EXTRA: The ‘good’ from the ‘satanic?’

“I’m here to separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews.”
--Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam

  -0-

What does Farrakhan need Facebook for?

And he seriously wonders why Facebook would lump him in with assorted right-wing bigots in banning his use of their medium on the Internet to spread his thoughts?

The Minister Louis Farrakhan of the South Side-based “nation” doesn’t exactly need Facebook to spread his thoughts. As it turns out, Rev. Michael Pfleger of the St. Sabina church opened up his Gresham neighborhood facility to Farrakhan to publicly discuss the issue.

THAT EVENT WOUND up getting national news coverage – with many people putting links to those stories on their own Facebook sites.

Personally, I find it intriguing to listen to Farrakhan try to defend himself against claims he’s bigoted against Jewish people by making such a silly statement as he did.

How would he react to the ignorance occasionally expressed by white people that they differentiate between “good” black people and “bad” black people. Or, if we want to be blunt about it, they probably substitute some racial slur for “black people” while attaching the labels “good” and “bad.”

I’d argue that with that one line, Farrakhan confirmed the worst suspicions of the rancid rhetoric that often gets thrown out against him.

YES, I’LL CONCEDE the point that Farrakhan has the right to spew whatever nonsense he chooses to think. But he doesn’t get the right to have the absolute last word.

We, the people, have the right to think he’s a babbling buffoon for spewing such trash talk. If he thinks referring to “good’ Jews and “Satanic” Jews is going to win over any converts, he’s got to be kidding.

If anything, it would sink Farrakhan and his followers to something along the level of the local government officials of Hoschton, Ga. That’s the municipality where it was publicly disclosed recently that a man who applied for a city administrator job was rejected solely because he was black. With the town’s mayor saying her lily-white community “isn’t ready for this.”

Just as we’re quick to dump all over that municipality’s officials for thinking we’re still in 19^th Century “Jim Crow” style Dixie, rather than the 21st Century, we’re going to call out Farrakhan’s nonsense-talk – even if he has a “right” to think it! For that is the “American Way” truly at work.

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Ban the boorish boob from the ballpark -- or perhaps just his ballpark beer?

I’m not sure how feasible it is for the Chicago Cubs to say they’re banning from the ballpark for life a man who is alleged to have been making racist hand gestures when he was in the presence of Doug Glanville – who once played for the Cubs but has turned to broadcasting for a living.

Outfielder-turned-broadcaster is focus

I could see where someone like Glanville would offend the sensibilities of racists – he’s a black man who also happens to be rather articulate, I’ve read thoughtful pieces about baseball that he’s written for the New York Times. In short, his existence dumps all over every stupid theory that the bigots would spew.

SO TO LEARN that Glanville, working for NBC Sports Chicago in broadcasting a Cubs game earlier this month, had a fan (in reality, just a nitwit who happened to be wearing a sweatshirt being the Cubs’ logo) flashing gestures typically associated by white supremacists? It’s not surprising!

I don’t doubt the man in question thinks he’s a tough guy who was putting Glanville in his place. Or maybe there’s some truth to the fans who are saying this is the kind of stupid stuff that happens when you serve alcohol in public.

It is good to know that Chicago Cubs management is taking this incident seriously, and not just dismissing it as a bit of naughty behavior that happens in public. As though we’re just supposed to accept that this is the way the world works.

But seriously, how do we know that fan won’t be able to slip in with the rest of the crowds that cram their way into Wrigley for Cubbie baseball?

Does Ernie's spirit still attract to Wrigley?

THE HONEST TRUTH is that there are some Chicagoans whose baseball preference for the Cubs over the White Sox is based on the notion that the Wrigley scene is one meant for white people. Some prefer going there because they think the White Sox scene is one where you’d find some black fans whom they'd rather not bother with.

And to be honest, white fans and black fans at the ballpark have the potential to act as poorly as they do in other scenarios.

So the idea that somebody with white supremacist leanings would be part of the crowd at Wrigley Field? It’s very possible, just like bigots exist just about everywhere. The way they ought to be dealt with is to let them know their rancid rhetoric and terrible thoughts will not be tolerated – that they are the outsiders in our society.

Who remembers East-West games at Comiskey?

As for whether I regard the Cubbie crowd as inherently racist? I’d say that’s an extreme. Cubs fans may be an insipid batch (“Cubnoxious,” except that the “feds” recently found that term to be inappropriate), but not all-around evil.

IN FACT, I’M aware there’s a certain generation of black Chicago that, to the degree they pay any attention to baseball, are inclined to follow the Cubs.

Memories of when Ernie Banks, Billie Williams and Fergie Jenkins were the base of the ballclub in the late 1960’s still linger. That and the fact that many of the white Sout’ Siders of old were White Sox fans – which meant rejecting the Sox was an act of protest by those black people, just like wearing a dashiki or having one's hair in an Afro.

But then again, there’s an even older generation who remember the days when there was Negro League baseball in Chicago, and the American Giants of old would use Comiskey Park for their home games – whereas Wrigley Field was a place where black baseball fans were supposed to regard as unwelcoming toward them.

Some may think it’s ridiculous to associate the almost annual presence of the old East-West Game (the Negro League version of an all-star game) with the modern-day White Sox. Although even Ernie Banks is now deceased – and not surely still bringing people into Wrigley Field with his sunshiny (in public) demeanor.

IN SHORT, IT’S probably no wonder that many black sporting fans are inclined to look to athletic endeavors other than baseball when deciding to spend the big bucks on going to a game.

Is Robinson baseball's act of penance?

Baseball, all too often, acts as though the fact that Jackie Robinson was permitted to play for the old Brooklyn Dodgers somehow indemnifies the game from all past, present and future flaws.

Although there may be some truth to the fact that this latest Wrigley Field incident was more a matter of a buffoon drinking himself into a stupor that caused him to act stupid.

But the notion of one getting intoxicated at the ol’ ball game strikes me as an impossibility. I know that when I went to a ballgame just last week, I had one beer – which cost $10.25!!! Who can afford to wind up blowing a 0.08 or higher at that price?

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U.S. evolves at differing rates

So what should we think of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and the fact that racist imagery – including that of the Ku Klux Klan – turns up in his college yearbook?

The Washington Post made this obscure yearbook page public knowledge. Personally, I'm more offended by Northam's quote than the photo

Personally, I’m not totally shocked.

I REMEMBER back when I was in college (mid-1980s) and looking through the old yearbooks from Illinois Wesleyan University – my alma mater – seeing graphics of Klan nightriders and hooded people being used as illustrations.

Entirely on those pages devoted to the fraternities that existed on campus.

But there is one fact that should be pointed out – these particular yearbooks were from the 1890s. Meaning they already were nearly a century old, and the ideals that may have existed on campus back then had long evolved into something far different from its origins.

I’ve also seen old University of Illinois yearbooks from the early 1900s indicating that the Ku Klux Klan once was regarded as a fully-legitimate fraternity on the Urbana, Ill., campus – although I’ve also seen various accounts indicating the U of I KKK was never an officially-recognized chapter of the Klan.

SO WHAT SHOCKS and appalls me about the Northam situation?

It’s that these Klan-like hooded images were still being considered acceptable as recently as the ‘80s – Northam was a student at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and it was the 1984 yearbook that included the photo of people in blackface and a Klan hood on a page devoted to Northam himself.

As for Northam saying in response that the questionable photograph is not of himself, but that he once remembers dressing up in blackface as part of a Michael Jackson impersonation, I’d think that is something that falls into the category of something stupid he once did that is now embarrassing.

NORTHAM: Same person now as he was in '84?

Largely because it makes many of us question his musical tastes in general. It’s something more silly than offensive. Or offensive in the sense that he could ever have been so ridiculous.

BUT THE REALITY is that this kind of imagery that had long withered away in Illinois was still considered acceptable in Virginia. Just as some people are still willing to fight for Confederate imagery in the form of flags and statues that still linger in parts of the nation.

Personally, I don’t have trouble believing that Northam himself had long forgotten about this imagery attached to his name, and he may well have moved far beyond this type of thought in his own life.

The smart-aleck in me thinks that if Northam still felt such thoughts in his daily existence, he’d be a Republican. Which probably would put him more in line with the bulk of the southern region from which he comes.

He’d probably be doing whatever he could to tie his imagery to that of President Donald Trump and going around wearing one of those red “Make America Great Again” caps – which some openly say is the 21^st Century’s version of wearing a white hood.

SO WHEN REPUBLICAN ideologues go about claiming that Northam is evidence of hypocrisy amongst those of the Democratic Party when it comes to racial issues, I see it more as evidence of trying to distract attention from their own racial hang-ups.

My point is that I’m not quickly jumping on board with those people who are demanding Northam’s resignation on grounds that he’s an embarrassment to his home state. Although I’m also wondering if the pressure is going to rise to such levels that he’ll have no choice BUT to resign!

Are the same people calling for Northam's resignation the same individuals who defend the continued existence of Confederate memorials?

I almost feel like the only people who’d win by denouncing Northam as an unreformed bigot are the unreformed bigots themselves – as though they’d try to claim this as justification for their own ignorant ways of thought.

While also expressing some thoughts indicating that they think we’d be better off going back to the past – such as an era where no one would give a second thought to anything being strange and hostile about the imagery stirred up by Northam’s college yearbook.

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Valerie Jarrett makes the news by not putting foot in mouth, unlike Roseanne

Valerie Jarrett has quite the life story – a former advisor to mayors Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley. A senior adviser during the presidency of Barack Obama.

Roseanne tried to insult Valerie Jarrett, ...

She’s even a former chairwoman of the Chicago Transit Board (which oversees all those CTA trains and buses) and also has held positions on several corporate boards. She even is the first female student to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That’s a lot more accomplishment than most people achieve in life.

... but wound up trashing herself instead

YET LET’S BE honest. There’s a good chance that in the eyes of the general public, Jarrett is going to be noted as significant for the fact that she took down the career of one Roseanne.

And she didn’t have to do anything directly – only conduct herself with more sophistication than the actress/comedian who seems to want to think she’s the voice of all those people who think Donald Trump represents “real Americans.”

Now keep in mind that it isn’t the least bit unusual for people to use social media accounts such as Twitter to spout out stupid things.

Will 'Roseanne'  rerun rep become as tainted ...

Which is what Roseanne did when she posted a little blurb Tuesday where she managed to use less than 50 characters (much less than the 140 maximum permitted) to defame Jarrett.

AS ROSEANNE PUT it, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” It’s not at all uncommon for bigots to make wisecracks comparing black people to apes. Some people just have a proclivity for saying something stupid.

But when people tried responding to Roseanne by calling her out on her ignorance, she initially tried responding that calling someone “muslim” isn’t racist and that the whole thing was intended to be a joke.

As though it’s the fault of others who want to call out bigotry. Either that, or else Roseanne is like many other ideological nitwits who think that freedom of speech only applies to themselves and that NO ONE is permitted to respond.

... as "The Cosby Show" rep?

Even though the concept really means we all can retort to each other until our minds are all worn out.

BUT THE OUTCRY became intense enough that Roseanne felt compelled to send out a final twit saying, “I apologize.” While also saying she was through with Twitter.

Not good enough, as ABC has said they’re cancelling Roseanne’s self-named comedy program. The one that gave her a television legacy some two decades ago and which she attempted a reboot this year.

That reboot actually finished up its first comeback season last week and had network executives convinced she was going to be a significant part of next TV season’s programming lineup.

That is, until Tuesday afternoon, when ABC officials decided that the outcry over Roseanne’s Twitter account was so intense that they’d just as soon cancel her. Several of the Roseanne cast members are now going out of their way to distance themselves from her gag. Its very likely that when Roseanne dies and her obituary is written, this will wind up being a significant moment – perhaps even the lede.

Life's lesson; 'Planet of Apes' gags are lame

CAREER SUICIDE IN a matter of hours. And for the record, Jarrett only referred to the incident as "a teaching moment," admitting she benefits from many people willing to come to her defense. Comparable to the way some perceive a level of class and sophistication the Obama years gave our society, compared to this Age of Trump we’re now in.

Not that Jarrett needs to say anything against Roseanne. Why help your critic by doing or saying anything that detracts from their own stupidity?

The sad thing is that the show’s producers tried to make some comedic hay out of the fact that Roseanne herself is a Trump backer and might actually become a way of putting a more positive spin on those people.

Yet did Roseanne unintendedly wind up showing us a real truth with her so-called sense of humor? Which, for those of us who feel a sense of shame that anybody in our society finds these days appealing, makes this incident the ultimate punchline for use against the Trump-ites.

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How un-American can we get; spraying cemetery swastikas for Memorial Day

I feel sorry for those cemetery work crews in Glen Carbon – an Illinois-based suburb of St. Louis – who had to spend their Saturday sweating it out in the summer-time heat scrubbing swastikas that were spray-painted on head stones at a local cemetery.

Who in 'right' mind wants to bring this back?

For officials with the Sunset Hill Cemetery found headstones vandalized Saturday morning, and they wanted to be sure the mess was cleaned up prior to Monday.

THE LAST THING that anybody wanted was the symbol of Nazi-era Germany defacing the grave markers – particularly those of people who might have served in the military back in the World War II era.

On the day we pay tribute to those soldiers, sailors, air corps and marines who fought in the many wars our nation has taken part in, it is sad that we have some nincompoop out there who thinks it’s funny to deface graves with the symbol of the “enemy” whom we fought against.

Either that, or perhaps we have an idiot who thinks we fought a war against the “wrong” enemy! Believe it or not, there are those with enough screws loose that their vision of what “America” is all about would have had us aligned with the Axis Powers of old.

And the odd thing is, many of them have enough of a militaristic attitude that would have them believe such a viewpoint is what this country ought to be about.

SOMETHING I’D THINK the people who actually fought in that particular war would find particularly repulsive. But then again, the surviving veterans of World War II are such that they’ve reached their 90s in age – if they’re even still alive.

Meaning many of us don’t have a direct memory of what that conflict was about. Which is why we get those endless studies showing young people of today don’t comprehend Hitler or the Holocaust. Maybe they think such stories are more examples of “fake news,” because, after all, nobody could have been that delusional or vicious in their behavior.

So yes, I’m bothered by the stories that came out of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the vandalized cemetery – although it also seems some houses near the cemetery also got tagged with the swastika. Which almost reminds me of that old “All in the Family” episode where someone tagged the front door of Archie Bunker’s bungalow with a swastika – and he tried to cover it up with a U.S. flag, only to be found out because he hung the flag on the door backwards!

Happening in real-life now as it happened on TV then

Some 1,300 military veterans are buried in that particular cemetery, and officials plan a noon-hour ceremony on Monday to pay tribute to those individuals.

SO IT WOULD seem that somebody was hoping to make a visual statement – one about what they think would “Make America Great Again” perhaps? And if you think I’m exaggerating such a viewpoint, consider the anonymous rants to be found on the Internet.

I literally found one person who thinks that such vandalism is to be expected because of the disrespect being shown by, “governments taking down and destroying monuments and history.”

As though not considering someone like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee to be heroic is the same thing. The actual comparison would be someone lighting crosses ablaze at the remains of old “colored” cemeteries.

On the positive side, police in Edwardsville actually came up with security camera video that captured grainy images of the suspected vandal in the area at the alleged time of the incident.

THERE EVEN HAS been an arrest. Although just what kinds of criminal charges that individual will face remains to be determined. I’m pretty sure, though, that there will be some people willing to make a martyr out of the individual – whose idea of a political “statement” involved running around in the dark with an aerosol spray can of black paint.

Don't see where swastika fits in

Personally, I’d rather remember on this Memorial Day the individuals who fought against such ideals that these nitwits are superficially supporting.

It’s like some people want to keep refighting the old wars – and they’re counting on our apathy as a society to permit them to have a chance at victory.

Without it, our “American” ideals (which are nowhere as narrow as they want to make them out to be) are what will continue to prevail!

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The resurrection of Adolf Hitler; or are Nazi Nut-zis on the loose?

A lot of people like to take their pot-shots at our nation’s current president by making comparisons to Adolf Hitler, although I am fairly sure that the people really inclined to “pledge allegiance” to the one-time German Fuhrer think Donald Trump is as much a loony as the rest of us.

JONES: Finally making it to general election

The kind of people who really think something noble occurred during that era some 80 years ago probably think Trump is all talk, without the nerve to really act.

BUT’S LET NOT dispute the notion that there are people inclined to think that fascism or a police state would have benefits for our society – particularly if it allowed for the eliminate in some form or another of less-than-desirable people.

There was one news report out of suburban Riverside about the man now facing criminal charges because he approached three girls – ages 12 to 14 – to tell them of the evils of miscegenation and how they ought to study history to learn that Hitler was not as evil as often portrayed.

For what it’s worth, the girls took a picture of the man, told their parents, who then contacted police – where authorities actually recognized him from a previous arrest.

The man, a Berwyn resident, now faces disorderly conduct charges, although the Chicago Sun-Times reported that police said the man admits to his actions, but doesn’t believe he did anything illegal.

NOT THAT IT’S just a guy hanging around the candy store (literally, in this case) looking to talk to young girls. There also were the reports about Art Jones, who in political circles is known as the Nazi perpetual candidate.

He appears to have got himself on the ballot for this year’s election cycle as the token Republican who will challenge the winner of the Dan Lipinski/Marie Newman Democratic primary fight that most likely determine the actual election winner.

For Jones is running in the March 20 primary unopposed. And Jones is a guy who once was an activist-type whose political philosophy included wearing the swastika and touting Hitler as an example of what our society should espouse.

Nazi 'menace' arrested in Riverside

Now I know Jones has long ago quit being that extreme. I remember once interviewing him many years ago (back when I was a kid reporter with the old City News Bureau) and he said he quit being a Nazi because they were too ineffectual – not capable of getting anything done.

NOT THAT HE is apologetic in any way for his own beliefs, which include rhetoric about how the holocaust of the Nazi era in Germany is exaggerated, if not an outright falsehood.

It’s at the point where Illinois Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider and Gov. Bruce Rauner both have felt compelled to denounce Jones’ campaign and claim it doesn’t represent the modern-day GOP.

Although I find it interesting that Republican gubernatorial challenger Jeanne Ives – who wants to be thought of as an extreme conservative candidate, won’t go anywhere near Jones and his rhetoric.

I have no doubt that many Democratic candidates will find ways of bringing up Jones’ congressional bid during their own campaigns. They’ll try to tout the whole Party of Lincoln as being that way.

I’M NOT WILLING to go that far.

I’m sure that most of us will see how pathetic it is that the Republican Party couldn’t come up with a credible candidate in Illinois’ 3^rd Congressional District – the Southwest Side and surrounding suburbs of Chicago.

So the idea that a Holocaust denier (the way Jones was described in both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times) is running for Congress, and that men are approaching young girls to tout their Nazi ideals, is a rise in fascism, is not evidence of a rise in right-wing extremism.

It just means the Nut-zis are on the loose. The bottom line? They’ll give us a good laugh with their nonsense.

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Southern Poverty Law Center a “hate” group? Ives wants ideologue voters

Jeanne Ives, the state senator from Wheaton who thinks anti-organized labor governor Bruce Rauner is a flaming liberal, let us know Monday she’ll wait a few days before filing her nominating petitions to get on the Republican ballot for the March 20 gubernatorial elections.

IVES: Wants the ideologue vote

Not that it really matters – Ives is the conservative ideologue candidate whose supporters already have made up their minds they’re voting for her (actually, against Rauner). The only question is just how many people really think Rauner isn’t conservative enough to appeal to them.

SO IT REALLY shouldn’t be surprising to anybody that Ives is capable of denouncing the Southern Poverty Law Center (an organization that has devoted decades to monitoring Ku Klux Klan activity) as a “hate group.”

She wants the political support of those individuals with their racial or ethnic hang-ups who think it’s the rest of the world that is somehow hateful of them for daring to suggest that their hang-ups are wrong.

Yes, she sees that Donald Trump was able to gain the presidency by appealing to people who think they’re being picked on for their wanting to look down on the rest of the world.

Perhaps she thinks she can do the same in Illinois – ignoring the fact that we were amongst the states that rejected The Donald. And that we take great pride in being able to say we did so (Go Hillary!!!).

SO JEANNE SAYING the people devoting their lives to fighting bigotry are the real bigots?!? It’s an obvious nonsense statement, but one that will play well with the kind of people she wants to turn out in great numbers to support her political ambitions.

TRUMP: Will Ives follow his campaign strategy

Which is really a collection of people determined to dump on the political ambitions of Bruce Rauner – the anti-labor guy whose conservative bearings aren’t intense-enough on social issues to appease the ideologues.

For the record, Ives’ comments were in relation to being asked about the Illinois Family Institute – a conservative-leaning think tank that works actively to promote conservative thought.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says the institute qualifies as a ‘hate group” based on its thoughts on legislation that relates to gay people. Ives wants the votes of people who support the institute, so during an interview she did with a Quad Cities-based television interview program, she said the law center “themselves should be deemed a hate group.”

RAUNER: Does Ives hurt his re-election chances

A THOUGHT THAT anybody with sense realizes is stupid. It’s part of an effort by the ideologues to shift attention from the extremes of their own thought and try to place blame on everybody else.

Which may be the way the ideologues want to view the world, but isn’t the way anybody with sense does so.

I know some political watchers are convinced that such nonsense talk (of which Ives is bound to spew much more between now and the GOP primary in March) will only help Rauner. They think a majority of Republicans, particularly those in the third of Illinois known as the Chicago suburbs, will be repulsed by such talk and wind up backing Rauner – no matter what they may think of his views on abortion.

Even though as a Wheaton resident, it could be argued that Ives IS one of those suburban Chicagoans and perhaps speaks for them.

PRITZKER: The ultimate beneficiary?

A PART OF me thinks that this could drive the true moderates (as in the people who have daily lives to live and don’t obsess this early about whom they’ll vote for come March 20, 2018) to the Democratic side – where they’re likely to have to pick between J.B. Pritzker (the millionaire just like Rauner) and the other people with Democratic dreams of running for office.

Or maybe many will just become disgusted with the whole process. Always a real possibility.

There’s only one thing I’m sure about.

While Ives may say she thinks the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “hate” group, that probably won’t be the most ridiculous thing she (or any other candidate) will say during this election cycle.

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Can we misconstrue the Klan? Or is racism on the rise amongst our teens?

I’ll be curious to see how the courts wind up addressing a case out of a high school in suburban Barrington, where some people are insisting on discipline for several students they believe were supportive of the Ku Klux Klan.

The ultimate arbiter?

For this incident reminds me of something potentially equally stupid back when I was in high school more than three decades ago – one Halloween when a student managed to concoct an overly elaborate costume for himself that wound up offending certain students of an African-American persuasion.

HIS COSTUME, AS I remember it, was essentially a white sheet – albeit one that had been decorated with elaborate, ghoulish-looking drawings. As I recall, the costume was intended to be symbolic of the rock band Black Sabbath (remember Ozzy Osbourne back when he really bit the heads off of bats and before he became a reality television star?).

But the black students who saw this white sheet walking down the hall presumed that someone had the nerve to wear a crude-looking Klan robe to school, and I remember seeing them chasing this student down the hall.

Teachers ultimately intervened, and the incident didn’t become anything lasting – although I wonder if somewhere out there is a one-time school mate (one whom I haven’t seen or heard from since those days) of mine who’s convinced he saw the Klan, and wishes he could have kicked its derriere.

Or, if some heavy metal rock fan realizes how close he came to getting a beat down because of his absurd choice of a Halloween costume?

IT SEEMS THERE is an incident at Barrington High School that has elevated to higher intensity levels – one that the courts ultimately will have to resolve.

It seems the Internet, amongst its many stupid and trivial images and tidbits, includes a photograph of white girls at a party, wearing white t-shirts and holding their arms over their heads in a gesture that some are choosing to be the equivalent of Klan hoods.

One of the girls, whose party the photo was supposedly taken at, is identified by initials. Which happen to be a string of “K’s.” How unfortunate for her.

For it means the photograph has been spread around the Internet to people who are insisting that the high school district take some sort of disciplinary action against these budding white racist princesses who likely view their purpose in life as the propagation of the white race by creating multiple white supremacist babies. A statement as over-the-top, ridiculous and absurd as this case has the potential to be.

THE FACT THAT this activity was not part of any school activity and took place on property not connected to the school doesn’t seem to sway any of these activist-types. They want action!

And when Barrington Community School District 220 didn’t provide it, they went to court, where assorted documents have been filed in recent months, and a hearing on the issue is scheduled for Monday.

Now I don’t know any of the people involved in any side of this particular case. So I don’t know if any of these girls involved at what was a “white out” party (everybody, including the black people who were invited, wore white clothes) has racist tendencies in their personalities.

Or if the activist types are just looking for a fight that some of my black classmates were willing to carry out many years ago.

BUT YET I don’t want to automatically dismiss the chance of racist perceptions being seen in our society. For they are there. They are real. We do have people with irrational hang-ups amongst us who largely count on the fact that they can couch them in such vague ways so as to make them unnoticeable to the masses.

Who would just as soon believe that such things, if they ever really existed, are a part of our societal past.

Ultimately, it’s going to be the courts that will have to decide what constitutes improper and racist behavior, and whether this incident rises to that level.

Although there’s a part of me that suspects the only real crime here is the parents of a certain teenage girl who gave their daughter a name resulting in multiple K’s for initials.

  -30-

Could ‘Dubya’ wind up having his rep resuscitated in this Age of Trump?

It’s pretty obvious that one of the priorities of our current presidential administration is to erase any trace of his immediate predecessor – the people whose objections to the days of Barack Obama were racially-motivated probably would like it if none of the Obama policies were to survive into the future.

BUSH: Will we detest him less, due to Trump?

Kind of like the old Soviet way of rewriting history to eliminate happenings that were considered undesirable; and there definitely are people in our society who feel that the fact a majority of us ever wanted Obama in office is something shameful.

BUT IT MAY also turn out that Trump will wind up impacting the way we remember another of his predecessors. Remember the dunce-in-chief days of George W. Bush; when the bulk of us used to seriously wonder how we could ever pick someone so insipid to be our nation’s chief executive?

It seems we now have both Bush-the-younger and Obama going about questioning the intellect of Donald J. Trump – wondering what it says about our society that he was able to gain control of the launch codes. And all the other perks and responsibilities that go along with the presidency.

Bush this week made one of his few public appearances since leaving the White House (he’s mostly been even more invisible than Obama during his post-presidential years), and he let it be known he didn’t think much of the way racial politics have taken such an ugly turn during the Trump time in office.

OBAMA: Paired with Bush in Age of Trump?

“Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication,” Bush said. While taking care not to say by name who he was talking about, the implication was clear. Although he’s the same guy who supposedly described Trump’s inaugural ceremonies as “some weird” poop – so to speak.

WHAT MAKES THIS somewhat ironic is that I remember the days (it hasn’t been that long, although the agony of enduring the Age of Trump makes it seem like he’s been around forever, spewing his nonsense-talk everywhere he goes) when the kind of people who are the base of the Trump supporters were similar to those who gave us George W. as president – and are the ones who think it somehow just and proper that Al Gore’s majority popular vote of 2000 didn’t result in an Electoral College victory.

TRUMP: Bush's unnamed target?

Of course, Bush-the-younger had his share of verbal gaffes that often left people confused as to what he was trying to say, and he was living proof that having an education at Ivy League schools does not automatically mean one is intellectual.

But many of the Bush gaffes came across as something we could laugh at – how could we let this boob into office. Even though it was often clear his amenable personality meant he was someone you could have a talk with – provided the ideology didn’t get in the way.

Whereas in this Age of Trump, “the Donald” seems determined to remind certain people in our society that they’re beneath him – and he’s more than willing to play into the hateful nature of some in our society to advance his own goals.

I DON’T THINK George W. Bush ever meant to hurt anybody; his vacuous nature meant some got harmed accidentally.

Whereas I don’t doubt Trump is more than willing to take down people if it benefits himself and his goals. Which may not actually be too deep.

I don’t doubt Trump probably regards the details of running the federal government to be boring; something to be delegated to the little people. He’d rather be the guy getting the nation all worked up over all those football players who have the nerve to think their position gives them a forum to express views on social issues – particularly those involving race.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not singing the praises of the Bush-the-younger years. Anyone who bothers to reread the commentaries I wrote in the early years of this weblog will see just how little I thought of those days when they actually occurred.

BUT I ALSO remember that a large part of why the conservative ideologues turned on George W. Bush was when he tried, toward the end of his presidency, to implement serious reform of the nation’s immigration policies.

The ideologues wanted nothing to do with reform – they just want venal policies meant to abuse individuals who aren’t exactly like themselves.

So the idea that Bush-the-younger is now somehow on the side of sense and compassion? It shouldn’t be too surprising.

Personally, I always thought that George W. (a former part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team) was someone I’d like to go to a ballgame with someday. Whereas I suspect going to a game with Trump would be a miserable experience – he’d be the obnoxious guy who peeves everyone sitting around him and security winds up having to eject from the ballpark for being a boor.

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Should we respect people who want to use “Merry Christmas” as a weapon?

I have my own reasons for being upset with President Donald J. Trump and his attempt recently to use the upcoming winter holidays as another weapon in his ideological war for the mood of the nation.

Would the Macy's department store on State Street offend the presidential sensibilities for winter holiday celebrations. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

It’s that Trump is just as guilty of watering down the Christmas spirit as those people he thinks he’s lambasting.

FOR TO ME, part of the problem with people losing the meaning or point of the Christmas holiday is that we start taking up its trappings so early. We’re not even at Halloween yet, but there are some people already preparing for the onslaught of Santa Clauses, reindeer and snowmen.

Trump, by bringing up this issue so early, is just as bad!

It’s too early to be thinking about Christmas, particularly since it’s still too early to be giving the Thanksgiving holiday much regard.

That bothers me just as much as the fact that he’s trying to turn the concept of “Merry Christmas” into a weapon that people hurl at those who happen not to share in their beliefs.

SOMEHOW, I CAN’T help but think the true concept of the birth of Christ, with all the significance it carries to those of Christian religious faiths, is grossly disrespected by using such an image to taunt other people.

Does the holiday menorah in Chicago have to go in a Trump-inspired world?

For the record, Trump made his holiday-related rant to a gathering of the Values Voter Summit, put together by the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. He let it be known he’s all for “stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” which is how he wants to perceive those people who use “Happy Holidays” as an all-purpose greeting to accommodate everybody’s particular winter holiday.

Odd that an attempt to include everybody is somehow seen as a taunt by those who want their own perceptions to prevail over all in our society, and our society to dominate over all that exist on this Planet Earth.

Sufficient religious display for people about to embark on airline flights?

Which makes me wonder if life is ever found to exist on other planets throughout the galaxy, will the people in support of this Age of Trump that we’re now in try to start up a crusade to ensure that alien races acknowledge and properly worship the so-called superiority of Donald J. Trump?

THE WHOLE EFFORT sounds absurd when you put it in those terms. Then again, absurdity has never stopped the Trump types from spouting out their latest ridiculous rhetoric.

Including the president’s own desire to make “Merry Christmas” a priority. Will this rank up equally with making sure those ingrate pro football players stand at attention during the National Anthem? Or is that article in The New Yorker where Trump criticizes Vice President Mike Pence evidence that he's already moved on to something else?

Does it all mean that Trump has the attention span of a gnat, and has become bored with that issue and needs a constant influx of confusion and mayhem to keep himself amused?

Sufficient holiday adornment for our govt. buildings?

The whole while ignoring the real problems that confront our society and our planet. Which he probably thinks of as boring details that could better be delegated to someone else so he’ll have time for another Mar-A-Lago-style weekend with golf.

BUT BACK TO the Christmas crusade, which may also be an effort at misdirection on the part of Trump, who was getting some criticism for even attending the gathering of religious-oriented individuals.

Trump is the first U.S. president to ever attend the group’s gatherings, and some activist-types were quick to point out that many of the people inclined to attend were those who use their religious beliefs to justify their white supremacist attitudes towards life.

As in “God Hates You” because you’re not a white Southern male – an attitude I have trouble accepting as being a part of any legitimate religious faith.

Just as I can’t believe that anybody seriously believes in using “Merry Christmas” as their winter holiday weapon of choice, when the attitude they’re really expressing with such talk is something more along the lines of, “Bah, Humbug!”

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