Collins on Newtown: "We need to redefine who we are."

Part three of four.

Looking for America, by Gail Collins (New York Times)
By GAIL COLLINS

... Every country has a sizable contingent of mentally ill citizens. We’re the one that gives them the technological power to play god.

Beam her up, Scotty.

Moments ago I was walking along Spring Street headed east. Naturally (?), I was walking on the sidewalk, where pedestrians generally should be.

Ahead of me, also on the sidewalk, was a bicycle coming slowly in my direction -- annoying, seeing as the pristine new bicycle path lay mere feet to the right.

It occurred to me to say something. As the bicyle came closer, I could see that the rider was an older, gray-haired woman. At first, she seemed to be talking on a cell phone, but upon closer inspection, this was shown not to be the case. I caught just a bit of the conversation she was having with herself:

... telling them that the diodes implanted in my body are preventing me from proving my innocence ...

I decided not to say anything.

New twist to old tale: Trognonymity Express goes off the rails with a published death threat.

As we’ve informed readers in the past, a disgruntled local resident named Vicki Denhart, author of the Freedom of Speech blog, has spent the past two years posing pseudonymously as a male academic (“Erik”) during the course of frequent slanderings and obsessive slimings directed with all the tactfulness of a grammar school playground sprite at her apparently numerous personal and political enemies.

Among the most pilloried of these adversaries is the incumbent mayor, James Garner.

Ms. Denhart’s Paleolithic gurgling has been periodically humorous, commonly misdirected, often completely false, and always cowardly, but now the transparent charade has escalated to new heights since she declared her candidacy for an at-large city council seat and began planting yard signs according to the Kochert Dictum, which hold that illegal acts aren’t really illegal if they can be deployed to annoy a political opponent.

Of course, the very fact that each local election cycle is pockmarked by numerous controversies over irrelevancies like yard signage points to the virtually non-existent state of substantive, issues-based discussion on the part of candidates and their parties, a lamentable absence that is one of the most prominent indicators of New Albany’s enduring contempt for the human brain … but I digress.

Unsurprisingly, and with the municipal races finally heating up, Ms. Denhart now accuses the mayor of Stalinist intimidation, alleging that he is orchestrating a widespread and horrible purge of … yes, political yard signs.

Again, You Sir...have a policy of removing selective candidates signs, to go with your selective billing and selective enforcement … Do you really believe Jimmy that you are above the law? Are you this desperate to stoop to this level of intimidation of the voters?

And, according to the History channel, what typically happens to such tyrants?

A message will be sent to you loud and clear on May 8th. That this is no longer your kingdom and the citizens are no longer your subjects.

History should be your teacher. Look what happen to Marie Antoinette, Nicholas Romanov the Czar of Russia and finally King James!

Odd that Ms. Denhart proposes to assassinate LeBron James of the up and coming Cleveland Cavaliers – maybe she’s a closet … uh, Pistons fan -- but wait: Upon closer examination, it seems that the bilious, anonymous and pseudonymous candidate is threatening the incumbent mayor with the guillotine and/or a cavalcade of bullets.

Unless, of course, she bears another of her fabled vitriolic grudges against the former English royal’s sanctioned Biblical translation. But that king is already dead, as any real “professor of history” would know. Perhaps she wishes to have the skeleton exhumed, drawn and quartered.

(As a side note, isn’t it interesting that “history should be your teacher” is a hoary cliché most often heard emanating from the vicinity of Councilman Steve Price?)

From where we’re sitting, nothing could be more “intimidating” than a death threat published on the Internet for the whole world to see, and if I were the mayor, I’d take it seriously. Vicki Denhart’s long months of cowardly playacting might be tragic-comical and worthy of contempt and derision (heaven knows I’ve tried my best), but lunatic ravings often are harbingers of genuine instability.

Isn’t it time that Ms. Denhart’s charade came to an end?

After all, it’s the reason why people laugh at us.

Whatever happened to the Coffeyite diaspora to Birdseye, anyway?