I Repeat: Who Is “Mr. Smith?”
Well, no one’s admitted to being “Mr. Smith” yet. I was going to let it drop, but this week he published a column even stupider than his last effort. I think the bastard’s toying with me, trying to make me go mad guessing his secret identity.
Let’s survey this week’s damage:
Old News in Colorado
Mr. SmithIf the interminable faux Indian Ward Churchill had lived in Colorado circa 1864, you can bet that his first trick would be to shape-shift out of his affirmative action disguise as rapidly as possible. Back issues of the Register-Call newspaper in Central City Colorado and the Miner’s Daily Register tell a true story from another day and time that shows just how far the wimping down of America has progressed.
See, most wingnuts yearn for the innocent days of the 1950s, when everyone spent their Saturdays bowling, vegetarians were regularly jailed, and the clitoral orgasm was an unseemly art practiced only by pagans and communists.
Not Mr. Smith. He yearns for the ’60s- the 1860s…
On April 16, 1865, the newspapers reported the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. A Kentuckian by the name of William Taber was overheard to say, “I’m glad of it. Served him right.” The comment is an interesting parallel to Psycho Ward’s notion that ordinary citizens working in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the business travelers on commercial airline flights were the villains while the murdering terrorists were gallant warriors.
At present, Psycho Ward is still professing at taxpayer expense. William Taber lived in another time. As word spread of the hateful comments of William Taber, the general consensus was that there should be an out of court settlement involving a sturdy tree and a rope.
“Yeah, we all knew Colorado was goin’ downhill when they adopted that fancy system of laws and turned their backs on Jesus-ordained lynch mobs.”
Sheriff Cozzens and lawyer Henry M. Tiller convened court in a local theater building and explained that lynching by the locals would be a very bad thing for the town’s reputation, even though the offense was obvious to all concerned.
Plus, it’s probably unconstitutional to lynch someone for saying something you don’t agree with.
Taber was indeed transferred to military custody in Denver and the April 27, 1864 edition of the Miner’s Daily Register picks up the case from there:
“Taber, the southern sympathizer, has been condemned at Denver and sentenced to carry a bag of sand weighing sixty pounds six hours a day for sixty days.”
And, of course, Colorado’s hard rock miners who spent more hours a day busting rocks and hauling ore than the offender calculated that he got off very easy indeed. And check the dates. Eleven days between the offense and the sentence? Traffic tickets aren’t settled that quickly in today’s over-lawyered courts.
And even though their actions violated the First and Eighth Amendments, the townsfolk declared it a great day for freedom, and shared a bowl of new-fangled “iced cream” to celebrate.
But maybe justice is served in other ways today… Time for tenure to be altered or abolished. And lest we offend the sensibilities of PETA, co-religionists of the I’ll Sue tribe, Psycho Ward’s sentence for offenses against America could even be a politically correct form of community service. I’d suggest he do something useful like loading and unloading 50 pound bags of Purina Monkey Chow at an animal preserve, zoo or simian food bank. And he could be paid what he’s worth instead of taking in a hundred grand a year as a legal entitlement of the corrupt and offensive tenure system.
The ACLU wants the law of the land set by according to the “Are you offended?” standard? bring it on. As Ann Coulter recently said, “Even a female math professor at Harvard should be able to run the numbers on this one.”
Let’s recap the highlights of Mr. Smith’s column:
-Longed nostalgically for a time he wasn’t even alive for
-Said the only problem with lynching was that it “would be a very bad thing for a town’s reputation”
-Advocated forcing people whose opinions he dislikes to carry 60-pound bags of rocks
-Mentioned some weird shit about a “simian food bank”
-Capped it all off with a quote from Ann Coulter
Like I’ve said, I think this guy is too wingnutty to be believable.
OK, “Mr. Smith,” c’mon. You don’t have to tell me who you are, but drop some hint about your identity in your next column. I’m onto you, buddy…
(Incidentally, I noticed that “Mr. Smith” started writing for The Rant around the same time Pete from the Dark Window stopped blogging. Hmmmmm…)
Aw, shucks, Brad- kain’t ya take a little g’ud naitcher’d ribbin’? Ah’m all afeared y’ben taikin’ this all tew serrus-like. Hangin’s all in fun, y’no? Faimbly Entry-Tainment. Braing the kidds.
Clearly, the rant has a pinko mole. A real conservative would have threatened Churchill with specters of Wounded Knee…
Freedom Camp!
“Taber was indeed transferred to military custody in Denver and the April 27, 1864 edition of the Miner’s Daily Register picks up the case from there
Yeah. It picks up the case ELEVEN MONTHS IN THE PAST
Perhaps Mr. Smith’s disaffection for higher education stems from some sort of ugly business involving a math teacher?
I’m actually a distant relative of William Taber (great-great-great grandfather’s brother, on my mother’s side) and I must take issue with Mr. Smith’s version of the story. The story as reported in the notorious Register-Call issue was based on an anonymous source who, as it later turned out, was none other than Sherif Cozzen’s son, Willie “Lazy Dog” Cozzens, who was better known as the town drunk.
If Mr Smith had bothered to read the Central City Herald, the real paper of record in Central City (as opposed to the Register-Call, which was little more than a tabloid rag), he would have known that the whole story was concocted as way to chase Mr. Taber out of town so that Willie Cozzen could lay hands on his valuable moonshine distillary/bait shop.
Of course, Taber’s name was later cleared and his possessions restored once the plot was revealed.
Boy they were fast in those days. Sentenced 354 days before word that Lincoln was assassinated even got to town?!? A liberal might call that a rush to judgement, thank god Mr. Smith and his “Queen of Hearts” off-with-their heads approach taught us differently …
As I said on the previous “Smith” thread, this guy’s genius is in cramming every possible boogeyman into a few short paragraphs, whether they have anything to do with the story or not.
A Colorado professor says something stupid about the 9/11 attacks. “Smith” responds by writing a few short paragraphs on affirmative action, lawyers, Indians (the “I’ll Sue” tribe–heh), tenure, taxes, traffic court, government (the “Vast Non-representative Conspiracy), PETA, non-Christians (coreligionists of PETA, heh), the ACLU, Harvard, and food banks.
Of these, the only one that applies even tangentially is tenure. Neither the ACLU nor any food bank brought us the tenure system. Neither Harvard University nor any traffic court judge has defended Churchill. “Smith” is a master at batting out a list of unrelated names and institutions that wingnuts think of as tainted, then presenting this list as though it were a bill of particulars in an indictment.
I have to wonder, though, how Ted Kennedy keeps getting left off of these lists. I submit that this is proof positive that “Smith” is covering up his own role in the incident at Chappaquiddick.
I think it’s a little too over the top to be effective. If there’s going to be a true mole, he would have to tone it down a little bit.
Sorry, I came in late. Is this who you’re talking about? I didn’t bother with that TV show when it was on, but I remember the speculation over how they got it to talk.
(“…It was the BLURST of times? You stupid monkey!”)