Monday, April 18, 2011

"Apegate" festers at the party of “too many Mexicans on the beach”

Orange County "fun Republican facts":
• [In 1972, Republican OC Supervisor Ronald] Caspers, annoyed that a Mexican-American group of county employees were demanding affirmative action …, called them "bandidos" during a board meeting, then asked county counsel to explore moving the county seat from [Santa Ana] to whiter environs because "we are in an area which does not have a normal ethnic balance." (OC Weekly)

• [In 1963,] OC U.S. [Republican] Congressman James B. Utt makes national news by suggesting that "a large contingent of barefooted Africans" might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the U.S. (OC Almanac)
     EARLY THIS AFTERNOON, the OC Reg’s Martin Wisckol reported that OCGOP chairman Scott Baugh now recognizes that the rules forbid him from throwing “ApeGate” emailer Marilyn Davenport under the bus like he wanted to—i.e., throwing her off of the Central Committee, to which she was duly elected in November.
     All he can do, dang it, is “issue a condemnation” of her:
     Davenport … was asked by Baugh to resign after her email last week. She responded in an email, “I will NOT resign my Central Committee position over this matter that the average person knows and agrees is much to do about nothing.”
     Because Kermit Marsh, the chairman of the [OCGOP] Ethics Committee, is out of town until the end of the week, Baugh said he will appoint a temporary replacement at tonight’s regularly scheduled monthly Central Committee meeting so that the ethics panel can address the issue as soon as possible.
. . .
     “I don’t want this thing lingering,” Baugh said this morning. “What she did was highly offensive and I’m not sure she understands the gravity of this. … I don’t know what’s in her heart – she’s a kind woman – but this was offensive.”
     It’s pretty clear that Baugh and co. are milking the situation for all it’s worth, smashing Davenport—and thus those pesky and uncooperative Tea Partiers generally—over the head whilst demonstrating the party’s alleged rejection of racism.
     Sure.
     Wisckol cleverly notes that this ugly incident is not without precedent:
     This [is] not the first time Central Committee members have aroused controversy with comments and emails targeting people who happened to be members of ethnic and religious minorities.
     Villa Park City Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, the committee’s first vice chairman, attracted criticism ... after a Feb. 13 rally outside a fundraiser by an Islamic group.
     “Let me tell you what’s going on over there right now – make no bones about it – that is pure unadulterated evil,” she says on a critical video by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is then edited to a later portion of her speech.
     “I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy any more,” she says. “I have a beautiful daughter. I have a wonderful 19-year-old son who’s a United States Marine. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”
. . .
     In 2009, Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose forwarded an email with a watermelon patch superimposed on the White House lawn. He resigned his post in the subsequent firestorm of criticism and lost a subsequent City Council election bid, but continues to serve on the Central Committee.
. . .
     Dick Nichols was not on the Central Committee, but was a Republican serving on the Newport City Council in 2003 when he voted against putting more grass at Corona de Mar’s beach because there were already “too many Mexicans on the beach.”
. . .
     Asked if the latest incident would hurt the GOP in the eyes of moderate voters, Baugh said it could work in the party’s favor.
     “It lets the world know that this is not us and we don’t tolerate it,” he said.
     Scott Baugh is very much a part of the old Fuentes/Schroeder right-wing hypocritical “anti-government” club that has controlled the local GOP for decades, bringing upon it shame, embarrassment, and occasional national ridicule and condemnation. Recall Tom Fuentes' "poll guards" in 1988?
     In recent years, this group has struggled to control the bad press engendered by its embrace of such characters as Mike Carona, Chriss Street, John Williams, Jeffrey Nielsen and a host of other rotten dissemblers and mountebanks—or worse.
     It is worth mentioning that Baugh’s determination to follow “the rules” is new for him. Members of the OC Central Committee have long complained about top leadership’s violations of bylaws and such, a pattern usually attributed to the need to disguise leadership's hinky and hypocritical ways.
     You might remember the blatant manipulation of the rules that was involved in reversing the Committee’s decision, a few years ago, not to endorse Mike Carona for Sheriff. The shit really hit the fan that time.

Heard emanating from cigar smoke down at the Balboa Bay Club: "Why, some of my best friends are black!"
Reader Greg B sent this. It's pretty good, especially if you like Sam Cook's great song.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Too funny Greg B. Loved the new version of the old Sam Cooke. LOL.

Wendy Gabriella (Notice when I post on dissent theblog, I sign my name.)

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...