What’s Wrong with Indiana?
By Jane • Apr 30th, 2008 • Category: Publishing News • •
First there was the Indiana Censorship Bill that requires any seller of sexually explicit material to register with the Secretary of State. You know, like bookstores that sell romances and such.
Now the Republicans have the opportunity to vote for Tony Zirkle who is in a primary race for a House seat in Northwest Indiana. Apparently, Mr. Zirkle is either none to bright or totally disingenuous. If it’s the former, I don’t think he should be making laws that affect the rest of this country. If it’s the latter, ditto plus ten.
What did Zirkle do? A white supremacist group decides to hold a party commemorating the birthday of Adolf Hitler. Zirkle is one of the speakers. When questioned about this, Zirkle claimed that “”I’ll speak before any group that invites me. . .I’ve spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta.” When asked his thoughts about the group, he said “he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.”
and
He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.
Nevermind the visual clues like the big picture of Hitler or the swastikas. If Zirkle wins, I’ll have to wonder if his opponent was Bill Napoli. Who’s worse?
Edited to add: Have decided that Zirkle is a dangerous kook. South Bend newspaper reported his views on segregation. Sounds like after a congressional study, Zirkle would like to herd us all into different communal camps.
He went on to tell the Kokomo Perspective, “While we are brainwashed with respect to integration and forcing everyone to be together and basically all arguments to the contrary are silenced, historically it’s very often been the case that you have to segregate and apartheid people to stop the continual war.”
….
“I don’t have enough facts to support it,” Zirkle said of his proposal, speaking with The Tribune. “I think it would need a congressional study to see if I support it. It may mean the cost of transferring people is too high.”
On the other hand, he said, maybe it could also save the costs of the crime rate — and reduce claims of racial profiling. Granted, he said, it could take a century for the move to really fall in place.
So how would you divvy up Hispanics?
You can pretty much lump them in with whites, he says.
What about black Latinos whose black roots go back several generations in Latin America? And what about the ever-growing number of mixed races?
“You’d have to let people declare what culture they want to be living in,” Zirkle said.
I’d like to live in whatever culture that Zirkle has denounced and rejected.
Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. Jane also does not like to talk about herself in the third person, but apparently this is the way that this biography thing works (although in a true biography, someone else would be writing this blurb). Anyway, currently Jane loves urban fantasy authors Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews. She's really excited about this year's crop of historicals including Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Sherry Thomas' Private Arrangements and the upcoming Loretta Chase Her Scandalous Ways.
She's looking for a good contemporary author. Email her with a recommendation!
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Idiots can be found everywhere. Although they tend to congregate in government offices.
Also just in from Indiana: Obama MAY NOT BE the Antichrist. Good to know they left the option open, tho. Just in case he’s fooling everyone.
When I was growing up there, I was always upset that primaries were so anticlimactic in Indiana. The races were already well decided by the time I voted. But not this year. Weird.
The baby cring in the background makes me want to cry and smack the shit out of someone at the same time. People that expose their kids to this kind of revolting hatred ought to be prosecuted.
*looks around suspiciously* Every day it feels like I edge a little closer to paranoid-tin-foil-hat mode. Canceled my cable (I don’t need no more propaganda from Corporate Media!), cashed out my stock (the market is crashing, the market is crashing!), am stuffing dollars “under the mattress” (It’s the Great American Cash Out! Bank runs for everyone!), have buffed up the food pantry (got rice? beans? water? medicine? vodka?), and have slowly been selling stuff I can’t eat (CDs, DVDs, books — egads, I have THOUSANDS of books, and they don’t sell well) so I can be more mobile (I’m playing chicken with my landlords — do they get me to renew my lease at a higher rent before the economy crashes and I can demand a lower rent?). I really, really, really need a good book to read.
And I just finished reading City of Shadows, set in Germany between the two great wars, as the Nazis were coming into power.
Wrenching.
Whey said:
*points down the front page*
Lady Elizabeth’s Comet by Sheila Simonson :)
Scary shit. Just scary. As I plan my son’s bar mitzvah, and think that tomorrow is Holocaust remembrance day, knowing that we can possibly elect idiots like this just scares the living daylights out of me.
He says even more. A Fox news article quotes him:
Obviously he doesn’t bother himself with pesky little facts or making sense when he talks. Why are the white Christian women having sex with black porn stars? Not that they can’t, but usually when politicians start talking about Christian women they mean married, monogamous women. What is going through his mind to come up with this?
So he won’t kill his wife or daughters, because they are “innocent jews.” But if you’re guilty Jews . . .
To educate others you need to be educated yourself.
And yet can someone who’s living in his own little world be educated?
Fox news did report that he’s never been elected, but he did get 30% of the primary vote in a previous election and the Republican party is endorsing the other candidate for this primary.
Have you ever been to Indiana? What’s not wrong with it would be a more apt question. Speaking as someone who lives just beyond the IL-IN border, I vote we relinquish Indiana to… well, pretty much anywhere. Not that I don’t have friends who live there — living so close, it’s impossible not to, but as a collective whole… not the best portrait of the Midwestern American.
It’s scary that he’s spouting this trash and believes it. It’s scarier that there are people who will vote for him.
I livein Indiana and I feel compelled to say–we’re not all like that! In fact, I have lived here all my life, and I have never met such a nutjob as Mr Zirkle. Indiana has grown increasingly diverse in the past 40 years; even the dinky little town we just spent 3 yrs in had a growing Hispanic, East Asian, and African-American pop. We now live in a small city which is a geographic hub. My kids’elementary and preschool is like a mini-UN. I grew up in a biracial family in the 60-80s, when we got lots of stares and coemments (many not very nice). I had a Sudanese boyfriend for 5 yrs, when interracial relationships were considered ill-advised. Now, even here in red-state Indiana, most people don’t give either situation a second thought or glance. Those who do are liable to be elderly.
As far as our primaries go–municipal politics tend to be dirty. Dems often win locally, Republicans, nationally. Primaries are pretty boring. This year’s attention is SO exciting–we’ll never see it again in my lifetime. But if Obama loses this state,it won’t be because of his race. It will be because people worry that he’s just a feel-good speaker and that Hillary has more of the political exposure and influence needed to get things done. I myself planned to vote for Obama, but as the day approaches, I am seriously considering Hillary because her healthcare plan is better.
Some areas of Indiana–Kokomo, Elwood, Martinsville, and even Muncie,where I grew up, had a reputation, in the 1st half of the 20t cy, for being a hotbed of KKK and similar actvity. The State Historical Soc. (in the early 90’s, at least) kept the membership rolls of that org. sealed to presumably protect ex-members and relatives. But Indiana, like the rest of the country, keeps growing and changing, hopefully for the better
Corrine has it right–what is NOT wrong with Indiana? Obama’s campaigners were chased by dogs, had racial epithets screamed at them, and exposed to other blatant signs of ignorance. It’s no wonder they can’t get a decent state economy going. And now they want to allow ANOTHER BP refinery on the shore of Lake Michigan–SANS pollution controls! The neighboring states are enraged, and even Canadians who share the lake are half-kiddingly pondering invasion of Indiana. The crap they put in the water and the air….their airborne mercury rates are through the roof…wait, maybe that is why their I.Q.s seem so low…its a vicious cycle…maybe that is what is wrong with Indiana…I think we should divide the state up and have neighboring states absorb it. Fencing original Indiana people in first, of course…now THERE’S a good use of Apartheid!