Hey Linda....are you going to write a letter to the girlfriend's employer about her uppity attitude and disrespect of the police?

I do not want to make this personal........but I want you to think.....do you think maybe commissioner May got real lucky he was not shot dead? Do you even have any measure of my anger about your patronizing insensitive letter, which reflects millions who live in the bubble and think that a black person must be abused an silent........each of us can change this horror. It starts by each of us examining our values and fears. Shun me, hate me, but I have never changed my position on these issues in 11 years......we are in a national crisis and when a kid can be ran over like a dog and you do not convene the grand jury, and the PNJ mob is so hateful, and probably the last segregated jail was right here in Pensacola.....it does matter to discuss these issues, and to be firm to stop these police abuses.

For the last time, Mr. Seaoat, I complained to MY commissioner (NOT Mr. May's employer),  because May --  an ELECTED OFFICIAL, who SHOULD be HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD, acted like a total, arrogant asshole of a bully in  his dealings with the officer, causing me to lose faith in his ability to be a fair and even-handed conductor of county business.  I would've said the SAME THING about him had he been white, brown, or yellow.  You absolutely REFUSE to believe that's the truth -- well, sir, that is most definitely YOUR problem, not mine.  

If in fact he was stopped because of his skin color -- and you have ABSOLUTELY NO EMPIRICAL PROOF of that -- so what??  That DOES NOT give him an excuse to be surly, overbearing and bullying.  No, it DOESN'T.  

And my estimation of his disgusting behavior is not changed because a black man got shot in Baton Rouge or Minneapolis, any more than it does because other blacks were hanged in Mississippi years ago.  May is an ELECTED OFFICIAL OF THIS COUNTY and needs to conduct himself accordingly.   If, because of his color, May has all the baggage hanging around his neck that YOU have put there, he doesn't belong conducting county business and should resign.

Not only that, but YOU, yes YOU,  continue to insult Commissioner May yourself by not respecting the validity of HIS OWN APOLOGY to the officer involved.

This is all I'm going to say on the subject and if you insist on continuing to bring it up, thinking I'm going to capitulate to your insults and faulty thinking on this incident, you're a bigger fool than I thought, and I will have no choice but to tell you again what I'd like to say now:

GO FUCK YOURSELF.

Didn't change your position in 11 years and you're how old? So before that you were a racist and now you're making up for it? Figures.

GO FUCK YOURSELF.

No thank you. Dreams......I once lived in the bubble where my friends were police officers and never would I expect them to do bad things.........I thought trickle down economics and Ronald Reagan was the answer. I thought that gangbangers needed to be broken, and if that meant bending the constitution and using means which were illegal and unconstitutional.....so be it. I socialized with country clubbers who told racist jokes and thought all Mexicans and Blacks were stupid and should be janitors. I never shared those views. I was shunned but still in the bubble living in a big house driving new cars and living the life of white privilege......did not really think about recycling until my kids trained me.....and thought large corporations were building America......until the factories closed.....the people that built America were thrown on the streets, and yes I owned a beach condo where at the meetings we discussed how to limit folks from setting up in front of "our" beach.......I have always fought for social justice, but I was a self serving greedy person who after serving the community for twenty years setting up youth programs and volunteering, I became focused on material things and abandoned what was important.....so like a reformed alcoholic, or bible thumper.......I have gotten strident and tired of the bubble and what it has done to this once great nation.......and now I can say with confidence I am the most irritating bore on this forum......and now Linda has told me so.......but I will never be accused of abandoning my values again.....never.

like a reformed alcoholic, or bible thumper ....................  Well said

like a reformed alcoholic, or bible thumper Well said


You know me better than I probably know myself, but I know you understood that, but you have to admit when you gave Linda a little bit of friction about the beach....she never told you to go F yourself, and Surf used to tease her about the buffets and the beach......and she almost told him to go F himself......I feel honored.....she dropped the shunning and told me to go F myself.......If I could have figured that out in my youth, I might have tried.........but I am going to grab a bible and join the guy on 90 in Milton across from the county building and start yelling at cars.....repent sinners.....repent......actually that sounds pretty good.

So are you admitting you are a reformed racist or what?

Hallmarkgard wrote:Ms Linda is a smart lady and knows how to play the game...She just called and raised pot limit.. Your aces and eights might not look so strong now...LOL

Thanks, Hallmark...I think.   But even though any kind word coming from you means a lot to me, this is truly not a game with me.  It's something I feel strongly about and am simply fed up to here with some all-knowing, admittedly arrogant, deeply judgmental S.O.B. trying to put his own racist words in my mouth and racist thoughts and intentions in my head that simply don't exist -- and who, in the process, himself woefully discredits the idea that a black man, elected to public office, can and should serve his community sans the victim baggage that Mr. Seaoat seems to permit him as an excuse for less-than-professional behavior.  
 And that's even though Mr. May himself allowed as how he shouldn't have acted the way he did.  But Sea knows better than May himself.  Laughable if it weren't so pitiful

This is all part of why I said and will say again that, despite his delusions of grand heroism, Sea doesn't do minorities any favor by his ("reformed smoker-type") attempts to manipulate people, facts, and truth, and even less to foster peace between the races.  

Am I wrong?

(Rhetorical question, Hallmark -- please feel free to ignore; not trying to put you on the spot in front of your old pal.)

I do know. You will know when I am gone why I know. I know the largest evil throughout history are those who go along to git along. The horror of a another black man being stopped in his neighborhood for being black and not for any other reason by a department who only stopped segregating black and white arrestees the year before has a citizen attacking that citizen for clearly taking a stand against this bad stop, but not stopping there, trying to have a man who represents those who face his fate every day removed from his office because she thinks he was offensive.

The only thing offensive was the letter. The letter was an evil and bad thing. Linda thinks it was appropriate to attack the victim of oppression and in classic social psychology balance theory when I state clearly the letter was bad, Linda attacks me, because as much as she has tried to defend her cowardly deed, the fact remains that I continue to call the letter bad. Her only way to achieve balance is that she did a good thing sending that letter, she is a good person, and I am a bad person. I will glady accept that label as the letter speaks for itself, and the oppression continues.

Just the opposite Hallmark. There is no bravery or courage to play in this sandbox as an actual person. It does however take dedication to make our community better to write viewpoints in the PNJ. I have always respected Linda's attempt to clarify beach issues in the PNJ where misinformation and downright lies existed, but for her viewpoints countering the same. I have complimented her over the years for the same, because those acts were good acts. However, when she sends a cowardly letter to another commissioner wanting a person who was wrongfully stopped in his neighborhood to be removed from office because he was offensive and rude, the letter was a cowardly act and wrong. Every good person at some time has done something wrong. We all at first try to rationalize that wrong. Usually over time people realize they have done something wrong and apologize. How can Linda apologize when she still thinks the letter was a good act when she never had that courage you want to assign to her to write the commissioner directly or call him disapproving of his conduct, and entering into an honest conversation with a black man driving in America. No it is easier to cast me as an evil bad person than to reconsider the act of that letter. I get it. I will remain an evil person. You and I however get it. We know at times both of us have been wrong, but in the discussion we do find truths and with passion the truth often does surface. Linda for years always questioned my angle or purpose in discussions of beach issues because I had left the beach......again leaving the purity of discussion of ideas and trying to assign a box to put me........she has found that box and has found balance......it is the toilet.

Who is pandering to the black community. I pander to American citizens. All American citizens deserve liberty and justice and to deny any American citizen the same is to deny all.

How can people be demoralized with ideas? I would not know Linda if she sat next to me in a restaurant. I do not know her name. I could try to research her past viewpoints and determine who she is, but why? If we accept like Ben Franklin when posting as a widow in his brother's newspaper, that there is a freedom of ideas where those ideas are not tethered to an individual, a sex, a race, or an angle or agenda.........then in that freedom some amazing things can happen as Franklin discovered.

I attempt to stir thought. I attempt to raise blood pressure and have people commit to their ideas. I am a ghost. I have never been who I appear to be on this forum. I am an actor playing a role in a theater where those who participate I hope gain and enjoy. I can certainly see when dealing with ideas that people get angry. People have left this forum because of ideas. People have threatened people because of ideas. People have tried to cross over into the real world and hurt people because of ideas. I have never done the same because none of the actors in this play are real......they are simply participating in a very unreal forum, where like theater we can leave the theater and take the best and bring the same into our realities. Nothing more or nothing less, but at least Linda has not said she will kill me like others have done.

Soon he earned the respect of everyone. Not because he was black but because he was a good person.

Should that not have been the standard for every hire?

My uncle starting sweeping the floor at ACIPCO, the American Cast Iron Pipe company when he was 18. He worked his way up to head of the shop and had 2500 people reporting to him. In the early 70s the world was horrified as as a centrifugal cast machine went off and sent molten metal throughout that shop killing 27 as men burned alive and only had belts left on their bodies when they were recovered. My uncle had to go to 27 funerals and meet with 27 families......black and white. You see ACIPCO as you go north on interstate 65 in North Birmingham as it sits just west of the interstate about five blocks where my grandmother's house is under that very same interstate. My uncle loved each of those employees whether they were black or white, and my uncle was born when Jim Crow was law, and he believed the same was right. You see in 1985 I had the company paper, and asked him who was Mr. White and who was Mr. Black who had charities at ACIPCO......he cocks his head like I was messing with him.....and goes Seaoat......there are charities for whites and charities for blacks, and neither want to give to the other......the man who shed tears for each of those who died in his shop, so readily accepted the de jure and now defacto separation of humans.

No Hallmark, I fight de jure and de facto injustice. It is my job. It is not some kind of liberal cause. It is my job. So I get good people can love a person of color, but at the same time be part of the very system which oppresses. I get it. I lived it. I make people uncomfortable on this forum, but in the real world I make them very uncomfortable. Injustice has remedies. I miss T beyond belief. His journey in life and his dedication the last five years on this forum to fight police abuses touched me. My respect for him was deep, yet the two of us would play hard in the sandbox. Good things can come out of this sandbox if we LISTEN, and we are willing to learn. I hear Linda loud and clear. She is not a racist. Ok. How should I take that letter?

Hallmarkgard wrote:Let me tell you a story about race relations.

At the shipyard we had no blacks that worked for us...We had maybe 50 to 60% Vietnamese and they did not get along with blacks very well.  Plus the Yard superintendent was a racist fro Ocean Springs Mississippi.  One day a young black guy named Donald Sapp asked me for a job.  I hired him as a labourer.  He was damn good worker. .  He always did what he  was assigned.  He never cussed and was all round good guy.  Soon he earned the respect of everyone.  Not because he was black but because he was a good person.   Slowly he started to change peoples options of those of color.  He did more for race relations than any one I have ever known.  No one had to defend him  He was a man, a real man.  Sadly he got sick with sickle cell and fell into bad health and passed away.  We closed the yard to attend his funeral.  Yes, even the boss from Mississippi attended and had changed his views.    We need more people like Donald Sapp.  Real people who changed the views of many people with his actions and courage....

So, you would say this man was a credit to his race?

Sorry, an individual's behavior does not determine the basic human rights of an entire race.

Not in America.

The Founding Fathers saw to that.

Jumpin Jehovah!, is this what passes for a feel good story in the armpit of America??

"Democratic principles, are the result of equality of condition." - Mercy Otis Warren