Posted inPhoenix

Superiority complex

Judging from the comments on the previous post, readers were interested in hearing more about my appearance with former Arizona Republic Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey toward the tail end of KJZZ's Here and Now on Wednesday. It's a measure of the true grit and journalistic integrity of host Steve Goldstein that he has me on his show every year or so. I can only imagine the pushback he gets from the Kooks (so tell his bosses if you like hearing me). But, yes, there's more to be said.

Of course, good people are working hard for Arizona, from the activists behind Save Arizona and the campaign to recall the odious Russell Pearce, to grassroots leaders such as Becky Daggett in Flagstaff and Kimber Lanning in Phoenix, to hard-fighting state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at the capitol. They are part of the Resistance. But they are losing. Arizona has become dominated by the worst kind of public and private craziness. Things have degenerated badly since Willey decamped for the Dallas Morning News in 2002 and even since I was kicked out of the state in 2007. Yes, she's in Texas, a very red state, but it's also a place with the kind of robust economy, opposition, vigorous media (e.g. Texas Monthly) and truly diverse cities (e.g. blue Austin) that are all lacking in Arizona. Dallas just opened a new 28-mile segment of its 72-mile light-rail system, just one thing that's unimaginable in Arizona. Its red-state Texas-sized braggadocio about conservative governance has run up against one of the worst state fiscal crises in America.

So with all due respect to my friend and former Palmcroft resident Keven, she doesn't know Arizona now. When Evan Mecham was governor, he was eased out of office by the business leadership because he was a national embarrassment. Now the business leadership is gone or hiding or compromised, and worse-and-dumber people than Mecham keep rising in power. Internally, at least, Arizona is rewarded for extremism. Also, as an editorial-page editor, she's paid to temporize. As a columnist, I'm paid, or not, to break china and throw down idols in the name of the truth. As for Arizona, the rocks come with the farm, so quit complaining about being badly treated by the rest of America.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Ideas have consequences

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords in suburban Tucson on Saturday brought many things to mind, some echoed on the weekend Rogue thread. One of my police buddies told me, "Is there any doubt?" that this crime is the fruit of the Kookocracy and its gun love. "The Kooks passed an insane law that says anyone but a convict can carry a concealed weapon. With no background and no training. I treat everyone, especially Kooks and gang bangers, as if they are carrying a 30-round Glock under their shirt." I thought about the death threats I regularly received when I was a columnist at the Arizona Republic from 2000 to 2007. I was pilloried with violent criticism. My house was photographed and placed on a prominent right-wing Web site (trying to make me out a hypocrite for blasting the Real Estate Industrial Complex while doing well with my own real-estate "investment"; in fact, the 97-year-old house was in the Midtown neighborhood where I grew up and we bought it intending to live there for the rest of our lives, not flip it in two years for a profit). A deranged individual could have used that photo as a springboard to something dangerous. After I appeared on a radio show, a friend in law enforcement was so troubled by hearing one caller to the program that he came to a book signing specifically to watch over me.

As Soleri pointed out, the false equivalency argument began almost immediately, even though virtually all the politically motivated violence in recent years has come from the right. More about that in a moment. By no means let us rush to judgment — but that shouldn't become an excuse to never reach it. My biggest reaction is how this event was very tied to Arizona. When I came back to Phoenix, I'd been a controversial columnist taking on the toughest issues in Denver, Dayton, Cincinnati and Charlotte, with my work carried nationally on the New York Times News Service and others. Yet I had never received a death threat. The climate in Arizona even in 2000 was different: More vicious and threatening, more abusive and thuggish, more filled with us-vs-them hate and paranoia.

The shooting also caused me to recall an exchange I had with my grandmother nearly half a century ago, in another America. In full thrall of cowboys and Indians, I asked her why now, in Phoenix, people didn't go around with six-shooters on their hips — a nice idea in my childish mind. My grandmother, born on the frontier and raised in Arizona Territory, said, "Men wore guns then so we wouldn't have to carry them today."

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