A couple of weeks ago, Without Supervision alerted us to two remarkably bad letters to the editor attacking Malcolm Baldwin, evidently cobbled together from the results of a FOIA request for constituent emails.
As it turns out, the readers to whom Mr. LaRock and Ms. Mann addressed their concerns are unimpressed by their efforts. Here is a short response:
Dear Editor: I couldn’t believe the letter from David LaRock attacking Malcolm Baldwin, a respected community leader, just because he voiced support for an ordinary non-discrimination rule.
Here’s what I want to know: Why is LaRock so hostile toward people who may be different from himself? Moreover, why is he thinking about other people’s sexual orientation and bodies in public restrooms? I (for one) wish he would stop.
If this is the kind of thing Higgins supporters are interested in, I’ll be voting for Malcolm Baldwin.
Indeed. I don’t think this is the sort of thing Catoctin residents want their supervisor doing, or thinking about, or encouraging others to think about. Yuck.
But once you erase commonly-accepted boundaries that define normal behavior, we may face bizarre circumstances such as our children encountering cross-dressing county employees in public restrooms.
Really, David? Is that what you think about all day? When I’m in the restroom, I just want to do my business and get out. The last thing I want is to be in there with some pervert who’s obsessed with thinking about my body parts.
So folks, if you see David LaRock in the potty, hold it a little longer. Wait for him to get out. You really don’t want to be in there with him.
By the way, the 1789 project yanked the photos of their staff, making it very difficult to find the above photo. I guess they don’t want us to know what they look like so that we can protect ourselves.
I see that Ken Reid continues to charm everyone he meets, already garnering a Turkey of the Year nomination from folks in his own party. Having made the acquaintance of several actual turkeys, both wild and domestic, I confess to having misgivings about the name of this award. Turkeys are often dignified and delightful creatures, while Ken Reid is not.
Do not, repeat do not, tell the Boy Scouts about this.
This is a picture of Ken grandstanding at the recent 9/11 ride through downtown Leesburg (the ride turned out to be much less of a disruption than police had predicted; since it was so far behind schedule by the time it reached Leesburg, it passed through town pretty fast.) When I ran into Supervisor Kelly Burk and her husband a short time later, there was really only one question to ask: Why aren’t you striding majestically up and down King St. wrapped in a giant, desecrated American flag?
We had a different question for Ken (actually a series of questions): Why did you run a stop sign and almost hit us as we started to cross the street at Cornwall and Liberty? Were you in a tremendous hurry for some reason? You did see us, didn’t you? Do you think that Town Council members are exempt from the traffic regulations that apply to everyone else?
Ken’s response to our inquiry was to say “sorry,” in a tone that made it perfectly clear that he was not at all sorry.
Carl Jung coined the phrase synchronicity to explain the odd coincidences that feel like answered prayers, messages from God, or prophesies. I had such an experience today. Chuck Colson invited me to a “Doing the Right Thing” showing at the Christian Fellowship Church of Ashburn.
Coincidentally, Christian Fellowship was responsible for the removal of dedicated Boy Scout troop leader Denise Steele because her life partner is female. Here’s the response from the church:
Phil Holliday, the executive pastor at Christian Fellowship Church and Esther Schaeffer, the charter organization representative, say they are simply following the rules.
When a chartered partner agrees to sponsor a scouting unit, an annual charter agreement is signed, they explained.
The controversy started when assistant scout master Skip Inabinett decided to “help” Steele by trying to break up her family.
In an email that Inabinett sent to a close personal friend of Steele’s and whose son was also in the troop, he stated, “If what you said about Denise Steele being an active sexual is true, do you feel comfortable talking with her about stepping down/resigning as an ASM … as her friend, this may be an opportunity for you to share with her about Christ’s love and the need to believe that as sinners we cannot get to heaven on our own and that we need a savior.”
Apparently, “God’s” work doesn’t involve rules of protocol or common courtesy.
To bring up an issue, there are certain steps of going about it starting with the scout master, then up to the committee and committee chair then to the charter organization. But, according to Steele and Funk, Inabinett went straight to the Boy Scouts of America with his complaint to get her removed as an assistant scout master – and it worked.
“He didn’t go through those steps. He skipped over the scout master, he skipped over the committee, he skipped over the district. He went straight to the highest level because that’s where he would get his answer. He went to the highest point to get me removed,” Steele said.
So this is the legalistic bullying behavior Chuck Colson teaches as “Doing the Right Thing“. Good to know. When do we pull his tax exemption? He doesn’t need our tax dollars to pay for this behavior.
Update 20110831:
There has been some question as to who is responsible for the decision to remove Denise Steele. At 7:31PM on Aug 31, 2011, Denise posted a comment on the Loudoun Times Mirror article where she confirmed that Phil Holliday coached Skip Inabinett and served as his proxy.
Skip has not said one word because he believes in what he did (no one can change that and I know he will not apologize). He has been “coached” and supported by the Executive Pastor, who also believes Skip has done nothing wrong…to the point Phil spoke on Skip’s behalf about Skip’s “intentions” when he met with us.
Turns out, Rep. Weiner is aptly named. Very disappointing. I had a lot of respect for him, and he seemed to be a genuine advocate for causes I believe in.
The neo-nazi group Stormfront.org has honored Patrick Henry College. “Since there are no more pro-white colleges, the next best choice are conservative colleges.” Stormfront has moved on from pure unadulterated racism to the kinder gentler worship of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, or in their their own words “If you are going to spend money on your kid’s college at least pick a place that does not have Feminist Studies.” FYI, the phrase Kinder, Küche, Kirche, was invented in the U.S.A. Hitler never used it. He did argue that a woman’s “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home,”.
Stormfront found a photo of armed and booted state troopers, lined up against a small Soulforce prayer group to their liking. The caption reads “Protest against Patrick Henry College for “bigotry.” The college permits nonwhite students, I do not know what they are complaining about.”
It’s good to know that modern day bigots no longer need to be pro-white. As long as they are anti-woman and anti-gay, they are ok. Good to know. It’s also good to know that even in the most conservative of “Christian colleges”, they have to use force against their own student body to keep them from talking to people outside the cocoon.
A woman is violently assaulted in a Baltimore McDonalds, dragged across the floor, repeatedly kicked in the head until she has a seizure, and is left to convulse in a corner while employees watch and record the assault on their phones. They can be heard laughing and encouraging the assailants in the background. One posted his video on the internet later, to entertain his friends. You can hear one of them near the end, warning the assailants “police on their way. Y’all better get out of here.” The only person who attempts to help the woman is an elderly female customer.
Warning: The video is extremely violent and disturbing. I’m reposting it because it’s important that people understand the consequences of their careless, self-centered actions.
If true, this is very sad news for our Republican friends, and even more so for Loudoun County. Several local Republican activists report receiving an email calling for some sort of anti-Muslim demonstration – tonight, at the Government Center in Leesburg – in protest of a campaign event for David Ramadan. Ramadan is a well-known Republican running for the proposed 87th House district. The rhetoric suggests something similar to the protest captured in this video:
Ramadan is being described as a “solid conservative” by an otherwise rather diverse assortment of Loudoun conservative activists. One could only imagine how beyond the pale those behind this “ANTI-SHARIAH TASK FORCE” must be – except that the names Dick Black and his apparent tea party acolyte Joann Chase (also vying for the 87th seat) are mentioned in the email. Continue reading →
It’s not enough for Bob Marshall that same sex couples have to move outside the state temporarily in order for both to be adoptive parents – in Virginia, second parent adoption or adoption by unmarried couples is illegal, so we have families in which one parent is literally a legal stranger to their own child. Think about what that means for a child’s security, if something were to happen to his or her legally recognized parent.
In 2005, Bob Marshall shared the embarrassment with Dick Black of having “Adoption: Prohibited if Homosexual” basically laughed out of the Senate after Black flew the disgraced Paul Cameron in as an “expert witness.” That wouldn’t have been enough, either – and the truth is that nothing will ever be enough for this obsessive oddball, short of our complete elimination. As he let slip to the Leesburg Today back in 2006, “This is a springboard. If they get this [defeat of the Marshall-Newman anti-marriage amendment], they are getting other things.” By “other things,” he refers to the freedom to live our lives with the same safety and security as everyone else. That amendment never had anything to do with marriage. Its purpose, as I explained here, was simply to create more danger for gay and lesbian couples, to discourage us from living openly and visibly – because it’s exactly that visibility that is driving the rapid shifts in public opinion toward support for equality.
It’s that same purpose that leads Mr. Marshall to have a hissy fit about this revision to the Virginia Department of Social Services regulations: Continue reading →
Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention to the latest excrement from the desk of Mr. Delgaudio, only enough to know that it has gone viral (and if someone from the UK could explain what a “Merino-faced numpty” is, that’d be great). Folks who know what he is are less inclined to give him attention. Phyllis Randall provides a nice summation of the dilemma in her comment at the Loudoun Times-Mirror site, pointing out that it’s really the responsibility of those in the party he has made his nest in.
She’s right. And where is the evidence that this isn’t true?
“There is only one logical reason [for the refusal of the LCRC blog police to condemn the behavior]; they along with others in their LCRC circle agree with the stuff Delgaudio has been saying.”
Unfortunately, as much as this silence should be pointed out, it also permits a very poor and distorted framing of what this is about. Contrary to the language of many commenters on both threads, the behavior at issue is not antics, it has nothing to do with the ‘politics of personality’, and the problem with it is not that it causes embarrassment to the LCRC or to actual Republicans, although I’m sure that it does. If the primary concern is bad publicity and the damage Delgaudio’s (and Black’s) hate speech will do to the cause of electing Republicans, even the well-meaning participants in this conversation have badly missed the mark.
The TSA email that’s currently garnering so much attention shouldn’t be – at least not as if it represents a new low point of Delgaudio’s career as a professional bigot. It doesn’t. It’s merely one more of many carefully calibrated look-at-me outbursts, one correctly described yesterday on the local NBC affiliate Reporters Notebook as “dumb” and “nuts,” but nothing really groundbreaking.
No, the low point was reached earlier this year, and the Republican leadership in this community utterly failed its responsibility to condemn the amoral little predator who claims to be one of them.
Referring to another human being as “it” is not an antic. It is not clowning. It is not a PR problem. It is not indicative of a colorful personality. It is not hyperbole. It is not the same thing as saying that the other human being is wrong, or sick, or even immoral. It is a statement that the other human being is not, in fact, a human being. It is a statement that the other human being is not, in fact, a human being.
With the pathetic* exception of Lori Waters, our supervisors – Mr. Delgaudio’s colleagues – easily made this distinction and called his behavior morally unacceptable:
Not so for anyone in his own party. I have yet to hear anyone who claims to speak for Republicans in Loudoun County make this distinction and single out this behavior for the condemnation it merits. This goes for both the smarmy LCRC operatives who are busy trying to shut up the dissidents, and those who only wish the “embarrassment” would stop. This was true back in January, and it is true today.
If there were ever a time for disciplinary action, this would have been it. If there were ever an event that would cause the supposed moderates in the LCRC and in elective office to stand up publicly and say that this violates basic human decency, this would have been it. But no one did. They all responded as if this was just another PR problem for them.
Let’s be clear: This is a measure of basic human decency. Anyone who fails to recognize this behavior as distinct and requiring specific condemnation cannot be trusted to govern. It doesn’t matter how moderate you say you are if you can’t be trusted to do the right thing when it matters.
*I highlight “pathetic” here rather than something else only because Ms. Waters’ reaction struck me as more clueless than cruel when confronted with the realities of public restroom use. I could, of course, have misread the situation.
