Contre-temps
See what happens when I take a day off on the couch with my girlfriend and a bottle of St. Brendan's Irish Cream? My slumbering burgh explodes into a national scandal and I totally miss it.
An 81-year-old World War II veteran, whose name really is Nelson Polite, is the head of city council here. He gets along well with all sorts, and generally lives up to his surname. The city is about a third white, a third black, and a third Hispanic. It's split about evenly between Republicans and Democrats. We elect a Democratic state Legislator and a Republican state Senator. The city council is split 4 to 5. The mayor is a Republican. And everyone seems to basically like and get along with Polite.
But he is a Democrat. And he won't back down from a controversy. Usually, though, the controversies involve civil rights. Last year, when the head of the city school district got caught dishing out no-work, high-pay contracts to family members and girlfriends, Polite (and other city black leaders) said they smelled a racist rat in the investigation because he was the first minority superintendent the district had had. Whatever.
His latest contre-temps, however, wasn't about race at all. At least not at the start.
The first I learned of it was a letter in the Sunday newspaper by David Stoltzfus, who runs a stall in Central Market. The market building is owned by the city, and leased to stallholders, some of whom have been there for decades. It's a treasure, a place where you can flirt with the Amish girl who actually grew the apples you're buying. I do most of my food shopping there, though I don't buy bread from Stoltzfus (Rick's Breads is my place). Here's what Stoltzfus wrote:
The afternoon paper picked up the story and did its own article. I remember, not too long ago, when a flap like this would have stayed local. It might have been picked up as a "brief" in a partisan publication or two, but that would have been the end of it.
Not now. Not with a hypersensitive, politicized, computer-wired nation ready to pounce with all its muscle on any partisan foolery. Not a month after a titanic election, in a week when the political stories no longer flood out, but the radio talk show hosts and Internet scribes still have a meat-hungry audience.
Rush Limbaugh weighed in: "Do you get the picture here, folks? This isn't the former Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. This is happening in Pennsylvania, 'the Friendship State,' It's a blue state but it's still the Friendship State - where, apparently, at least one elected Democrat believes that hatred should trump freedom in a man's own store." I don't know where he got the "Friendship State" notion. We're "the Keystone State," and it used to say "You've got a Friend in Pennsylvania" on the license plates, but that was years ago and it was a tourist slogan play on the Society of Friends (Quakers), never an official motto. Whatever.
Here's where it gets interesting. None of the many Web sites where I've checked this story notes that Polite is black. None of the local newspaper reports that fuelled their indignation has said that, either. I doubt Rush knows (or cares). Frankly, it's not germane to this story; Polite was addressing Stoltzfus not as a civil rights champion but as city council president, and as a Democrat.
Web sites like this one printed the old man's home address and phone number. Since then, Polite said, the phone rings in the middle of the night and strangers scream obscenities at him. He said he has downloaded more than 600 e-mails, many of which his daughter described as "hateful" and "horrible."
No specific examples have been made public. Someone who thinks it's racist to investigate a school district superintendent who got caught flagrantly raiding the cookie jar might have a different definition of racism than I do. But I wouldn't doubt there are racist sentiments in Polite's e-mail pile. And they probably came from local folks. When you spend a lifetime in one town promoting race issues, as Polite has, you're going to make enemies you can be proud of. Even some of the letters to the editor that did run locally had a definite tinge of race in them:
Yikes. Yet I all but cringe when I read about the heads of the local black community defending Polite by using essentially the same arguments that the heads of the local white community used 40 years ago to criticize "outsiders" who stirred up the Negroes, insulted institutions they didn't understand, and generally sought to serve their own agendas regardless of the consequences in one small town.
The reverend at the local AME church, my neighbor, actually used the word "outsiders." He said, "I'm not going to allow folks to make comments about someone who has rolled up his sleeves and done the work that Mr. Polite has done." The audience applauded.
In another reverse echo of the bad old days, Polite wondered why the media needed to be involved at all. "This is a personal thing between that gentleman and myself," Polite said of Stoltzfus. "Why would he even take it to the newspaper?"
So now Rush has moved on to other topics, but the focus here has shifted to the reaction, not to what Polite vowed to do about the picture of the president. His fellow Democratic council member, Julianne Dickson, now talks about Polite's courage in the face of the storm. "No difference of opinion about what someone has said warrants the kind of response we were all subjected to," she said. A black community leader, said, "If we don't stand up and show some respect and consideration for him, we have not only shown a disservice to him, but a disservice to each other."
The ranks are closed, the wagons are circled. On one side, now, the issue is not the uncomfortable one of an unwarranted extension of executive power. It's not about whether they really champion free speech if they want to banish public display of pictures of That Man in the White House. It's not about the ugly hate burning in many hearts against Shrubbie McChimpler. No, it's the old, easy bugbear of racism. Clarity and light. Suddenly, they're all Freedom Riders again.
Councilman John Graupera tried to ease the tension with a jest. "You've put Lancaster on the map. You're a genius Nelson." But not many people here are laughing.
Nelson's wrong on this one. Flat-out wrong, incomprehensibly wrong. Yet he still doesn't see it, or, if he sees it, won't admit it. At the latest city council meeting, Tuesday, Polite refused to apologize for demanding that the photos come down. He maintains the city needs rules about displaying political items in a publicly owned market.
In fact, the firestorm he called down on us has only affirmed his conviction. "This country is angry. This community is angry. We need to do something about it." He's right about the anger. He's wrong about the match that set it off. It wasn't Stoltzfus' picture, it was Polite's threat.
I don't want to speculate about the reflexive tendency of one party or another to clamp down on expressions it doesn't like. I'll just say the heat and fumes of a bad election seem to have gone to the old guy's head. The best thing I read in the whole series of comments to have come out of this was from our buddy "the spice guy." He runs a stall in market, too. Amy and Luke, who love to cook, are his regular customers. He's the kind of guy who will measure out 50 cents worth of something for a 10-year-old kid. His name's Jim Zink, and he's a Democrat. What would you expect from a guy with a pony-tail who runs "The Herb Shop?" (I may be the only middle-aged, pony-tailed Republican in town). But last time we were in there he had a photo of Dubya over his spice rack, in a show of solidarity. “He has every right to hang it," Zink says of Stoltzfus.
An 81-year-old World War II veteran, whose name really is Nelson Polite, is the head of city council here. He gets along well with all sorts, and generally lives up to his surname. The city is about a third white, a third black, and a third Hispanic. It's split about evenly between Republicans and Democrats. We elect a Democratic state Legislator and a Republican state Senator. The city council is split 4 to 5. The mayor is a Republican. And everyone seems to basically like and get along with Polite.
But he is a Democrat. And he won't back down from a controversy. Usually, though, the controversies involve civil rights. Last year, when the head of the city school district got caught dishing out no-work, high-pay contracts to family members and girlfriends, Polite (and other city black leaders) said they smelled a racist rat in the investigation because he was the first minority superintendent the district had had. Whatever.
His latest contre-temps, however, wasn't about race at all. At least not at the start.
The first I learned of it was a letter in the Sunday newspaper by David Stoltzfus, who runs a stall in Central Market. The market building is owned by the city, and leased to stallholders, some of whom have been there for decades. It's a treasure, a place where you can flirt with the Amish girl who actually grew the apples you're buying. I do most of my food shopping there, though I don't buy bread from Stoltzfus (Rick's Breads is my place). Here's what Stoltzfus wrote:
A member of Lancaster City Council, Nelson Polite, approached our stand and identified himself. He told me the picture of President Bush displayed above our stand is offensive to many people and that the Democrats are mad about it. He then informed me that the picture must come down, or he will take his request to higher authority. One way or another he said, "That picture will come down."
Here is my response to all parties affiliated with the request: First of all, I am an American! I salute the American flag because I know the red stripes stand for all the blood that is shed for our freedom. I salute and give honor to the president and all past presidents for upholding our freedom and for the office they walk in. Just because I display a picture of an American president at our place of business does not mean that I am a Republican or Democrat. I am an American.
I say if you are angry about whose picture is in the frame, then direct your anger at the right place. American people have elected this president, and we should show tolerance and respect to the highest office held in this free land. Our anger should be directed at those who disrespect and hate our country and what it stands for and at the real "murderers," the people who carried out September 11 attacks.
In the meantime, I will respect and honor our whole political process, established by the founding fathers. If I am breaking the law by displaying this picture, then I will remove it, for I will uphold the law.
But don't take away my constitutional right of freedom of expression just because you're of another opinion. Party lines should not continue to divide us, as this past election has shown. Let's be a bridge to this divided United States, just because we are American!
The afternoon paper picked up the story and did its own article. I remember, not too long ago, when a flap like this would have stayed local. It might have been picked up as a "brief" in a partisan publication or two, but that would have been the end of it.
Not now. Not with a hypersensitive, politicized, computer-wired nation ready to pounce with all its muscle on any partisan foolery. Not a month after a titanic election, in a week when the political stories no longer flood out, but the radio talk show hosts and Internet scribes still have a meat-hungry audience.
Rush Limbaugh weighed in: "Do you get the picture here, folks? This isn't the former Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. This is happening in Pennsylvania, 'the Friendship State,' It's a blue state but it's still the Friendship State - where, apparently, at least one elected Democrat believes that hatred should trump freedom in a man's own store." I don't know where he got the "Friendship State" notion. We're "the Keystone State," and it used to say "You've got a Friend in Pennsylvania" on the license plates, but that was years ago and it was a tourist slogan play on the Society of Friends (Quakers), never an official motto. Whatever.
Here's where it gets interesting. None of the many Web sites where I've checked this story notes that Polite is black. None of the local newspaper reports that fuelled their indignation has said that, either. I doubt Rush knows (or cares). Frankly, it's not germane to this story; Polite was addressing Stoltzfus not as a civil rights champion but as city council president, and as a Democrat.
Web sites like this one printed the old man's home address and phone number. Since then, Polite said, the phone rings in the middle of the night and strangers scream obscenities at him. He said he has downloaded more than 600 e-mails, many of which his daughter described as "hateful" and "horrible."
No specific examples have been made public. Someone who thinks it's racist to investigate a school district superintendent who got caught flagrantly raiding the cookie jar might have a different definition of racism than I do. But I wouldn't doubt there are racist sentiments in Polite's e-mail pile. And they probably came from local folks. When you spend a lifetime in one town promoting race issues, as Polite has, you're going to make enemies you can be proud of. Even some of the letters to the editor that did run locally had a definite tinge of race in them:
Nelson was a rabble-rouser in high school and has been continuing it ever since. His job is on City Council and not to be a nit-picker. If he wants to straighten things out in the city he should go shopping around and get the names of the hoodlums robbing the banks, gas stations and convenience stores, for that would satisfy more of the residents in the city than to be nit-picking over a picture on a wall.
Yikes. Yet I all but cringe when I read about the heads of the local black community defending Polite by using essentially the same arguments that the heads of the local white community used 40 years ago to criticize "outsiders" who stirred up the Negroes, insulted institutions they didn't understand, and generally sought to serve their own agendas regardless of the consequences in one small town.
The reverend at the local AME church, my neighbor, actually used the word "outsiders." He said, "I'm not going to allow folks to make comments about someone who has rolled up his sleeves and done the work that Mr. Polite has done." The audience applauded.
In another reverse echo of the bad old days, Polite wondered why the media needed to be involved at all. "This is a personal thing between that gentleman and myself," Polite said of Stoltzfus. "Why would he even take it to the newspaper?"
So now Rush has moved on to other topics, but the focus here has shifted to the reaction, not to what Polite vowed to do about the picture of the president. His fellow Democratic council member, Julianne Dickson, now talks about Polite's courage in the face of the storm. "No difference of opinion about what someone has said warrants the kind of response we were all subjected to," she said. A black community leader, said, "If we don't stand up and show some respect and consideration for him, we have not only shown a disservice to him, but a disservice to each other."
The ranks are closed, the wagons are circled. On one side, now, the issue is not the uncomfortable one of an unwarranted extension of executive power. It's not about whether they really champion free speech if they want to banish public display of pictures of That Man in the White House. It's not about the ugly hate burning in many hearts against Shrubbie McChimpler. No, it's the old, easy bugbear of racism. Clarity and light. Suddenly, they're all Freedom Riders again.
Councilman John Graupera tried to ease the tension with a jest. "You've put Lancaster on the map. You're a genius Nelson." But not many people here are laughing.
Nelson's wrong on this one. Flat-out wrong, incomprehensibly wrong. Yet he still doesn't see it, or, if he sees it, won't admit it. At the latest city council meeting, Tuesday, Polite refused to apologize for demanding that the photos come down. He maintains the city needs rules about displaying political items in a publicly owned market.
In fact, the firestorm he called down on us has only affirmed his conviction. "This country is angry. This community is angry. We need to do something about it." He's right about the anger. He's wrong about the match that set it off. It wasn't Stoltzfus' picture, it was Polite's threat.
I don't want to speculate about the reflexive tendency of one party or another to clamp down on expressions it doesn't like. I'll just say the heat and fumes of a bad election seem to have gone to the old guy's head. The best thing I read in the whole series of comments to have come out of this was from our buddy "the spice guy." He runs a stall in market, too. Amy and Luke, who love to cook, are his regular customers. He's the kind of guy who will measure out 50 cents worth of something for a 10-year-old kid. His name's Jim Zink, and he's a Democrat. What would you expect from a guy with a pony-tail who runs "The Herb Shop?" (I may be the only middle-aged, pony-tailed Republican in town). But last time we were in there he had a photo of Dubya over his spice rack, in a show of solidarity. “He has every right to hang it," Zink says of Stoltzfus.
