Mirror, mirror on the wall...who's the worst sheriff of them all? Snort.
Though this will come as no shock to denizens of cactus country, The New York Times' editorial blog -- The Board -- today dubbed our corrupt top constable, "America's Worst Sheriff."
Noting Joe Arpaio's recent foray in to trash TV with the new (and soon to be forgotten) Fox reality pilot, "Smile...You're Under Arrest!," our fellow scribblers at The Gray Lady went off on Maricopa County's Pennzoil-pated law man, bitch-slapping the crotchety septuagenarian so hard you could almost call it elder abuse. Heh. No worries, though. Joe deserves every verbal wallop, and then some.
"It's easy to snicker at the sight of a publicity-addicted law-enforcement official wallowing with the dregs of reality TV,' writes The Board, "sharing a channel with shows like `My Bare Lady,' `The Glutton Bowl" and `World Famous for Dicking Around.'
"But Sheriff Arpaio is armed and dangerous. He is a genuine public menace with a long and well-documented trail of inmate abuses, unjustified arrests, racial profiling, brutal and inept policing and wasteful spending."The blog post goes on to mention the recent Goldwater Institute report blasting Joe, his piss-poor record on crime, the 40,000 outstanding felony warrants, the lax response times, the bank-busting lawsuit settlements, the "racist sweeps of Latino neighborhoods," and on and on. And if The Board doesn't specifically mention every gruesome, unnatural death in Arpaio's gulags, ya can't fault its authors. They don't have a free month or three to pen that doorstop.
The Board even gives a shout out to Eduardo Barraza's independent Web site Barriozona.com, which documents Joe's doings. And it mentions a certain taloned terror of the keyboards, who had a spate of blog items recently, detailing the arrests of peaceful citizens by Joe's goons -- for applauding during a Board of Supervisors meeting, no less.
So thanks to The Board for paying attention. It's nice to know more civilized parts of the world give a pig's zit about all the injustice and abuse of power here in Sand Land. Who knows? Maybe Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General pick, will read about us on The Board and catch a clue. We need all the help we can get.
