blogger interrupted

Is that the headline Ohio bloggers are waiting for?

On Monday, July 27, 2008, an arsonist torched Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman’s Tremont home in the middle of the night, while Cimperman, his wife, and his newborn daughter slept.  Only the help of neighbors saved their lives.  Why did Cimperman’s house get torched?  Racism.

Cimperman also told The Plain Dealer on Monday that he had received two threatening letters last summer after he stood up for two black families on his street who were victims of arsons believed to be racially motivated. One letter, he said, simply read: “Die.”

He turned over those letters, which he said were signed “the local Ku Klux Klan,” to police investigators last year.

These embers of hate, which smolder now in Tremont - one of the oldest, most inclusive, diverse neighborhoods in Cleveland - have smoldered in the hearts of Americans since the day this country was born.  They are there, in all of us, sometimes seeming to have gone.

But with one breath, the embers flare.  And then burn.  And then show up in a newspaper having engulfed a man’s home in a good neighborhood, for the simple fact that he stood up to the hate.

I’ve been banging this drum since the day the Hillary Clinton campaign decided, that to breathe on these embers, this was her path to the nomination of the Democratic Party.  She lost, but the embers she lit are still smoldering, and are now lyying under a blow torch held by the Republican Party and John McCain.

It’s not just the anonymous email smears.  Named Ohio Republican bloggers are gleefully onboard.  There is no innuendo, race-baiting, or toilet full of hateful shit they will shy from crawling into.  They do it every single day.  Tom Blumer, Matt Hurley, Matt Naugle, Nixguy Dave who won’t tell us his last name, Ralph King…if their stuff were all put into one magazine, published under the name “White People Unite”, that publication would be on the ADL hate watchlist in a heartbeat.

What are lefty bloggers in Ohio doing in the face of this?

Not much.

While the entire McCain campaign, the Republican Party, and Ohio Republican blogging, has been reduced to arguing that Barack Obama is an uppity Negro who wants to fuck your daughter on top of a burning American flag, Ohio lefty “progressive” bloggers have been largely silent.  It’s been me, and Plunderbund.  That’s about it.

Lisa Renee Ward?  Scott Piepho?  Jill Miller Zimon?  David Potts?  Nick DeCenzo?  George Nemeth?  Scott Bakalar?  Bill Callahan?  Bill Sloat?  Jeff Coryell?  Kyle Kutuchief?  Jason Haas? Len at Blogesque?  Anthony Fossacecca?  Brian Rothenberg?  Dave Harding?  Where are your voices?

And those are just the bloggers.  Not one single elected official in this state, Democrat or Republican, has had one syllable to say about the poisonous environment that is being created in this campaign.  Not one.

Not a black elected official.

Not a white elected official.

Not one Democrat.

Not one Republican.

What are you people waiting for?

Are you waiting for the headline on this post?  Are you waiting to pour your hearts out in a soaring eulogy about the life of one of the greatest black men in American history after a nightmare shocks you out of denial?

Wake up and smell the poison.  It’s everywhere.

The answer to hate speech is more speech.  It is the central justification for protected speech under the First Amendment.  If the first half of that equation is met with silence from the second half, guess which half wins.

I don’t know what leads to this silence - whether it’s cowardice, or a tin ear, or obliviousness, or simply a fear of getting into a fray that is physically revolting to a normal human being.  I expect this cowardice from the likes of Dennis Kucinich, Tim Ryan, Betty Sutton, Zack Space, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Marcy Kaptur, Lee Fisher, Rich Cordray, Ben Espy, Frank Jackson, Ted Strickland, Chris Redfern, and the rest of the cowards who pretend to lead us, a majority of whom handed Hillary more gas cans when her campaign started this fire.  I could list every elected official in Ohio who has failed to utter Word One against this tide, but that’s a waste of space.

I expect more of Ohio’s progressive bloggers.  I really do.

I’m probably wrong to do that, aren’t I.

What I should expect of Ohio bloggers, apparently, is their self-righteous, day late, dollar short, handwringing on the day that someone takes a shot at Barack.  Because make no mistake.  In the face of such silence - not just here in Ohio’s little corner of the blogosphere, but in the mouths of every “leader” in America - this kind of hate manifests itself in the worst way, every single time.

So I’ll just keep waiting.  Maybe it’ll be worth the wait.  I’m sure the prose in the Ohio blogosphere will be particularly eloquent on that day.

Boohoo.  Ouch.

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