ToMA: Historic building, free speech take hits

Merry Nebeker, speaking entirely free of critical thinking or pertinent expertise, carries water for the extremists, lamely attempting to divert attention from the nastiness of the racists in our community and the antics that made Councilman Blair internationally famous last week.

She toes the lines well grooved by many of the hipshooting commenters -- that the mural is an inappropriate political statement, that it damages an historic building, and that critics are impairing Mr Blair's right to free speech. None of this is supportable in the slightest by facts.

The mural is by the kids and for the kids, primarily their own expression of ideas to help them be healthier. Because the largest image in the mural is of a non-white kid, the reactionaries see something different. The kids don't.

While the school is old, the part with the mural -- a cafeteria added relatively recently -- is neither old nor distinguished architecturally in any way. That's a classic red herring.

And Mr Blair has not only been allowed to express whatever dumbass ideas he has, he's been encouraged to do so and paid wages to do so for years -- up until he said something so dumbass that it threatened his employer's revenue stream. Now he gets to be a dumbass on his own dime, and if the recall effort is successful, as a private citizen rather than public official. The extreme right has grown altogether too comfortable with the idea that they can say stupid, hurtful things without consequences, but that doesn't come from the Constitution, sorry.

My question, again, is why this overlong LTE was promoted to a column under the Talk of My Ass slug. The writer has no expertise or even a fresh perspective. This is a waste of time that smells of old fish -- herring, I think.