Don's Tuesday column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/16/2013

Liberal hypocrisy, irony; Republican dinner

Mine isn’t the first hearty “Welcome” for Gov. Brown-appointed County Supervisor, Sandy Bruce. Were she to drop in and say “Hi” to her fellow Republicans at, for instance, the annual Red, White and Blue Dinner on April 27, 5 PM, at the Vets Hall, or to Tea Party Patriots any Tuesday at the Westside Grange, she will find folks eager to get to know her and her positions.

It strikes this Republican as a touch ironic to read that she is an “account clerk at the county’s Social Services Department,” was a “project coordinator at the Tehama County Health Services Agency in 1999,” and “serves as union steward for the International Union of Operating Engineers at the Tehama County Department of Social Services.” The word “ironic,” meaning “event that is the opposite of what is expected” (Webster’s Pocket Dictionary), applies in the sense that having government employment in social services, union membership, even stewardship, and government health care coordination—are not the routine resume entries for a Republican stalwart.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that (Seinfeld-ism); I can’t think of better places for Republican values to share the field with, well, other values. After all, it is undeniable that healthy percentages of government employees and union members are Republicans. Perhaps she made valiant efforts to see that dues collected (would “extorted” be too harsh?) from government workers’ paychecks were spent equally among Democratic and Republican candidates.

Perhaps she fought to see that taxpayers’ money, paying those same workers and their union dues, wasn’t used to fund initiative campaigns to raise our taxes or our collective indebtedness via bond sales. Remember, it was that famous and legendary Democrat, President Franklin Roosevelt, and that equally famous and legendary union leader, George Meany, who were against government workers being unionized, precisely because any labor action would effectively be against their true employers, the tax-paying citizens. Times change; she has the benefit of my doubt at this point. However, a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still, as they say, a wolf.

More now on the aforementioned Red, White and Blue Republican Dinner, dedicated to Abraham Lincoln this year, at the Veterans Memorial Hall at 5 PM on Oak Street. Honest Abe himself will make a virtual appearance with a memorable speech and humorous anecdote. Some remarkable local voices will be raised in songs from that era, and other patriotic tunes.

Of great note will be an appearance and keynote speech by Elizabeth Emken, who ran a top notch, but losing, campaign against our very, very, yes very senior Senator Diane Feinstein. Such were Ms. Emken’s command of the issues and oratorical skills that Feinstein never allowed herself to be on the same stage. The Senator even arrogantly and condescendingly patted a reporter’s back as she left an interview, when the reporter simply asked why she refused to debate Emken. What a liberal hypocrite!

Anyway, tickets and tables are available, but limited and usually sell out; call 529-1226 for more information and reservations if you haven’t gotten a flyer in the mail.

A few weeks back, a teapot tempest, high dudgeon and arrogant umbrage appeared on this page over news media restrictions at a Redding Tea Party Patriots meeting that featured Congressman Doug LaMalfa. Let me be clear that I think the decision to impose some limits on the TV and print reporters was arguably ill advised; I would have voted against it had I been at the meeting. However, I support their right to make it harder for reporters, who in the past have misrepresented and engaged in adversarial and unbalanced reporting, to have further chances to, basically, lie about the Tea Party.

The point is well made that a congressman is our collective employee and the freedom of the press is potentially abridged when access is limited. Somebody should tell President Obama to stop doing exactly that—the hypocrite! However, one protests too much when office-holders routinely limit the press at events that are private, on private property and for the benefit of a particular constituency. When the freedom of the press is used to grossly misrepresent what a group of private citizens say and do, the news media violate the trust given them by the people. The news media (who, by definition, have a higher responsibility than those citizens) cannot complain over being restricted. Abuses will not go unpunished by the people.

On the other hand, people should recognize that the media provide other citizens with information, and if someone doesn’t want a bad impression out there, they should think through what they say before it pops out of their mouth. I know someone who blurted out a poorly formulated thought at the Republican headquarters on election night in 2008 that didn’t look so erudite the next day in the local paper.

If, for instance, I had attended one of few Coffee Party meetings and wrote untruthfully about them, I doubt they would have allowed me further access, no? Then, consider how various of the anti-war and local Occupy crowd refused to answer simple questions when I spoke to them at Oak and Main in November, 2005, and in front of the Bank of America in 2011. I still have the articles I wrote which had not one untruthful word or misrepresentation of their answers to my polling questions. They just knew who I was, what I believe and write and didn’t want to talk me. Liberals are such hypocrites!