After bragging about our recent nod in The Denver Post (no, we’re not quite over it yet, yes, our moms are very proud of us), we have quite the episode in store for you this week. Once again, Kyle Clark of local NBC affiliate 9News joins us, this time to talk about the pretty awkward clash that happened between normie racist rank and file anti-migrant cranks led by terminal loser and Jeffco GOP County Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi Pallozzi, and ultra racist online neo-nazi freaks that name themselves outrageous horseshit like “Goyum Defense League,” “City Council Death Squad,” and “Sad Little Baby Cowards Who Blame Jews For Their Shitty, Shitty Lives and Cry to Random City Councilors About it.”
Kyle was covering last week’s Lakewood City Council as part of his excellent series on the created-fully-out-of-paranoid-whole-cloth fantasy that some local Republican politicians and activists have concocted that there is a secret plot afoot to turn Lakewood into a sanctuary city with the horrific consequence that we might be forced to help people who don’t look like us.
Unamerican insanity, we know.
What the Lakewood City Council wasn’t prepared for, apparently, was the onslaught of antisemitism from very-most-likely out of town sickos who make a habit of sitting around in their lonely rooms by their lonely selves in racist chatrooms organizing the takeover of local city council remote testimony to spread antisemitic hatred to anyone who is forced to listen. The Denver Post did a pretty decent rundown of the incident which is worth your time to read in full, but here’s a brief excerpt so you get the idea:
The caller came on the line during public comment at last week’s Lakewood City Council meeting and immediately launched into a hateful, antisemitic tirade that made claims about Jews, repeating multiple oft-recited tropes.
From the audience in the council chambers, someone shouted: “Are you going to allow this?”
How nice.
We also revisited the topic of how to cover politicians like Lauren Boebert who exist purely to get attention and notoriety, regardless of if it’s positive or negative, and especially regardless of the voters these politicians were elected to represent. Kyle's argument, which I'm pretty much in full agreement with, is that ignoring it doesn't make it go away, and where's the line anyway? Should reporters refuse to talk about bigots and cranks when there are 10 or 12 of them? What about when there are 150 or 300? What about when they get elected mayor? Failing to shine a light on this hatred and presenting these views to the public allows it to fester in darkness, and out of the two bad options of exposing people to hateful ideas and shielding them from them, I think I err on the side of letting people hear and see for themselves in hopes their better angels prevail.
Our other big segment in this episode is around what Jason has taken to calling The Republican Caucus Curse on ColoradoPols.com. To wit, since 2010 (that’s 14 years ago kids!) not a single Republican in Colorado has graduated from the State Legislature to higher office (and no, county commissioners don’t count, even though they’re generally much better paid than state lawmakers). Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof:
All this, and we still talk about how Democrats keep winning and almost more importantly, Republicans keep losing special elections all over the country! Congress finally found the votes to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security, even though the Senate wanted nothing to do with this ridiculousness, and much more!
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Episode 182: The Made-Up Migrant Scare in Lakewood (feat. Kyle Clark)