They Just Don't Care, Do They? (Updated and expanded, 7/13)

(See additional update below)

Correction, Please!

Mexican Anschluss in Arizona?

Item: 

In a June 29 essay burdened with the alarmist title "Eighty Mile Swath of Arizona Surrendered to Cartels," The New American addressed what it called "the menacing terror of drug traffickers and human smugglers that have all but taken adverse possession of the region."

"Eighty miles from the border with Mexico in Arizona, the federal government has posted signs warning Americans not to approach any closer to the border, as it is a region of `active drug and human smuggling' and that those that ignore the warning may “encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed,'" wrote TNA contributor Joe Wolverton II.

Those warning signs, he insisted, are "white flags of surrender flying 80 miles within the border of the United States of America. Is [sic] such examples of federal contempt of the border crisis enough to convince those who scoff at cries of treason and invasion?"

Correction:

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any territory in Arizona has been surrendered to Mexico, or to narcotics gangs operating out of Mexico. A Border Patrol agent stationed in the supposedly surrendered territory responded to a question about this supposed cession by dismissing it as "false information." 

The claim that the Obama administration turned over the territory to Mexico originated with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a publicity-fixated Republican neo-con and ally of John McCain. Babeu's jurisdiction does not abut the border with Mexico. Clarence Dupnink, sheriff of neighboring Pima County, which does share a border with Mexico, insists that border violence has actually decreased in recent years. 

Drug smuggling and related violence -- which are unavoidable bi-products of the demented "war on drugs," an unconstitutional and counterproductive effort to regulate the bloodstream of Americans -- are a problem for Arizona (albeit a smaller one now that it was several years ago). The same is true for sections of Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, and elsewhere.

Many crime-ridden urban neighborhoods are controlled by drug-dealing ethnic gangs; for example, some neighborhoods in Philadelphia are run by the Dominican mafia. Does this mean that parts of Philadelphia have been surrendered to the Dominican Republic? Do the depredations of the Russian mob in Brighton Beach mean that Brooklyn's "Little Odessa" is now an island of Russian sovereignty?

Keep an eye peeled for an upcoming TNA piece retailing Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's latest bombshell disclosure -- the sudden surge in beheadings committed by illegal immigrants in the Arizona desert!

The Obama Administration Running Legal Interference for New Black Panthers? 

Item:

"The New Black Panther Party has been a controversial subject for a number of reasons," wrote GOP stenographer Raven Clabough a July 10 posting on the TNA website. "On Election Day 2008, Black Panther member King Samir Shabazz and national chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz were caught on video bearing billyclubs outside of a Philadelphia polling center. An investigation was launched and charges of voter intimidation were made, but the Department of Justice, under the leadership of Eric Holder, elected to dismiss the case."

Correction:

The New Black Panther Party -- a less-than-fearsome group that is equal parts comic opera and street theater -- is a pretty loathsome outfit, and neither they nor anybody else should be permitted to intimidate voters for any reason. The Justice Department examined the behavior of NBBP cadres and decided to drop the criminal probe.


That was the Bush-Mukasey Justice Department, not the Obama-Holder Justice Department. 

The decision was made three months before either Obama or Holder had anything to do with the matter. 


J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney-turned-GOP activist, claims that under Obama and Holder the voting rights section of the Justice Department repeatedly showed "hostility" toward prosecuting intimidation cases involving "black defendants and white victims," and said that its dismissal of the NBBP case illustrates this institutionalized bigotry. 




Thomas J. Perrelli, identified by Adams as the one who ordered the dismissal of the case against the NBPP, wasn't confirmed until three months after the Bush administration dropped the criminal complaint.

Deputy Assitant AG Julie Fernandes, who per Adams' version ordered subordinates not to prosecute minority voter intimidation cases, didn't start at her post until six months after the criminal case was dismissed.

Why wasn't Adams outraged when the Bush-Mukasey Justice Department dropped the criminal probe of the NBPP? Why is he trying to give the Obama-Holder Justice Department all of the blame for this, when, at most, they were simply building on the decisions of their predecessors?


The Obama administration won the civil case against the NBBP by default. It didn't pursue an injunction against the entire organization -- which was the department's original approach -- focusing instead on the one individual whose actions, captured on tape, were clearly illegal.

What Adams describes as "reverse discrimination" has been referred to by others involved in the decision as a disagreement over strategy and priorities among "career people" in the department. This seems entirely plausible, pending corroboration from Adams of his alarming accusations of official misconduct that, if true, would be grounds not only for impeachment but criminal prosecution.  

UPDATE --

While the people in charge of TNA are pandering to the Fox-aligned demographic by retailing breathless accounts of Afro-Militarism, an Arizona offshoot of the National Socialist Movement -- led by former JBS member, Hitler fanboy, and likely federal asset J.T. Ready -- are actually taking people hostage at gunpoint.

The New Black Panther Party's alleged "voter intimidation" involved one NBBP goofball -- roughly one-eighth of the group's entire membership -- making faces and saying offensive things. The NSM's "border patrols" are quite likely to get someone killed.



Obama's a foreign-born usurper -- we read it in the check-out line!

Item:

"Globe magazine has jumped into the citizenship controversy with a July 12 cover story that states, `Obama was not born in the U.S.,' writes Raven Clabough, who appears to be TNA's liaison to the Hannitized. "The supermarket tabloid may not have the best track record for accurate reporting among mainstream publications, but it does have a large circulation and its voice and what it has to say will undoubtedly bring the issue of Obama's citizenship to the attention of a lot more people and cause them to consider seriously if there is anything to it."

Correction:

Actually, there's nothing to correct here, because there's no story -- at least none that The New American would have bothered with back when those producing it aspired to provide credible news and thought-provoking commentary. 

To the extent that there is "news" here, the substance of it would appear to be this: Whether or not Obama's an illegitimate president owing to foreign birth, a large-circulation tabloid has lent its support to that theory, and this will have an impact on the opinions of its readers (make that "browsers"). 

This isn't reporting. It's not even blogging. It is pure, undisguised pandering of the worst and most transparent variety. And it is an all-sufficient indictment of the abysmal standards that prevail at what was once an exceptional publication. 

Oh, If Only We Had a Military Dictator....

Item:


In a paean to "Operation Wetback," the paramilitary Border Patrol operation that rounded up and deported millions of Mexican laborers, Dr. Roger McGrath extols the "bold, decisive, and forceful leader" who presided over it: General Dwight Eisenhower (who was president at the time), and Lt. General Joe Swing, Director of the INS. 

"It took a military man, who thought that national borders should mean something" in order to defeat the "unholy alliance of agribusinessmen and other employers," in concert with perfidious Mexicans, to subvert the border and undermine the labor market in the southwest, writes McGrath. 

The problem began during World War II, when, "with so many Americans in the service — and fighting and dying overseas — Mexicans illegally entered the United States to take advantage of employment opportunities, especially as agricultural laborers."

Fortunately, Eisenhower and Swing were willing to employ military means to beat back this invasion, offering an example we would be wise to follow, concludes Dr. McGrath.


Correction:


First of all, it's notable to see Eisenhower -- not Robert Welch's favorite public figure -- being extolled as not only a hero, but as something akin to the savior of the republic, in the pages of The New American. Perhaps the TNA editorial staff decided it was acceptable -- in this one instance -- to traffic in "nuances" that differ from Mr. Welch's views. (Of course, publicly differing in "nuance" from the incumbent JBS management is a firing offense, or at least it was in one specific instance.)


Of greater significance is the omission from Dr. McGrath's essay of any mention of the 1942 "Bracero" treaty between the U.S. and Mexico. 

McGrath depicts Mexican laborers as "taking advantage" of dislocations in the labor market caused by the war socialist economy of WWII. In fact, it was the FDR regime that invited those laborers into the country through the 1942 Bracero Treaty, which didn't expire until 1963. Through that agreement, the U.S. government imported millions of Mexicans to labor as "guest workers" in fields, factories, and other productive roles left vacant because of mobilization for the war. 

Mexico at the time was in the midst of its own depression, which was even deeper and more tragic than ours. So it's not surprising that millions of Mexicans -- in some cases, literally entire villages -- migrated northward in search of the promised wage of 30 cents an hour (which was specified in the treaty). Nor is it surprising that the northward migration didn't flow tidily in government-established channels. 

"Operation Wetback" was not the first time Mexican laborers who had come north to fill jobs left vacant in wartime were rounded up and expelled. During Woodrow Wilson's War, as well, fan informal Bracero-style agreement was reached with Mexico that permitted laborers to come north with their families. Many English-speaking American citizens born in this country pursuant to that agreement were among those eventually rounded up and summarily expelled at gunpoint.

None of this is mentioned or even alluded to in Dr. McGrath's homily regarding the supposed virtues iron-handed military rule.

By omitting "Bracero" from this discussion, McGrath produces a caricature: The villains are insidious Mexicans "stealing" jobs from American draftees, and conniving businessmen bereft of civic virtue. 

The "heroes," by way of contrast, are "decisive, forceful" military leaders in positions of political authority -- guys like Lt. Gen. Swing, whom McGrath describes as "[h]andsome and square-jawed with sparkling blue eyes, white hair, and a bearing that suggested strength and decisiveness...." Yes, someone like that is just the hero to beat back the Brown Peril, isn't he?

Mini-clarification, July 18: In the photo caption on page 37 in the print edition of TNA's July 19 issue, there is a fleeting reference to the "Bracero Agreement" as providing to Mexican laborers "a legal way to enter the United States and work." This truncated, inadequate description is the only mention of Bracero in the entire article.

Observations:

The TNA stories examined above display the superficiality, selective credulity, and opportunism that have come to characterize the publication since -- oh, let's pick a date purely at random; how about October 2006? Dr. McGrath's story, produced by a capable writer and long-established academic figure, represents something worse: Deliberate omission in an effort to promote an ideological agenda.

There was a time, not long ago, when TNA would take the time and invest the effort to examine and report on issues responsibly, rather than simply retailing whatever resonates with the Republican-wedded, Fox "News" and Talk Radio-obsessed sub-population. 

They're too busy riding the wave in Appleton to take the time and care to find out if part of Arizona really is under the rule of throat-slitting Mexican narcotics lords, or if the Holder-era Justice Department really is a festering pit of Afro-racist corruption. 

But this would require actual reporting, and it might complicate the effort to pander to the lowest common denominator -- and in the cases discussed above, that denominator runs right along one of the fault-lines Robert Welch warned about.

 

        "The Cressbeckler Stance": JBS-TV's New Star Attraction?

Why bother watching Art Thompson stumble through the latest installment of "cranky old reactionary reads the newspaper"? Joad Cressbeckler offers pretty much the same content in a much more entertaining way:

The McManus Credo: Dulce et Decorum est Mendacium Decir

He never stops lying, and until the breath permanently departs his lungs he never will. 

For an inveterate liar like John McManus, a speaking tour presents a number of potential pitfalls. One is the possibility of being asked, in public, about the lies you have told and the people you have betrayed. This happened to Jack during an interview on KID-AM in Idaho Falls, and he handled the matter with the unctuous dishonesty that is his most recognizable trait. 


"I'm curious as to why you fired William Norman Grigg," inquired a caller during Jack's appearance, "and also if you would address the accusations of anti-Semitic statements, [such as] saying that Jews and masons are the cause of the conspiracy --"


"Now, wait a minute," interjected an audibly flustered McManus as the host very thoughtfully cut off the caller. "Hold on a second, you're spreading a lot of rumors."


"Mr. Grigg refused to, uh, adopt the positions of the Society regarding decorum in his blog and so forth," Jack lied, inventing yet another version of what happened in October 2006. "We asked him to do so, he said he wouldn't, so we said, okay, well then we can't continue."


This is an extravagant falsehood, as I have discussed elsewhere. "Decorum" had nothing to do with my firing. I was fired for publishing a blog on my own time -- one Appleton used as a fund-raising tool for nearly two weeks after I was terminated. The only specific charge Art Thompson could muster was that I had used my blog to publish material that had been "rejected" by Appleton because I had disagreed with JBS management on matters of "nuance."

I was offered the opportunity, after the fact, to grovel for my job by agreeing that everything I wrote or spoke for public consumption would be subject to prior approval by Appleton. 

One of those who would be given the veto over my writings and utterances was John F. McManus, who had spent decades promiscuously violating the JBS's standards and principles regarding anti-Jewish bigotry.

Jack's second answer is a combo platter of mendacity, one that is even larger, more audacious -- and, quite unintentionally, very revealing.


"He [Grigg] has accused me of being an anti-Semite," Jack continued. "An anti-Semite is somebody who hates. I don't hate anybody, I never have hated anybody, I'm not an anti-Semite -- and I don't want to discuss the matter any further."


Notice that the caller did not connect the two questions: He didn't ask Jack why I had characterized him as an anti-Semite, or even mention that I had made the accusation. Jack's answer was intended to leave the uninformed listener with the impression that I was the source -- apparently, the original and only one -- of the idea that Jack has ever expressed anti-Semitic views.


Jack knows this isn't true, of course -- because, among other things, Jack eagerly used me in October 2005 to defend him against those accusations. 

The source of those accusations is a large and enviably well-documented dossier compiled by Art Thompson, who had become alarmed over Jack's anti-Jewish agitation no later than 2000. Jack's side career as a Jew-baiter made him (and the JBS) vulnerable to blackmail during the 2005 management struggle. 

When an effort was made to blackmail Jack, I resigned my job in disgust and, to an extent, his defense -- not because I sympathized with his bigoted views, but because I couldn't countenance the use of criminal means to settle a leadership dispute. 

At the time I knew nothing about Jack's views beyond the clips I had been shown by his critics in the previous JBS administration, and the fact that he had used the repellent expression "slimy New York Jew" in a conversation. After Art Thompson was appointed CEO, Jack asked me to re-join the staff.

It wasn't until Don Fotheringham used his website to publicize the Art Thompson-created dossier on Jack that I learned that he had spent years propagating anti-Semitic nonsense, while pulling down a pretty decent salary to be the figurehead president of the JBS. He did so in prolonged, conscious defiance of the Birch Society's principles. This is why he was -- at Art Thompson's initiative -- removed from his position as JBS president. As the effort to blackmail him in 2005 demonstrates, Jack's actions directly threatened the very existence of the organization.


So, naturally, Jack was reinstated by Art Thompson as JBS president, and a year after I had risked my job on their behalf, Jack and Art stabbed me in the back. 


Jack's self-serving definition of "anti-Semitism" as "one who hates" is worthy of remark. I can't address Jack's inner life, or his unspoken motives, so I grant that it's entirely possible that he doesn't hate Jews. That isn't the issue, nor is Jack's definition of "anti-Semitism" the proper one for our purposes. 

Jack is committed, as a matter of covenant, to a minuscule and deeply authoritarian schismatic para-Catholic cult founded by unabashed anti-Semite Leonard Feeney. In 1959, Feeney -- a defrocked priest still referred to as "Father" by his followers -- insisted that  "the Jews, as an organized force, are the implacable, declared enemies of Christianity — of its tenets, its traditions, its moral code, its very culture. We think it is vital, too, for American Catholics to realize that the Church has always known this fact about the Jews, and, to the extent of her influence, has counseled and decreed regulations for curbing their malice." (Emphasis added.) 

 Feeney and his followers insist that "the state must declare itself officially Catholic" -- that is, "Catholic" as defined by Feeney, since everybody else in the Roman Catholic Church is controlled by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Under a Feeneyite regime, the "curbs" inflicted on Jews by the state would include the denial of citizenship. Historically this has led to some pretty ugly consequences, up to and including the Shoah.

Presumably, Jack would see this as a form of rigorous "Christian" love -- the same kind of tough but necessary correction that Torquemada and other torturers applied in order to purify Jews and other heretics through pain. The day after I was fired, while I was still bleeding from the dorsal knife wounds he helped to inflict, Jack sent me an e-mail professing to be my friend. So there's reason to believe that his views of affection would be suited to the practice of "Christian" kindness of the sort described above.

Despite the fact that the Feeneyite ideology is utterly incompatible with constitutionalism, let alone the professed principles of the JBS, Jack has been peddling this stuff while taking home a Birch paycheck -- and he's been doing so for decades.

Several weeks ago, I received a letter from a veteran in the liberty movement who describes his first meeting with McManus: 

I first met Jack in 1973. I was a high school senior in Boston. My history teacher, [name omitted] ... had given me "The Law" by Bastiat and I discovered I was a libertarian. [The teacher] told me about the JBS bookstore in Belmont and I rode my bicycle over to check it out.

That's when I met Jack. I was at the bookstore perhaps once a month or so buying books. When you entered the front door, the book store was to the right, and Jack's office was to the left. If Jack was there he'd always invite me into his office for a chat. Jack would give me his spiel on the Masonic Pope, the Masonic  UN, and the Masonic Masons. In the summer of 1974, I told Jack I was planning to go to [an Evangelical Christian college] that fall. Jack was horrified! "They hate the Catholic Church!" he said. I was still indifferent to religion. I decided on [that school] because I didn't want to go to a leftist college like Boston University or any of the other schools in Massachusetts.

I'd found out about [the school Jack hated] through their ads on the back cover of American Opinion magazine, and I made the mistake of assuming that since the JBS bookstore sold lots of libertarian books, (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Bastiat, etc) that anything and anyone connected to the JBS also had to be good. Duh!

Anyway, I only lasted one semester ... and soon after I returned in December, Jack told me about St. Benedict Center, which at that time was in Harvard, MA. He also loaned me a number of books about catholic history, extolling the virtues of the Inquisition, Queen Isabella, Philip II and the like...

It didn't occur to me at the time, but looking back, and reading what you say about Jack on your blog, it is interesting that at no time did Jack seem interested in what I might do in relation to the JBS, but he was extremely interested in getting me involved with SBC. [the Feeneyite cult's religious community].And all of this while sitting in his office in the Birch Society headquarters, collecting his salary from the JBS.

So his religious crusading goes back at least to mid-1974.

Jack is obviously deeply committed to the Feeneyite religion. On the basis of his example it's apparent that honesty is not among its tenets. 

Nemo me impune lacessit!

Appleton's Ministry of Truth in Action

Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify....


As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames. --


Orwell, 1984




That familiar passage describes how Winston Smith, as an employee of the Ministry of Truth, "rectified" public records by excising inconvenient or embarrassing facts and casting them into the Memory Hole.


The stalwart defenders of truth, freedom, and decency in Appleton, as is demonstrated below, follow exactly the same procedure in the interests of sanitizing their corporate image.


(Click on the images below to enlarge.)































"We live in a world of double standards," pontificated JBS CEO Art Thompson in a January 13 essay. "There is the standard of what a socialist can say and do and then there is the standard of what a conservative or constitutionalist can say or do."



Art either is possessed of world-class audacity, or stricken with a crippling lack of self-awareness, to be hurling that particular set of stones from the dubious shelter of a very brittle glass house. By "stones," of course, I refer to the geologic objects. If Art were actually possessed of the metaphorical kind, he wouldn't have to take refuge in cheap, petty acts of censorship.



As I have copiously documented in this space, Art and his ally Jack McManus are notorious for their double-jointed ethics.


Herewith a brief but necessary recap:


In 2000, Art campaigned to have Jack cashiered as JBS President because of Jack's long-standing relationship with a schismatic Catholic group whose teachings are unabashedly anti-Semitic. Jack was videotaped delivering an address to the group in which he propounded a theory of history and politics depicting a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy as the enemy of the Christian West.


Jack is entitled to both his religious convictions and his political opinions, of course, even when they flatly contradict the principles and official positions of the JBS. But under long-established, black-letter corporate policy, Jack would be -- at the very least -- "red-starred" for his high-profile association with an anti-Semitic sect.


It's impossible to see how he could, in good conscience, continue to be the most prominent spokesman and official ideologist of the Society when he engaged in conduct and cultivated associations that would have been grounds for expulsion on the part of a volunteer member -- unless he was the beneficiary of one of the "double standards" assailed by Art in his January 13 essay.


Jack was removed as President and given a place on the Council, but he wasn't fired. A few years later, Art collaborated with Jack -- who retained his position on the Board of Incorporators -- to oust G. Vance Smith as CEO. Apparently as a reward for his cooperation, Art re-instated Jack as JBS President.


This was done despite the fact that Jack was being blackmailed by Vance's supporters, who threatened to take the compromising video excerpts of Jack's anti-Jewish speeches -- excerpts that had been compiled by Art Thompson five years earlier -- to media outlets if Jack didn't agree to a compromise that would leave Vance in his job for at least another year. Jack explained his predicament to me. Disgusted over the prospect of the management struggle being settled by blackmail, I resigned from the staff of the JBS.



Two days later, after Vance was removed and the Thompson-McManus faction was installed, Jack invited me back on staff and made a point of having me stand next to them when Art first addressed the Home Office staff as CEO.



One year later, almost to the day, Art and Jack, along with Alan Scholl and Gary Benoit, decided that I had to be fired as Senior Editor because I had begun to publish a personal blog entitled Pro Libertate. I did this because of numerous e-mails and other communications from JBS members and TNA subscribers who were puzzled when Appleton discontinued the Birch Blog.



The Gang of Four has never clearly explained why I was fired. I was invited to grovel for my job by taking down the blog, apologizing in writing for everything published therein, and promising that every word I wrote or spoke for public consumption would be vetted by Appleton. Had I done so, Art told me, I might get my job back. I wrote him a letter explaining that Appleton rented my time as an employee, but didn't own my name or my private time. So he dispatched an official termination letter sanctimoniously -- and falsely -- accusing me of behaving in a fashion incompatible with the "principles" laid down by Robert Welch.


He never specified how I had violated those principles, with good reason: Unlike Jack, who violated (and continues to violate) those principles promiscuously, impenitently, and with impunity, I never did.


One standard applied to me. Another entirely different one applied to Jack. By my math, two is twice as many as one; ergo, Art and Jack (and Alan and Gary) were guilty of a double standard.


Accordingly, when Art saw fit to pose as an ethical tutor, my responsibility to the truth dictated that I underscore his own culpable hypocrisy. Doing so meant I had to find a way to breach the Chinese Wall erected to keep me from posting to comment threads found on JBS websites. I knew -- on the basis of previous performance -- that once the comment was posted it would soon be cast into the Memory Hole. Thankfully, with the help of a friend more computer-savvy than myself I was able to capture images of the comment thread (see above) before it was "rectified" by Appleton's Ministry of Truth.


Here's the full text of the comment:


[title] The Age of the Double Standard


How about this one: A self-described "freedom" organization fires a long-time senior editor for the supposed offense of maintaining a personal blog, but continues to employ a publisher who -- in defiance of long-standing company policy -- routinely gives speeches before anti-Semitic audiences? This patent hypocrisy is compounded by the fact that the same publisher had once been identified as a liability by the company CEO ... the author of the foregoing essay lamenting hypocrisy.

Motes and beams, Mr. Thompson.


As those who visit that thread in its current form can see, the comment has been dispatched into the ether.


The terms of usage statement at the JBS website specifies: "By submitting your comments we reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete your comments and portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice."



It is instructive to see how that "discretion" is employed: The comment above is confrontational and highly critical, but it is neither vulgar nor libelous. It is the documentable truth -- one that the supple-spined Upper Management in Appleton cannot countenance and from which it seeks to "protect" its readers.


This behavior is indistinguishable from the internet censorship practiced by China's Communist oligarchs and others of that ilk -- something the JBS has properly denounced.


Thus we find ourselves colliding with yet another of Appleton's double standards.

Oh, by the way.....

The comment thread here also illustrates, to good effect, why interdicting my posts is a corporate priority for the truth-aversive people in JBS Upper Management.

Previews of Coming Detractions

"We know there's going to be an attack piece on the John Birch Society coming out in the New York Times," intones Art Thompson in his most recent vlog. When it comes, he insists, it will demonstrate that The Powers That Be are "afraid of our potential" and provoked by the "growth" and successes of the JBS.




I've been aware of the impending Times piece on the JBS for about a week, since I was contacted by a reporter for the paper and spent more than an hour being interviewed by him. I answered his questions as candidly and completely as I could.


I'm fairly confident that I know the general contours of the piece he intends to write. It will not be flattering. Nor will it be a simple "attack" piece, as Thompson maintains. It will almost certainly place the JBS squarely in the center of the constellation of "right-wing hate groups." And for this, Art Thompson and Jack McManus have nobody to blame but themselves.


After I was fired, the current JBS management attempted -- briefly and unpersuasively -- to make the case that my supposedly defamatory treatment of certain abhorrent people (i.e. the repulsive Mark Levin) exposed the organization to a potential libel action. In fact, someone in upper management quietly circulated the story that I had actually been sued for libel. The first claim was ridiculous on its face. The second was a puerile lie.



What really rankles about all of this, of course, is that the decision to fire me as a supposed liability of that sort was made by Jack McManus, a person who spent years propagating anti-Semitic theological and political theories, which were captured on audio and videotape, for the edification of schismatic Catholic groups. His eagerness to propagate those views eventually came to the attention of ... Art Thompson, at the time Director of Field Activities, who played a pretty significant role in the events that led to Jack's ouster as JBS President.


In one frantic memo, in fact, Art seemed to suggest that Jack was actually preparing to attack the JBS in collaboration with its detractors. He also pointed out that Jack had been evangelizing on behalf of anti-Semitism for about at least 3 1/2 years, and perhaps as many as ten years, "on our nickel."


Art's recommendation was to put together a short collection of clips from Jack's anti-Jewish diatribes, and document carefully JBS management's effort to get him to "do the right thing" -- namely, to resign "as a retirement move."


That's more or less what happened. Mind you, Jack wasn't fired; he was forced to play a reduced role and take a reduced salary, and a position on the JBS Council. His letter actually said, in almost so many words, that he was resigning in order to spend more time with his family.


No, really.


A few years later, Art -- who was working behind the scenes to bring down Vance Smith -- was pre-emptively fired by Vance. Somehow Art ended up making common cause with ... Jack McManus, most likely out of shared antipathy for Vance. Just prior to Vance's ouster, his supporters began to circulate a compilation of video clips I call "Jack McManus Sings the Nuremberg Variations" -- that is, conspicuously ugly excerpts from those same anti-Semitic speeches.




I was among those lobbied by Vance's side. I was asked, "How would this look on the evening news? On CNN? What use would Morris Dees make of this kind of thing?" My question in reply was two-fold: Where did they get the clips, and what use did they plan to make of them?


I didn't get an answer, but it's obvious: The idea of blackmailing Jack actually began with Art Thompson.


Repulsive as Jack's speeches were, I found blackmail to be even worse. So when it looked as if Vance's effort to use the compromat against Jack would succeed, I resigned from the JBS; I simply couldn't be associated with an organization in which personnel disputes were settled through blackmail. (That sort of thing, I had winsomely supposed, might take place in the Mirror Universe JBS, but not in this dimension's version.)


Two days later, Vance was gone, and I was entreated back on staff. The supplicant who persuaded me was ... Jack McManus.


Almost exactly a year later, Jack -- the guy whose vulnerability to blackmail had left the organization in critical jeopardy, the one whose anti-Semitic track record presently imperils the organization -- was among those who decided to fire me for the supposed offense of maintaining a personal blog they didn't control.



I've recounted this before. It's worth reviewing again now, even if the Times never publishes its envisioned JBS profile. I've anticipated that the JBS would find itself in serious trouble, both from a PR perspective and potentially from federal scrutiny, owing to the current management's myopia about the unsavory correspondences it has cultivated in recent years.



As I've pointed out previously, it almost seems as if the people running things in Appleton have set out to validate the "sandwich smear" -- the old rhetorical tactic of squeezing a reference to the JBS between two slices of ugliness (as in the phrase, "radical groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society, and the National Socialist Movement").



I began this blog as a way of protecting my reputation against the scurrilities Appleton routinely deploys against those who have left the staff under less-than-favorable circumstances; it also serves as my "Correction, Please!" column for dealing with sundry pieces of official dishonesty from JBS management.



Should the Times publish the article, and my quotes feature prominently therein, I fully expect that Art and his homies will insist that I've consummated my fall from grace, that I'm now an amalgam of Judas, Maleagant, and Benedict Arnold, that I've joined the ranks of the Raizgul, that I'm an apostate and sinner and sell-out. They will pile on my shoulders the sum of all the rage and hate against the Establishment Media felt by Birchers from Robert Welch down.



As long as this blog is available, people will have access to the truth. They'll be able to see the unalloyed hypocrisy of a group of people who would fire me for writing a blog, but merely demote Jack McManus for having a full-time sideline as an anti-Semitic demagogue. Readers will have access to my warnings about the repellent figures who have adhered to the JBS during the two years or so that it was devoted monomaniacally to dealing with the "Brown Peril" from Mexico.



Jack is finishing an extended speaking tour for the JBS. Right now, he is the public face of the John Birch Society. He is also their largest liability, although Art Thompson has to be considered at least a respectable second in that category, given that he was the one who appointed Jack to be JBS president -- just a few years after doing everything he could to remove him as a threat to the organization's well-being.


The JBS is not threatened by the New York Times; negative publicity would be an improvement over being consigned, ala Spinal Tap, to the "Where Are They Now?" file. The persistent dishonesty and bad judgment of the organization's upper management represents a far graver threat.



I've lived and worked in Washington, D.C. and spent a lot of time in the company of Establishment journalists. I know better than to assume that I know a stranger based on a single phone call, of any duration. That being said, I will offer this defense of the reporter from the New York Times who interrupted my workday a week ago: The first thing this fellow, a two-time cancer survivor, did when he called me was to ask after Korrin's health.


This offers a very commendable contrast to the conduct of the former friends who fired me in October 2006: Since that time, they've offered not a single syllable of sympathy for Korrin, or anyone else in our family.