Did she kill someone, commit a felony, get busted for a DUI, take a bribe, or otherwise tarnish the reputation of the office she's served for 15-plus years?
Nah, her enemies wanna run her out of town on a hot rail because she picked up a piñata head in the likeness of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Jose Castillo
Bad head: Pro-immigrant firebrand Isabel Garcia hoists the remainder of a Sheriff Joe piñata during a recent protest in Tucson.
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See, Nickel Bag Joe was down in the Old Pueblo recently signing his prevarication-friendly tome Joe's Law, that bag of blarney wherein he claims that the Minutemen and the Mexican Mafia have conspired against his life, that (contrary to the recollection of an ex-cop who was involved) he helped break the famed French Connection, that he once (kinda-sorta) gave Elvis Presley a pass on a speeding ticket. ("Sheriff Joe Buffaloes Readers," June 26).
While Joe was signing books inside a Tucson Barnes & Noble, Derechos Humanos, the immigrant rights group Garcia co-chairs in her spare time, protested outside. Some demonstrators brought along a Sheriff Joe piñata, complete with pink handcuffs, and whacked the crap out of it. At the end of the ersatz Arpaio-bashing, Garcia was caught on videotape picking up the decapitated piñata head and carrying it around.
Like, um, big deal, right? Heck, The Bird possesses the head, outfitted with devil horns, of a Joe piñata left over from a Cinco de Mayo celebration held by the Phoenix activist organization PUEBLO. Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, if a citizen can't give a papier-mâché Joe doll some licks after all the evil he's done as Maricopa County's top despot, then we might as well pack it all in and move to some really free country like Cuba or Myanmar.
Garcia, of course, didn't even take a crack at the piñata. She just hoisted Joe's mug.
For this, a guy calling himself Jon Justice, who flaps his lips as a morning talk jock for the hate-station 104.1 FM "The Truth" (yeah, right), and crackpot anti-illegal agitator Roy Warden have been urging folks to call Garcia's boss, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry, and demand that she be fired.
These Garcia-slamming guttersnipes are also calling on the State Bar of Arizona to punish or disbar Garcia for exercising her right to freedom of expression.
Justice's big radio move heretofore was a stunt in which he pretended to drown a dog on-air in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ultimately, he lost his Michigan a.m. show because of the caper.
As for Warden? He's infamous for going around Tucson burning Mexican flags, and getting in trouble with the local police for threatening to blow peoples' heads off. (Like many nativists, Warden is usually strapped with a sidearm.)
You'd think rational folks would want to keep a brain trust like Justice and Warden at arm's length. But Garcia has a long list of wing-nut enemies from her work as an advocate. Fox News Mexican-hater Michelle Malkin blogged about the controversy. And nativist hate Web sites across the country are calling for Garcia's hide.
Unbelievably, these a-hole ax-grinders have gained some traction in their effort to oust her. Even the Tucson Citizen, in the guise of lefty columnist Anne Denogean, has picked up the cause, inadvertently doing the bidding of MCSO flack Jack MacIntyre.
In a letter to Garcia's boss chastising her "disgraceful, unethical conduct," MacIntyre maintained that Garcia's actions "suggested her minions violently assault Sheriff Arpaio."
What a hoot! MacIntyre long ago sold his soul to Joe for a fat salary (he's one of several highly paid flacks in Arpaio's employ during tough economic times). The guy wouldn't know ethics if they clobbered him upside the snout, bent him over, and treated him like a lady.
The contention that the pummeling of a piñata's a threat just shows you what wusses head up the big, bad MCSO. A little symbolic protest makes these thugs shiver in their steel-toed boots.
Garcia, for her part, is refusing to apologize over the incident. Why should she? She didn't do anything wrong. Ride it out, Isabel. Meanwhile, The Bird's got your back.
FM WELFARE
So when KTAR 92.3 FM hatemonger Darrell Ankarlo ain't playing the immigrant card and drumming up discontent against the undocumented, he often complains (as conservatives are wont to do) about high taxes and big government. So why is he benefitting from a sponsorship from the County Attorney's Office?
That's right, your tax or RICO dollars may be going to advertise the local book tour for Ankarlo's racist claptrap of a tome, Another Man's Sombrero, wherein he milks a series of boneheaded broadcasts he made from the border, pretending to be an expert on immigration for those gullible enough to purchase this trash.
The book's full of the same tired rants he fills his broadcasts with, using bigoted terms like "anchor babies" to refer to citizens born on American soil to parents who're here illegally. Linking Mexican immigrants to a tidal wave of crime, when study after study shows this to be bull. Appealing to Anglo paranoia over "the loss of the greatest country in the history of the world."
To cop a line from South Park's Officer Barbrady: Nothing new to see here, people; move along.
