"Oh, darkies how my heart grows weary"

You're damn right. My heart is growing weary, very weary -- of people like Paula Deen denying their racism while making unacceptable racist comments and then having the temerity to try to brush their blatantly bigoted remarks off as some kind of joke.

I have no compunction to forgive this woman -- none -- and how dare anyone be presumptuous enough to expect it. I've heard this kind of crap most of my life and I'm really tired of the bigots saying they're not racist while they say these same kinds of things, and worse, over and over again. 

I'm equally weary of the people who make lame excuses for those who make racist comments.  Examples from The Tennessean's Facebook page after an article announcing that Deen had been fired:

Bobby L. Kay: "this is absolutely ridiculous. Every southern white person of 40 years old or older has used the term if only in a joking manner. What is so terrible about this is the black guys I hung out used the term on a regular basis. News media gives somebody beside obama a break."

Melody Paxton: "Hypocrites. They need to get the liberals off their networks then. That road travels both ways."

I'm sure they paid no attention to my rebuttal that it has NOTHING to do with being liberal or conservative. And, NO, "every southern white person over 40 years old or more" has NOT used these terms in a joking manner. Furthermore, I really don't give a flying flip if black people use the n*%%#^ word. So? And, NO, Obama is not a racist and he had nothing to do with Deen getting fired.

Paula Deen, however, is an equal opportunity racist who has targeted gays, Jews and other groups and not just back in the good old days when she was an unknown and very poor entity.  According to her own words during her deposition:

Lawyer: What about jokes, if somebody is telling a joke that's got --

Deen: It's just what they are, they're jokes.

Lawyer: Okay. Would you consider those to be using the N word in a mean way?

…

Deen: That's -- that's kind of hard. Most -- most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks. Most jokes target -- I don't know. I didn't make up the jokes, I don't know. I can't -- I don't know.

Lawyer: Okay.

Deen: They usually target, though a group. Gays or straights, black, redneck, you know, I just don't know. I can't, myself, determine what offends another person.

I give the woman credit. She managed to raise herself from her poor white roots to being a media star with a great big smile, a thick southern drawl and big blinking blue eyes. The first word that has always come to my admittedly cynical mind when I've seen her photo is FAKE.

Deen represents all that I abhor about so much of what was the old South and what still is in far too many cases. But that's part of the trouble: she still lives in the past, or in the fantasy world that she has created from the past, and probably worst of all, she has forgotten her humble beginnings.

James Poniewozik writes in an excellent analysis:

Deen made a pile of money off a certain idea of old-school southern culture. In return, she had an obligation to that culture–an obligation not to embody its worst, most shameful history and attitudes. Instead, in one swoop, fairly or not, she single-handedly affirmed people’s worst suspicions of people who talk and eat like her–along with glibly insulting minorities, she slurred many of the very fans who made her successful. She made it that much harder to say that Confederate Bean Soup is just a recipe.

. . . in the aw-shucks way she did in her deposition, Deen didn’t just insult black people and Jewish people and God knows who else. She insulted the present-day south and the decent people in it; she insulted the fans who wanted to like her food and TV shows and not be embarrassed; and she insulted the home-and-hospitality culture she purports to stand up for. Yes, food is food, no matter your color or creed. But it doesn’t matter how much butter and batter you coat it in, ugly is still ugly.

Next order of business: fire all the public servants who make unacceptable racist comments. That would be half of Congress and the majority of state legislators, at least in the South.

'White Only," a Revealing Poll and Some Good News

In a creative twist to "I'm not racist," an Ohio landlord defends the above sign she had hanging on the gate to her pool: "I'm not a bad person," said Jamie Hein of Cincinnati. “I don’t have any problem with race at all. It’s a historical sign.”  The sign is dated 1931 and from Alabama.

The Ohio Civil Rights Commission, however, found that Hein did indeed violate the Ohio Civil Rights Act by posting the sign. Hein has asked the commission to reconsider the decision: "I've never said anything to that child . . . . If I have to stick up for my white rights, I have to stick up for my white rights. It goes both ways."

Despite her lame attempts to hide her racism, Heim just might get her wish. Not every case is black and white. 

Hear ye, hear ye - what's in a poll?

A shout out to Congress, especially to those on the right side of the aisle (but Democrats don't have a hell of a lot to brag about):

Fifty percent of those surveyed by Pew said that they believe the 112th Congress has accomplished less than other Congresses – and of those saying this Congress has been unproductive, 40 percent say Republican leaders bear most of the blame. Thirty-two percent said leaders of both parties are equally at fault, and 23 percent said Democratic leaders are more to blame.

Republicans also do not fare well when it comes to the public’s perceptions of the GOP’s ability to work together with Democrats. Fifty-three percent of respondents in the Pew poll said the Republican Party is “more extreme” than the Democratic Party in its positions; 51 percent said that Democrats are more willing to work together with the other side; 41 percent viewed Democrats as better able to manage the government; and 45 percent called the Democratic Party “more honest and ethical.”

Some good news this week:

Besides the end to the Iraq war - welcome news to everyone except John McCain - we have the SEC finally doing what it should have done a long time ago:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they misled the government and taxpayers about risky subprime mortgages the mortgage giants held during the housing bust.

Those charged include the agencies' two former CEOs, Fannie's Daniel Mudd and Freddie's Richard Syron. They are the highest-profile individuals to be charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis.

Mudd, 53, and Syron, 68, led the mortgage giants when the housing bubble burst in late 2006 and 2007. The four other top executives also worked for the companies during that time.

The case was filed in federal court in New York City.

Also long overdue, the Department of Justice has issued a report accusing Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, Phoenix's answer to Adolf Hitler, of “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.”

The inquiry’s findings paint a picture of a department staffed by poorly trained deputies who target Latino drivers on the roadways and detain innocent Latinos in the community in their searches for illegal immigrants. The mistreatment, the government said, extends to the jails the department oversees, where Latino inmates who do not speak English are mistreated.

“The absence of clear policies and procedures to ensure effective and constitutional policing,” the report said, “along with the deviations from widely accepted policing and correctional practices, and the failure to implement meaningful oversight and accountability structures, have contributed to a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.”

If  America's toughest sheriff refuses to enter into a court approved settlement agreement, he will get slapped with a lawsuit and his empire could lose millions of dollars in federal money.

I expressed my total loathing of this man back in August 2010:

Arpaio doesn't count sheep at night. He counts Latinos and three Latinos are three Latinos too many. His ego is bigger than his paunch, so even after a restless night's sleep with nightmares of brown men refusing to shine his patrol car, he still has the energy to do a cheap imitation of John Wayne for the media.

But Arpaio is no Grade B actor in a Grade B movie playing the part of the bad guy. He is the real thing - a malicious brute. He uses chain gangs, deliberately humiliates inmates by forcing them to wear pink underwear, houses prisoners in tents with temperatures of over 110 degrees, and, he makes sure medical care is only a dream.

To say that Arpaio is obsessed with immigration is to say that a ballet dancer is obsessed with staying fit and trim.

My idea of a suitable punishment for Arpaio is to dress him in pink undies, put him in a stockade out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert without benefit of food, water or toilet facilities until he's reduced to a pile of  dried up shriveled bones.

The Bloggy-Wobbly Blues

The Bloggy-Wobbly Blues have had me by the throat for the past few weeks. Since I blame everything else on the right-wing, why stop now?

We've had some ugly times in this country of ours - during the hay days of the KKK, the McCarthy era, the horrid House Un-American Activities Committee, the John Birch Society - but they looked like tea parties compared to the current well financed movement that is hell-bent on destroying this country of ours. My country. The country for which I have a profound love, dammit.

In the early days of the Tea Party I thought they were just a silly bunch of fools running around with tea bags dangling from their silly hats and looking, well, silly - but essentially pretty harmless. I didn't agree with them, but could see where they might attract a small following of disgruntled Independents and Republicans, and even a few misguided Democrats. In the end, like so many such political movements, they'd probably fade into the sunset and become nothing more than a footnote in the nation's history books.

Had they stuck to their original narrow platform this wishful thinking on my part might have become reality. Instead the Tea Party, aided and abetted by Big Money, the Main Stream Media, the shamefully dishonorable Republican Party of today, and their own propaganda arm, Fox News, branched out and became the tree of, not life, but of destruction. Their silliness turned into an ugly tidal wave of anger, hate, racism, and astoundingly ignorant anti-government, anti-worker, anti-middle class, anti-woman, anti-education, anti-science, and anti-everything and anything that contributes to this country's unique place in the world.

And what the hell was John McCain thinking when he unleashed that vapid, illiterate, intellectually debased, narcissistic and fanatical woman on the American people? With her ascendancy to the MSM throne, every nut in America's woodwork has come out to play and they don't play by the rules.

I figured decent Americans would eventually come to their senses and reject these noisy, classless, selfish, narrow-minded, paranoid, twisted "morans" on the far-right and within the current Republican Party, a party that Abe Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller and William Buckley would most assuredly dismiss out of hand today.

Richard Freeman sums up the insanity that is the right in an article entitled, oddly enough, When the Country Goes Insane, which I highly recommend in its entirety.

Hate is stronger than logic and more than anything else, Republicans love their hate. It’s the only thing that gives them power. The more vicious, the more loony they are, the more they are treated like savants, like prophets channeling some higher wisdom, come though it may from the self-loathing gutter of political prostitution. They pull stuff out of their ass and brazenly pass it off as stone tablets. And people swoon.

Of course, you can understand why. The media genuflect before gibberish and idolize idiocy. They are the media-tors of a Gresham’s Law of public discourse where bad information drives out good. For their own slick whoring they become “players,” while everybody else is left with a debauched civic currency, a crushed economy, and a collective impotence that makes true democracy and true prosperity impossible.

And now we're seeing further hate as King Peter launches his investigation into the "radicalism of American Muslims." "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Muslim Religion?" Odd, isn't it, how the party of less spending is wasting tax-payer money for the benefit of one tyrant's ego?

America may not be broke but it is certainly morally and emotionally bankrupt. It will take far more than my puny little blog to stem this tidal wave of anger, hate, ignorance, inequality, paranoia, racism, and selfishness. And that, my friends, depresses the hell out of me.



UPDATE: RandomThoughts and I must be on the same wavelength. He just says it a lot better.

"I'M NOT A RACIST"

Was just getting ready to take a few zzz's when I came across this on Crooks and Liars (HERE). A 90-year-old caller to C-Span asks why "colored people" aren't more grateful for "free everything" and ends by saying she's not a racist. At least she didn't use the N----- word.

CALLER: I'm 90 years old and I just wanted to ask the colored man, why don't colored people instead of saying what we did to them, why don't they say what we did for them? They talk about the slavery but since then they have been given welfare, free medicine, free everything.

HARLESTON: Ma'am I think this is more of a conversation about the relationship between the administration and the people on Wall Street and not necessarily one that's based on race.

CALLER: Oh, okay. I'm not a racist. That was my comment. Thank you.

Even though I was brought up to respect my elders, all bets would have been off in this case. I can almost guarantee that I could not have handled the situation with the dignity and diplomacy exhibited by Harelston.

Church Carnival Game: Throw Darts at the President

Carnival company owner says Obama game is not meant to be "political." Maybe not but it sure has a racist taint to it. I'd be willing to bet that this company has never used another president as a target.

Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban

In a campaign similar to the Senate race between John McCain and J. D. Hayworth, Tom Horne and the notorious Sheriff of Maricopa County Joe Arpaio are battling it out for Attorney General. All four are tripping over each other to prove who is the fairest of them all. Translated, that means the whitest of the white, the rightest of the right, and the racist of their race.

As if Arizona's immigration bill isn't outrageous enough, Tom Horne, superintendent of public instruction, wrote a bill to kill ethnic studies classes, including La Raza studies. "It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," he has said of ethnic studies classes that, he claims, teach Hispanics to resent whites.

Governor Jan Brewer signed it into law this week.

Horne's rhetoric "'skips straight to the inflammatory charge that such learning could encourage students to revolt against US government, effectively legitimizing fears of a Mexican 'reconquista.' "Where students of ethnic studies were once merely criticized as enemies of the Western canon, they're now being vilified as enemies of Arizona state."

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

The new law threatens to withhold 10 percent of state funding from any school district or charter school that offers classes that are designed for one particular group, “advocate ethnic solidarity,” “promote resentment of a race or class of people,” or “promote the overthrow of the United States government.”

The overthrow of the government? When was the last time you heard that kind of paranoid prattle?

Sometimes one finds a nugget of wisdom in a pile of road apples.

Tucson Unified School District acting superintendent Maggie Shafer says the classes, offered by the Mexican American Studies Department, will continue and “are in full compliance with the law.”

The classes are open to all students and include non-Hispanics, she says. The Tucson district is 56 percent Hispanic. “If kids come together and they feel some sense of brotherhood from sharing a class and studying about history and possibly previous oppression, well, that’s a byproduct of the course; we’re not teaching solidarity.”

Are Women's Studies, Asian Studies, Native American Studies and Black Studies going to be next on the chopping black? Either the water table has dropped so low that these neanderthals are digesting too much sand or they've been struck by lightening on the golf course.

Further reading at Progressive Eruptions.

David Duke Defends Tea Party Against Charges of Racism by Jewish Media

When the third part of the John Birch Society series runs tomorrow, remember the words of former Klansman David Duke.



Eat my grits, Duke.

For the transcript link to Crooks and Liars and thanks to Liberal Values for leading me there.

The rage is not about health care

President Obama could have proposed a tax rebate of $10,000 and the conservatives still would have gone stark raving mad. When the Health Care Bill passed Republicans and Tea Partiers turned into a raging sea of childishness, insanity, ugliness and stupidity.

Representative John Boehner went apoplectic chanting "Hell no, you can't." Frank Rich,  in a New York Times Op-ed piece, The Rage Is Not About Health Care, suggests Boehner "had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons."

In a debate with David Ploffe on ABC's "This Week," Karl Rove frothed at the mouth and went on a non-stop tirade. Such antics have become less funny and less entertaining.

Republicans have shouted "you lie" and "baby killer" in House chambers, violating every rule of  decency and decorum. To steal a phrase from Joe McCarthy, Republican Congressional representatives have become Tea Party "fellow travelers."

For over a year Tea Party protests have attracted increasingly large crowds. They have grown louder, uglier, more threatening and more violent as time has passed. They have shouted racial and homophobic slurs at respected members of Congress and have thrown bricks through their offices - similar to a mini-Kristallnacht in 1938 Germany.

According to Rich, there was heated reaction when Social Security was passed in 1935 and Medicare thirty years later.  "When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association."

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill...you have to look to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the  explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.   

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer...

The election of a black president and a female House speaker, the appointment of a Latino to the Supreme Court, and a gay Congressional committee chairman "would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play."

In this writer's opinion, the Tea Partiers - just like the Birchers, the patriot groups, and other right-wing groups - have a serious case of paranoia. And racism - despite social scientists' claims to the contrary. Maybe they should have read the liberal blogs in the early days - especially those written by southerners.

The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935.

By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist (Richard) Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

In my very humble opinion the Tea Partiers and Beck and Co. are one thin hair away from being sedicious.  If we lived in a police state, as that monumental wonder Beck proclaims, everyone of those thugs would be in jail.

Tea Party focuses on Obama and hate not health care

I think this article from Philly2Philly speaks for itself. I thought I had seen it all until now. There is nothing I can add to this sad and despicable time in our history.

The Tea Party movement has shown its ugly colors yesterday as members of its movement hurled racial epithets at several black congressman during their so-called health care protest yesterday in Washington D.C. And, as the House votes on Healthcare Reform today the Tea Party's message has been twarted by racism.

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele has a nightmare on his hands. And, so do the Tea Party supporters who aren't racist. To be fair, the majority of Tea Party protesters aren't racist, but they have a public image problem that won't go away.

The images and video clips throughout this article don't lie. Any reasonably intelligent human being can surmise that you won't see any of this psychobabble and racial bigotry on display at an EPA protest.

Ultimately, what started out as a well-intentioned movement has been reduced to a haven for uneducated bottom feeders. Any "positive" message the non-racist Tea Partiers hope to get across is drowned out by a cacophony of nasty insults, jeers, and racist psychobabble.

The video is really worth watching but the slide show below it is as powerful.

Racial slurs during Obama's first year: a review

From unknown Bubbas and Clara Belles and from media hacks to elected officials, racial slurs aimed at President Obama have offended every decent person in our country. They hate him, not simply because they disagree with him. They hate him because he's black.

These neanderthals have been carrying their anger around since the 1964 civil rights legislation was passed. Finally God has given them the right to display their posteriors for all the world to see and it's not a pretty view.

These classless and un-Christian imbeciles, these ignorant  hoodlums, have altered images of the president to look like an African witch doctor and his wife to look like a gorilla. Charming. Their comments have been subtle, they have been crude and behind everyone of them is racism, pure and simple.

Presidents have always been fair game for cartoonists and the target of jokes on late night TV  but these images and slurs are anything but funny. They represent hate, and worse, it's based on race and the color of a person's skin.

Today TPM reports:

TeaParty.org, a Houston-based group founded by Dale Robertson, yesterday sent an email fund-raising solicitation, obtained by TPMmuckraker, headlined "Obama Pimping Obama-Care, One Last Time!

The photograph (to the right) -- showing the president as a stereotypical African-American pimp, sporting a pencil-thin mustache and a zebra-striped, fur-brimmed fedora, complete with a feather -- illustrated the theme.

ABC's Sarah Netter has compiled a review of racism over the past year as it pertains to President Obama.

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader: Before the election, Reid described Obama as a "light-skinned African American, with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Rod Blagojevich, former Illinois Governor: "I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.

Mike Parry, Minnesota State Senator: Twittered, "My opinion  is that our president is arrogant and angry. The fact is that he is a black man."

Bill Clinton, Former President: Reportedly told the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Obama, "A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee."

Russ Wiseman: Arlington, Tenn., Mayor: Lashed out at the president on his Facebook page for being a "Muslim president."

Lynn Jenkins, Rep. R-Kan.: "Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope."

De. David McKalip, Fla. neurosurgeon and health care reform opponent: sent out an email containing an image of Obama as an African with doctor.

Glenn Beck: Obama had repeatedly shown that he is a "guy who had a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture." . . . "This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Gary Frago, Atwater, Calif., Councilman: Sent several racist e-mails, including a comparison between Obama and O.J. Simpson and a crack about Michelle Obama posing in National Geographic.

Rusty DePass, S.C. GOP activist: Responding to a Facebook post about an escaped gorilla from the Columbia zoo, he wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors."

Sherri Goforth, Tenn. State GOP Staffer: Forwarded an e-mail image of presidential portraits with the one of Obama appearing only as a set of white eyes on a black background.

Mike Green, S.C. GOP activist: Tweeted, "I just heard Obama was going to impose a 40% tax on aspirin because it's white and it works."

Rush Limbaugh: Obama was "behaving like an African colonial despot." He also called Obama "an angry black guy." During the campaign, Limbaugh was flamed for playing "Barack, the Magic Negro" to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" on his show.

Diann Jones, Texas GOP Leader: Forwarded an e-mail to local Republican clubs calling a state-sponsored firearm tax "another terrific idea from the black house and its minions."

Sean Delonas, Cartoonist who depicted two policemen, one with a gun, standing over a dead chimpanzee with the words, "They'll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill."

Buck Burnette, Texas Longhorn Lineman:  Posted on Facebook, "All the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse."

Chaffey (Calif) Community Republican Women, Federated: published a newsletter with an image of "Obama Bucks" - food stamps with Obama's head on a donkey surrounded by fried chicken, watermelon and ribs.

David Storck, former Fla. GOP Leader: Forwarded an e-mail written by a volunteer that said, "I see carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama. This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little that he is at minimum, socialist, and probably Marxist in his core beliefs. After all, he is black - no experience or accomplishments - but he is black."

Bobby May, Virginia GOP Leader and former treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party: Wrote a column for the Virginia Voice questioning whether Obama would change the American flag to include the Islamic symbol or devote more aid to Africa so "the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.

Geoff Davis, U.S. Rep, R-Ky: "That boy's finger does not need to be on the button."

Geraldine Ferraro, former Democratic vice presidential candidate, commented while working for Hillary Clinton's presidential run, "Obama's candidacy wouldn't have been so successful if he weren't black."

SPECIAL NOTE: Huge kudos to ABC News writer Sarah Netter. In an era when research is anathema to most reporters, she deserves a bucket full of praise. As a former news librarian and sometimes writer, I appreciate the time it took to research, compile and write this article. Printed out this is an 11 page article - with a generous amount of white space. Not only does Netter provide dates and background, she also does, or tries to do, a brief followup on each incident - apologies, non-apologies, evasions, excuses, etc..

"It Has Nothing to Do with Racism"

If you've never visited Taos, New Mexico, it's a must see before you die. Sitting on top of a mesa at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, it offers breath-taking views of the desert and an array of purple, red, orange, blue, pink and adobe colors which change by the hour according to the sun and clouds. Since the 1800s Taos has attracted such painters as Georgia O'Keeffe, D. H. Lawrence and photographer Ansel Adams. Lawrence's art hangs in a little hotel near the center of town. If you didn't know he was a painter, he wasn't, but he was an extraordinary writer.

For over 200 years Taos has been inhabited by Anglos, Native Americans, Hispanics or Latinos from Spain and south of the border. The attire, buildings and local landscaping are as colorful as the vistas surrounding the town. Taos is one of the most liberal of all liberal towns -- that is until a tough-talking former Marine swaggered in from Texas with the intention of refurbishing the Paragon Inn, one of 20 he has resurrected.

According to the Associated Press, Larry Whitten immediately laid down some new rules after he bought the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel. Obviousloy paranoid, he forbade the Hispanic workers from speaking Spanish in his presence and "ordered some of them to Anglicize their names."

Whitman informed several employees he was changing their Spanish first names. He says it's a routine practice at his hotels "to change first name of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce." Hope he never buys a hotel in Old Mexico or France or Spain.

I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I'm just doing what I've always done.

So, why did he decide on Taos? Whitten had visited this picturesque town before and liked its beauty. Apparently he doesn't consider the historically multi-cultural heritage as part of the beauty.

It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know theSpanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything.

The messages and comments he made in interviews with local media, including referring to townsfolk as "mountain people" and "potheads who escaped society," further enflamed tensions.