Victory Over the Forces of Stupid.

I joined this little Yahoo group that is for and about memories of the city I grew up in. The group is home to lots of posts like “Remember Josey Skateland?” and “Remember the VW in the old pool?” It’s a nice, warm place to go sit back and get your Wonder Years on. It was a thoroughly enjoyable place.

“Was” being the operative word.

One of my old classmates got himself elected to the city council and now he has political ambition for higher office. He wants to go to The Show. To get there he needs the attention of the State GOP.

To get the attention of the State GOP he polished up little code enforcement turd and turned that innocuous little turd into a nice shiney piece of election year anti-immigration hype, because you know all the poor people living in those run down, ratty rental houses are wetbacks! And they don’t speak no English ya’ll! And they do all their shopping at THE DOLLAR STORE!!. The proliferation of absentee slum lords have nothing to do with it. Those (Proud To Be) 'Murican owners of those run down ratty rental properties have nothing at all to do with the condition of those properties.

Well, the city is up in arms and even the arch conservative RNC mouthpiece Dallas Morning News felt the need to issue a strongly worded editorial condemning the whole affair as base pandering twaddle.

So. What does this have to do with my little Yahoo group? Everything. The group had been waxing nostalgic about a long gone Brahms Ice Cream place. My classmates' RNC audition reel blew the roof off the place. These people, most if not all, life long residents noticed that there are "suddenly" lot of Hispanics around! and many do not speak English! (please note that thirty years ago I had classmates who did not speak English) One reported: “My neighbor doesn’t speak English!!” Gosh. my neighbor does speak English and I would be thrilled if the garbage I had to over hear was garbage I couldn’t understand! And ya know what? his property looks like hell and he does shite about it. He’s a citizen.

The discourse was getting ugly. And by “ugly” I mean the kind of language that civilized people pretend they don't know. The anonymous nature of the group let them get their racism on and they were joyful at the opportunity.

The Hispanics got mad too and they didn't hide behind user names. They took their anger to City Hall. Some biddy at the group went to counter protest was shocked at how "angry" the Hispanics were. Oddly, they don’t like being accused of being ignorant, dirty, pestilent, and generally bringing ruination upon the city. They also want my classmate who started the whole thing out of office. And ya know what? they have the numbers... all the immigrants in town aren't Hispanic and aren't all illegal but they are all being tarred with Tim's' racist brush.

I got real tired of reading the venom in my in box. Real tired. So I wrote something for them to read. I rewrote it about seventeen times. I had to keep removing things like “ugly racists” and “ low lives indulging in back door racism” and “ cowardly sheet wearing rednecks ” and “ ignert scum sucking hate mongers” or “the mentality of a mob of liquored up yokels” and other things less friendly . I wanted to get my point across with out lowering myself to their level. So. I posted this:

Could we change the topic please? The discourse has become dangerously close to hate speech and I would hate for Yahoo to shut this group down because of content. As the DMN said this is not something for Farmers Branch to decide. This is topic for national policy, not local city government and not Tim O'Hare.

True, they thought I was being a buzz killing, bleeding heart commie symp, terrest lovin' librul, politically correct shrew, but this was posted:

Fearing Big Brother (since we've got people in here using phrases like "hate speech"), I nuked all of the messages posted over the course of the past week. Again, I encourage y'all to discuss this off board (and to please keep me posted). However, since there's no telling what Yahoo does and does not like, it probably is a wise idea to not discuss that topic on the board anymore. Ah, the ever politically correct 21st Century....

It stopped because I asked for it to stop. Even though I was a total pussy about how I got it stopped. I'm still proud of me. Happy Birthday to ME.

I should have posted:

Can we please change the topic? You are bigots and the words and phrases you are using are racist in nature. I am offended and hurt by what I am seeing. The discourse is offensive and ugly and if it continues in this manner I will be forced to turn the group into Yahoo.

And then I should have done it.