EXPUNGING THE EXPUNGER

SIMPLE PLEASURES
As an old coot I find myself getting joy in small ways - a magnificent sunset, the smiles of the beautiful children in my neighborhood and the way my heart pounds when my wife comes home from work each night. These kinds of pleasures bring as much joy as would winning the lottery - although I'd like to test that theory one of these days, just to be sure.

DAILY PILOT MAKES ME SMILE
Today another event occurred that brought a big smile to my face. A loyal reader pointed out that the Daily Pilot - our newspaper of record for a century - deleted the CM Press from it's roster of community blogs. I'm sorry, but I just can't stop smiling.

STRAINED RELATIONS
For years the relationship between the author of the CM Press, Mr. U. Know-Who, and the management of the Daily Pilot have been strained - to say the very least. For years he would submit commentaries, some of which would be published and some would not. He never failed to express his displeasure when one of his "Mensa meanderings" didn't make the editorial cut and has threatened legal action when he disagreed with characterizations in the Pilot.

THE ODD COUPLE
There was a time when, I'm sure to provoke controversy, the editors would publish letters from Old Grumpy and me side-by-side. I thought it was fun. Old Grumpy was ticked off to have his "stellar" work appear beside the feeble efforts of a guy who spends his days living in a cave, wearing a tin foil hat - according to him. That made it even more fun.

EVER THE CRITIC
Recently Mr. U. Know-Who - who apparently views himself as Jimmy Olson because he played a reporter (badly) in a terrible movie 35 years ago - has decided he knows all there is to know about publishing a local newspaper, so he's begun using his pathetic blog to instruct the editors of the Pilot on what they need to do to save the paper. I'm sure those comments endeared him to them.

SHARP STICK TO THE EYE
For a guy who tells us he's very smart, he sure doesn't act that way. I mean, does he really think he's going to get a receptive ear from the editors of the Daily Pilot when he perpetually pokes them in the eye with a sharp stick? Not likely.

VILE ASSOCIATIONS?
Or, maybe the editors decided to de-link his blog because they didn't think their community newspaper serves it's readers well by linking to a notorious right-wing extremist who uses the esteem in which he is held by KKK poster boy David Duke as a tool with which to market his pathetic books. That seems like a good reason to me.

HOW DO YOU LIKE IT, GRUMPY?
So, Mr. U. Know-Who has been expunged from the roster of community bloggers on the Daily Pilot pages and I find myself wondering how he likes it. After all, he's been trying to expunge the Latinos from our city for most of this decade. I wonder how it feels for him to be the "expungee" instead of the "expunger"? In my humble opinion, it's long over due.

Your Neighbor's Admirer

THE BRAIN
An activist in this city - a man who very much resembles my theoretical character, Your Neighbor and to whom I have occasionally referred to as The-Brain-Who-Ate-Costa-Mesa - has exercised his influence over several past and current members of the City Council and their appointed surrogates on the Planning and Parks and Recreation Commissions. Much of what he has espoused from the speaker's podium and in correspondence in the local media and on his blog have a central theme - the expulsion of the Latino population from our city. Of course, he and his acolytes have denied this many times, but actions speak louder than words.

LESSER INTELLECTS
I pay attention to his postings on various white supremacist web sites, painful as they are to read. This guy has frequently spouted that the essays in question are not racist, and that only those of small minds (he professes to be a MENSA member) would think that. We lesser beings lack the mental horsepower to really understand the depth of his message. Yep, I guess that's right - I don't understand that his mantra of racial purity is not really racism. I don't understand that his denigration of "lesser races" is not really racism.

THE ADMIRER
Imagine my surprise (tongue in cheek) when I found, on the official web site of David Duke - former head of the Ku Klux Klan - this link, which carries the most recent of Your Neighbor's essays entitled "White Buck Shoes and the North American Union". The text of this essay refers, once again, to the "blending" of the American populace - the homogenization of the races through interracial marriage. Apparently Duke, long the poster boy for racism in this country, thinks Your Neighbor's views are just dandy - so much so to feature them on his official web site.

INFLUENCE
So, as you read that essay and consider it's source, I hope you'll contemplate the influence this man has had on your elected leaders and their appointees and what this means to the future of this city. Consider whether you really want the future of our city guided by the hand of such a man. I hope you'll consider how the radical right has taken over our city, as witnessed by the gushing support provided during the campaign to our young jailer/mayor and his barnacle, Wendy Leece, by Jim Gilchrist, Grand Pooba of the Minutemen and his frothing band of Minuteman Mob supporters. I hope you'll consider these facts when you think about the amount of out-of-town money that flowed into the mayor's campaign war chest and dribbled over into Ms. Leece's campaign, too. Some observers have said I give Your Neighbor too much credit for things that happen in our city - that he's really a smart, yet pathetic guy who has not found a positive way to direct his prodigious intellect. Well, maybe - but from where I sit (with my tin foil hat, tuna cans on my ears in my grungy skivvys, according to him), the trail is clear and his influence is obvious.

THE FUTURE?
Mansoor and Leece rode to victory on the backs of the brown-skinned residents of our city, through the campaign contributions provided by outsiders and the support of those on the radical right. They've aimed our city down the road of intolerance, with Your Neighbor's hand firmly on the steering wheel. Eric Bever and perhaps others with similar views are poised to perpetuate this direction as they seek seats on the City Council next year. It's not too early to consider just what the perpetuation of this direction means to the city.