MY TURN: Is that a polka I hear?

Dear Mr. Regan:

How heartwarming it was to see that you had put up $10,000, ostensibly to catch the racist culprits spewing bile at our visitors from Utah. 

Now, some people might have called that offer a brazen attempt at political cover. 

They might have talked about how in Mathew Dallek’s book on the John Birch Society he points out that “Birchers helped forge an alternative political tradition on the far right and that the core ideas were an anti-establishment, apocalyptic, more violent mode of politics, conspiracy theories, anti-interventionism and a more explicit racism …” 

Some might have mentioned that the KCRCC has given a full-throated endorsement of the John Birch Society. Others might have mentioned something like that, but I would never say such a thing.

Some might have even said that it was weird how seeing your photo right next to a headline shouting, “Hate on Display” seemed rather self-evident. But I wouldn’t do a thing like that. No, and I wouldn’t suggest that you’re trying to provide more political cover for your confederate flag waving cronies by suggesting that what the team from Utah was hearing was “rap music playing loudly.” 

Rather, the music you may be hearing in your head is a polka. It probably sounds familiar. Yes, I believe it’s the I Was Not a Racist Polka, a variation on the Chad Mitchell trio’s hit from 1962. Of course, I would never suggest such a thing. Not me.

I know that Jenny from Post Falls is terribly worried about your feelings and all these negative letters written about you in the Press. What a charming fellow you are! How you dance lightly around the issue of racism and try to make those who call out racism villains. 

You have a nice vocabulary, a good education, a disarming smile and a fatherly acceptance of the parade of confederate flags, the Gadsden flag (see snake), and the many other symbols we are treated to as parades of cars, trucks and dump-trucks pass us by around town. 

“Oh, well, boys will be boys,” you might say. Sooner or later (you might say to yourself) these fellows will learn that hiding their intentions behind a throatful of slick denial is much better than the outward display of bigotry they force on the public. It’s easier to put one over on the public that way, isn’t it Mr. Regan? But I would never mention such a thing as that. Not me. 

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Ethel Steinmetz Marmont is a Coeur d'Alene resident.