome our fears.

Progress in Rutland is stalled now, because of anti-immigrant sentiment both locally and nationally.

As National Public Radio reported, two Syrian refugee family settled in Rutland before Trump shut down that program and before Allaire became mayor.

To be sure, many Rutlanders welcome the refugees.

Says NPR:

"Speaking through an interpreter this week, members ofone family said they felt relieved to be in Vermont. 'At first, we came her and we were surprised bythe very, very warm welcme by the people of Rutland,' one Syrian said. 'The mayor, our caseworker, our host family, all came and welcomed us, and since then, it never stopped, and people have just welcomed us and helped in every way."

That's one part of Rutland. One part of our nation. The ones ready to judge on a newcomer's character, not background.

The other Rutland, the other nation, cowers in fear. Shut the door, and lock us inside, safe from the world.

But that just leaves us more unsafe. What we don't know CAN hurt us, much more than the risks we do know about.

Of course we shouldn't let in everyone and anyone into the United States. We have a long, long history of both embracing and combating immigrants.

It seems we do better durung times when we welome people from other countries.

Yes, vet the hell out of all would-be refugees to the United States. Yes, we don't need or want a stampede of millions of immigrants all at once.

But let's leave the door cracked open, shall we? The nation we save might be our own.

Sadly, Arizona Republic Learns That Any Opinion Warrants Death Threats

In the current sad state of affairs, the staff at the Arizona
Republic newspaper has been getting numerous death
threats for endorsing Hillary Clinton. The paper's
editorial on it reaction to the threats is a must-read

An editorial in the Arizona Republic newspaper is going viral for a very sad reason.

Another editorial several days earlier in the traditionally conservative newspaper in the conservative state of Arizona endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.  

Until now, the paper has always endorsed the Republican candidate, but the Arizona Republic's editorial board couldn't stomach Donald Trump.

Sure, some conservative readers of the Arizona Republic got mad at the Clinton endorsement, complained loudly about it, even canceled subscriptions.

All that is fair.

But a number of people -not just a few - lobbed very gross death threats against the people who work at the Arizona Republic, thereby continuing a strange, awful new tradition in America:  Threaten to kill anyone who doesn't share your worldview.

In this past Sunday's editorial, Editor Mi-Ai Parrish listed the threats the Arizona Republic received for the "high crime" of endorsing a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time in 125 years.

Among them:

"You're dead. Watch your back."

"We will burn you down."

"You should be put in front of a firing squad as a traitor."

I know, it's just a bunch of yahoos who make these kind of threats. Still, it's a sensitive subject, especially at the Arizona Republic.

Back in 1976, a car bomb killed Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles  because somebody was pissed off that he was looking into a crooked land deal.

You have to take death threats seriously.  

A 1976 car bombing killed an Arizona Republic
investigative reporter who was looking into a shady land deal.

Still, you absolutely have to read the Arizona Republic editorial on the death threats, if you haven't already.

The editorial has gone viral as a master class for all of us on First Amendment rights, civics, civility, and the need for a free press. And it's a tribute to all the good employees at the Arizona Republic.

The Arizona Republic is still a conservative paper. I'm an East Coast liberal. I bet I could find a ton of Arizona Republic editorials that annoy me, that I disagree with, that I think are dumb.

That's fine. But how does one make the leap from being annoyed at something you read to want to kill the person who wrote it, and all the people who work in the building with that author?

Something is wrong in this country, and it's not the editorial page at the Arizona Republic.

A TV News Anchor Almost Threw Rock Through Car Window For Great Reason

Denver News9 anchor at home after his on-air dog apology
as he gets help from his canine companions answering
congratulatory emails about his editorial.  

News anchor Kyle Clark, the anchor at News9, the local Denver NBC affiliate, came this close to throwing a rock through the window of somebody's Honda CRV recently.

No, Clark has not become unhinged. Nor does he lead a secret life of crime and vandalism.

But he loves dogs, and has two of them at home. On a recent, sunny, hot, 90 degree day, Clark stopped at a strip mall to run some errands.

Inside the CRV was a dog. In a swelternng hot car. He ran his errands, and came back ten minutes later and the dog was still there.  You could hear the dog crying all the way across the parking lot in that terribly hot car.

He was tempted to throw a rock through the car window, but didn't. (By the way, Florida just made it legal to break into a car to save an animal and other states are following suit.)

So he called 311, the number you call to get city services.

Clark pretty much did what the Humane Society says you should do when you see a dog trapped in a hot car. Take down the car's make, model and license number, go to nearby businesses and have them make announcements to get the owner of the car to their car and call non-emergency numbers to get help.

You probably should avoid throwing a rock through a car window unless you're desperate because you might face criminal charges or a civil lawsuit.

In Clark's case, he was on hold for five minutes with 311 before the owner of the CRV emerged from a frozen yogurt shop.

He politely cautioned the owner of the CRV not to leave dogs inside cars on hot days. They can die really fast in those conditions.  In this case the dog survived.

The person basically just laughed Clark off. There was nothing more Clark could do about the really bad dog owner. I personally still worry for that dog, because I'm sure the person in question just doesn't care.

Later, Clark took to the airwaves and offered a heartfelt apology. Not to the dog owner he confronted in that torrid parking lot. But to the dog that was in the CRV

"I'm sorry that your dog does not have better humans," he told the dog, on air at News9.

Here's the viral video of Clark's on-air apology to help encourage everyone to take care of their furry companions in hot weather:

Boston Globe Headlines From 2017 Are Truly Scary

The would be April 9 2017
edition of the Boston Globe.  

UPDATE: 

Donald Trump reacted to the Boston Globe fake front page, predictably calling it "stupid"

"How about that stupid Boston Globe? It's worthless. It sold for a dollar."

I guess if a newspaper sells for $1 it's automatically stupid. Sell it for much more, and I guess it's OK.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

In case you missed it, the front page of the April 9,  2017 editions of the Boston Globe are really a nightmare.

I know, I know, it's not 2017 yet and the first paragraph of this post is not one of my famous typos.

But that imagined front page, which is on the actual front page of today's opinion/editorial section of the Sunday Boston Globe, imagines a world in which Donald Trump is indeed president.

It takes Trump's campaign promises at face value, and brings us to what the world would be like.

"It is an exercise in taking a man at his word," writes the Boston Globe editorial staff.

"Deportations To Begin " screams the headline at the top of the April 9, 2017 Boston Globe. There's a subhead that reads: "President Trump Calls For Tripling of ICE Force" and as almost an afterthought continues. "Riots Continue"

Other headlines on the front page are just as grim: "Markets Sink As Trade War Looms" and maybe one of the scariest: "U.S. Soldiers Refuse Orders To Kill ISIS Families."

That's a riff on Trump's off-stated idea that not only should we kill ISIS terrorists, but their families, too.

I guess to teach them a lesson? I dunno. What lesson?

The soldier story goes on, "The military faces a 'crisis of good order and discipline,' Pentagon officials said yesterday, after days of widespread unrest in the ranks over White House orders to kill relatives of ISIS militants. More protests were planned in support of two Army Special Forces soldiers who disobeyed direct orders to kill everyone in an ISIS compound."

It's worth going on the Boston Globe web site, read the editorial explaining their mock paper, and then clicking on each April 9, 2017 article to read them in detail.

Here's a good PDF of this front page if that makes it easier to read (probably does)

The Boston Globe does insert a bit of humor in the front page that mocks Trump. In a column that advertises articles on the inside pages of the April 9, 2017, Boston Globe, we learn that NASA engineers halted an unmanned probe on fears that the new gold leaf trim would interfere with radio communications.

We also learn that heavy spring snow has closed "Trump National Park for the first time since it dropped its loser name, 'Yellowstone' in January."

The U.S. Education Secretary is also trying to force PBS to remake "Celebrity Apprentice" using hand puppets, and the president's new romance novel has been pulled from store shelves because some of it plagarizes from a May, 1986 edition of Penthouse magazine.

Nevertheless, the April 9, 2017 Boston Globe is a clever bit of clairvoyance we should all pay attention to.

The scary thing to me is that the scenarios that play out in these articles seem totally plausible if Trump is serious about what hes saying now.  (Except maybe the humorous bits.)

Here's the basic problem: Demagogues like Trump love to spill what seem like easy, common sense solutions to deep, complex problems. But he either won't or can't predict the chain reaction of stuff that will go on.

Trump and his followers are mostly a subset of the type of people who can't think: "If I do A, then B, C and D will happen." They don't have the brain firepower to to get past "I Will Do A"

Today's Boston Globe full throttle blast won't make any of his supporters think twice, I'm sure. But it is quite an exercise in predicting the future.

And it's not a future I or most people I know want.