SNL Has White Supremacists Moving To Vermont In Scary, Weird Scenario

A Saturday Night Live sketch a few weeks ago skewered
Vermont's whiteness. Funny, but unsettling

A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live had a skit about a Neo-Confederate meeting that had us Vermonters especially unsettled.

The video featured a group of white supremacists having a meeting somewhere in the South.

The group leader wants to establish their own white settlement, a "our own place for our own people" with "an agrarian community where everybody lives in harmony, where every single person is white"

A member of the meeting raises his had pipes up: "Yeah, I know that place. That sounds like Vermont."  That's a definite laugh line, but geez.

The leader says he doesn't understand. He's talking about a place where even the people who wash the dishes and pick the fruit are white.

"Oh,  yeah, that's Vermont," the man responds. The leader grows suspicious of the man, especially when he says he's from the North. But the guy's white supremacist creds remain in place when he quickly explains he's from Boston. The whole group is satisfied with that.

"I'm talking about a place where a white man can take things he grew from the ground and trade things with another white man, who grew things from the ground."

Replies the northerner: "That's a farmer's market and they're all over Vermont."

Pretty soon, the groups is deciding that Vermont sounds like just the ticket. It's a place where "The leaves change color but the people never do."

In the end, it's settled. They're going to Vermont.

That's a bit chilling.  Especially since racism does seem to be alive and well in Vermont. Just take the recent case of Kiah Morris. She had been Vermont's only black legislator. She dropped her re-election campaign, then resigned after receiving racial threats.

Her house was broken into and swastikas were painted on trees near her property. The Vermont Attorney General's office is investigating.

Yeah, we're not always the liberal, welcoming place we want to think we are. In any event, I hope that white supremacists don't regard SNL as a documentary.

Here's the video:

Recycled, Frozen Adventurer's Toes Going To Yukon Bar

Nick Griffiths lost some toes in a frigid Yukon endurance race back in
February, but his digits live on in a bar cocktail. (ewww!)

I'm all for recycling. Why make the world's refuse problem even worse? Just re-use stuff.

However, anything can be taken to a bit of an extreme, and I think Nick Griffiths is doing just that.

Griffiths was one of several people who ended up hospitalized from injuries suffered in extreme cold while competing in the long distance backcountry Yukon Arctic Ultra race in February.  

The race - your choice between 100 miles or 300 miles was run amid temperatures of around 40 below. No wonder several people got frostbite.

Griffiths was among them. He had three toes amputated due to severe frostbite. But what to do with the discarded toes?

The answer: Give them to the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Yukon, home of the infamous Sourtoe Cocktail, reports CBC in Canada.

The cocktail has a simple, but, to me at least, an unappetizing recipe: It's a shot of whiskey with a real human digit bobbing in the glass. Yep, somebody's toe or finger.

Yum!

Griffiths said the Downtown Hotel contacted him and said, "Can we have them if you're not going to need them anymore?"

The hotel needs the toes in reserve in case they lose them themselves. Once, a customer stole a toe, and another time, a customer swallowed a toe for a $500 fee. (Dawson Hotel policy is there's a $500 fine for swallowing a toe.)

So if you ever go up to Dawson, Yukon, there's an interesting cocktail waiting for you up there.

Or not.

Michigan Cops, DA Wants To Ruin Black College Student's Life Just Because

DeJuawn Wallace being arrested in a February traffic
stop, from a police dash cam. He didn't pull
over immediately, but continued to drive
to a well-lit area, for safety. Cops
and a prosecutor object to this.  

UPDATE: 
As expected because of the negative publicity and the fact that even prosecuting the case made prosecutors a laughing stock, they dropped the charged Thursday agains DaJuawn Wallace.

His "crime," as you'll read below in the original post, was being cautious.

But as the Huffington Post points out, Prosecutor Christopher Boyd offered a plea deal for Wallace to plead guilty to a lesser charge, before the publicity over this stupidity blew up in Boyd's face, and he had to drop the charges.

However, Boyd and very many other prosecutors offer "plea deals" to people charged with crimes, even though many of these people might not have actually committed any crimes.

But, the defendents are often poor and don't have the resources to fight the bogus charges. Or, they've had previous run-ins with the law and realize nobody will believe they are innocent.

Prosecutors usually occupy elected positions. The prosecutors offer these bogus plea deals to innocent defendents because it gives them a higher conviction rate, making them more appealing next time they're up for re-election.

While there are some damn good, honest prosecutors out there, a large number of them, apparently, think their career and their bragging rights is worth ruining the lives of many innocent people by giving them bogus crime records.

One researcher estimates there might be as many as 20,000 people in jail serving time or crimes they did not commit. And some of those crimes actually happened, but were committed by someone else who is still out in the streets.

It's just easier for prosecutors to grab the low hanging fruit and win easy prosecutions against innocent people. Again, just to advance their careers.

Absolutely shameful.


PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

One dark early morning in February, DaJuawn Wallace, 24, was driving along a very poorly lit road in Kockville Township, Michigan.

Suddenly, the blue lights of a police car flashed in back of him.

Wallace knew that there had been incidents in the area in which people pretending to be cops, complete with blue lights pull people over and rob them or even worse.

Wallace said he signaled to the cop that he would keep driving - slowly - until he arrived at a safer, brightly lit area.

People are often advised to do this.  In and near Detroit, there have been recent cases of people impersonating police and stopping people to rob them.

A mile and half down the road, Wallace pulled into the glare of a brightly lit Sam's Club parking lot and stopped.

The cop decided to charge him with a felony count of fleeing and eluding police for not pulling over sooner, reports the Michigan news site MLive.com

This despite the explanation from Wallace. The DA "generously" offered a deal in which Wallace could plead guilty to a misdemeanor with a delayed sentence, meaning the charges would be dismissed if he completed a one-year probation.

But if he does that, he probably would lose his job and almost definitely his college financial aid.

Saginaw County Chief Prosecutor Christoher Boyd said when a police officer in a official police cruiser orders you to stop uou must. "You don't get a driver's license and get to pick what rules you are going to follow and what rules you are not going to follow," Boyd said, as reported at MLive.com.

Well, Wallace DID stop, once he got to a well-lit area, and he didn't try to speed off and outrun the cop. He just didn't know if he was about to be robbed or not. So I guess if you're a young black man in Michigan, you don't get the choice of trying not to be a victim of crime.

Nobody has come up with evidence so far that Wallace did anything other than seek a well lit, public place. The only reason why cops stopped him in the first place is because his car resembled one that had just driven on a sidewalk at a nearby college. It turns out, the sidewalk driver wasn't Wallace.

So what's Boyd's deal? Does he just never want to "lose" a case? Maybe his ego is too fragile to give up on a prosecution when facts present themselves?

Or is Wallace an uppity black kid. After all, he's pursuing a Master's degree in college. You don't want any n*****s being successful, right Prosecutor Boyd? God forbid a white guy like you lets a black guy find success.

The above paragraph might be an over the top accusation. I sure hope it is.

Nonetheless, Mother Jones reported today that the vast majority of prosecutors in the nation are white men. Obviously, most of them aren't racist. Still, when 79 percent of prosecutors are white men, and 14 states have an all white male prosecuting lineup, you do want to see a little more diversity.

This week, the Michigan case has suddenly gotten lots of publicity. When bad PR  happens, the prosecutor will try to find a face saving way out in which Wallace doesn't end up with problems concerning his job or school financial assistance.   He'll just got some sort of toothless warning.

One sign that things might work out in Wallace's favor is public support. MLive.com has an update saying there will be a rally in his behalf tomorrow.

But who knows how many other people get in trouble like Wallace did? For doing something innocent, or at least benign, I bet a lot of people have their lives ruined by the occasional overzealous cop or prosecutor.

Time to fix this problem, maybe?

Death And Love And Marriage And Grace

This political cartoon is becoming iconic
after last week's news  

Last week was a rare moment in which grace managed to overpower, however briefly, the crudeness that is the usual way things seem to go nowadays.

These moments of grace were ironically born of that crudeness.

The grace partly had its roots in the terrible racial murder of nine people gathered in a Charleston, South Carolina church for Bible study.

The grace came after years of hate and misguided "morality" lectures aimed at gay people, some of whom just wanted to marry each other. The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that in our nation at least, these gay people had the right to marry.

The grace was visible in the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy:

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater thatn once they were.

The White House Friday evening. 

As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.

Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of the civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants that right."

By far the leading trending hashtag on Twitter was #LoveWins. For once, love DID win.  

There was something dignified, graceful in all those raucous celebrations in the moments after the Supreme Court announced its decision. Rainbow colors are fun, and they were everywhere Friday. Rainbow lights even bathed the White House, as President Obama celebrated the decision.

Obama had his well-reported graceful moment Friday - even singing "Amazing Grace" - in a scene that had nothing to do with gay marriage.

The President was eulogizing the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, gunned down with eight others in the Charleston church by a young man drowning in racial rage.

Said Obama, describing the actions of the killer and the hand of God:

President Obama reminded us about grace as
he delivered a eulogy in Charleston, South
Carolina Friday. He even sang "Amazing Grace"
to emphasize his point.  

"Blinded by hatred the alleged killer would not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group, the light of love that shown as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle.

The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would reside when they saw him in court in the midst of unspeakable grief with words of forgiveness. 

He couldn't imagine that. He's given us the chance where we've been lost to find our best selves. We may not have earned this grace with our rancor and complacency and short-sightednees and fear of each other, but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He's once more given us grace."

We live in a world of Internet trolls insulting everyone in their path. We live in a world of blowhards on the cable news shows all screaming over each other and talking nonsense. We live in a world in which politicians, our so-called leaders, stir up divisions, hate, their own political fortunes at the expense of the common good. We live in a world in which activists preach hate, and encourage it, just  so they can line their pockets with the money given to them by gullible donors.  

Sometimes it seemed like the world was completely overrun with this dark scenario that I just described.

Sure enough, by the time I woke up Saturday morning, it was back to the usual awfulness in the world. A few dozen tourists had been killed by an attacker at a Tunisian hotel.  They're still searching for an escaped killer in the Adirondack wilderness. The blowhards were back on cable news. The Internet trolls ranted unimpeded.

However, the wonderful, graceful moments so many people show on Friday proved once again that good will is not dead. In the darkness of our media, political and social landscape, there are bright, inviting pockets of light.

Friday proved that.

It's time to embrace that light. With grace and love. #LoveWins.

On MLK Day Wisconsin Basketball Brothers Almost In Trouble For Having Fun While Black

A happy little newspaper photo got three Wisconsin brothers in trouble because, well, they're basketball players, they're black, so the automatic assumption is they're up to no good.

To the school and police, their hand gestures were gang signs
To everybody involved in basketball, the hand gestures
celebrate a three-pointer.  Photo by Steve
Ottmann, Sheboygan Falls News  

The problem was the way they gesturing in the photo.

Incidents like this, when they hit around the time of MLK Day as this one has, kind of makes me depressed about race relations in the United States.

The Sheboygan Falls News recently ran a feature about the three brothers, Jordan, Juwaun and Jamal Jackson, who are on the local high school basketball team.

It was a light, seemingly noncontroversial story, with a photo of the three teens showing them making the kind of hand gestures professional players, and their fans often make during successful moments on the court.

But these kids are black, you understand. They were making hand gestures, so they had to be making gang signals, said many readers, the school and local police, who began an hardboiled investigation into the matter. Two of the boys were suspended from their next game after the photo appeared in the paper, according to Jim Romenesko's journalism web site 

Never mind that the hand gestures in questions are now a staple, a cliche, really, at many basketball games.

"Gangsters" like U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has made similar gestures while he enjoys ball games. After all, as Think Progress notes, there's been plenty of media attention and several trend stories about the gesture, which celebrates successful three point shots in basketball. 

If anyone at the school or the police department was confused about the gestures in the newspaper photo, it would have been so easy to quietly ask the kidswhat the hand gesture meant, look it up, confirm what they said and go on.

But no, everybody, including the police, which should have known better, went into full bore panic about gangs in Sheboygan Falls. After all, if an uppity black kid makes a gesture for a newspaper story,  no matter how innocent, said black kid will go on to just gang bang and shoot up the whole town, right?

There was a quick reversal after people started pointing out how ridiculous the school and police were being. According to WHBL, the local radio station:

"The suspension was handed down after a school liaison officer noticed the two brothers had made hand gestures that looked like gang symbols in the picture. After Sheboygan Falls Police confirmed the gestures were gang symboos, the school followed their athletic code and suspended the two for the team's game against Plymouth.

Police chief Steve Riffel said their investigation also determined the boys' actions were not intended to be a gesture supporting crime or a certain gang, but rather a gesture made when a shot was made."

The two brothers who had been suspended from the game were allowed to play. But the damage had been done, really.

House Speaker John Boehner does a variation
of the "gang sign" that got the kids in Sheboygan Falls
in trouble. m

Why couldn't the liasson officer and the police done a quiet, easy search at the beginning on this to prove that indeed this was just harmless game signals?

Common sense would dictate the kids probably wouldn't be in a gang if they were that accomplished in school, and wouldn't be dumb enough to do it in a publication that would be seen all over the community.

Yeah, some teens are dumb, but most aren't that dumb.

And how are these three boys supposed to trust the school liaison officer and town police after this?  Apparently, the school and the police always view them with suspicion, so no matter what they do, they can assume the authorities are assuming they are up to no good.

What kind of way is that to enjoy your high school years?

The quotes in the Sheboygan Press newspaper from Sheboygan Falls School Administrator Jean Born sure are rich:

 "This decision that was made here or these students has absolutely nothing, nothing to do with race, she said. "We balance a bunch of factors" when looking at student discipline, Born said. She noted the district's top priority is student safety, and that officials sought "a balanced approach" to the situation.

"You knowk we're challenged all the time with keeping our schools safe," Born said. "Part of our ob is to make sure that everybody that comes here feels safe."

Yep, that's her job. Making sure everyone who goes to the school feel safe. Why not apply that to the Jackson brothers, too. Make them feel safe instead of suggesting they are members of a gang, to make everyone afraid or angry at them. That's not a safe situation for a high school kid, is it?

Meanwhile, Jeff Pederson, the editor of the paper which had the original photos, told Romenesko that he is shaken by the whole incident.

"What has happened with what I still believe is a perfectly fine photo that fit well with the story is disgusting and will stay with me for the rest of my life. I am struggling to understand this entire situation, but I do know that I can't allow the people we photograph to be put up to this very serious level of scrutiny ever again."

"I firmly believe that a fun photo with personality catched the eye and  an even bring a smile to someone's face even if they don't know the people in the photo. That is the kind of photo I have always tried to search for, but obviously things will change with this very ugly event, which should have never been an issue, let alone a national controversy and even a joke to some.

Honestly, that is unacceptable and it will force me to change my approach to make sure that never happens again."

So in other words, Pederson, because he has found that ugly streak in society, will now have to think twice about putting in a fun photo in his paper. Especially if it involves minorities.

It's true, some black kids are scumbags. Just like some white kids are. Asians and everybody else too, have their bad apples.

However, in the minds of some people in our society, if a young black kid is doing something admirable or just fun, he's up to no good unless proven otherwise.

I'm a white guy, so I don't claim to have all the deep insights into race relations.  I do believe, like most Americans do, that we've come a long way from the days of Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we're celebrating today.

But as the Jackson brothers in Sheboygan Falls know, we've still got a ways to go.