A St. Olaf visiting professor bragged about stealing John McCain signs from his GOP neighbors and described it as a thrilling act of political defiance for a highly-trafficked liberal blog.
“Yanking out the signs and running like a scared rabbit back to my idling car was one of the single-most exhilarating and empowering political acts that I have ever done,” wrote Phil Busse in an essay titled “Confessions of a Lawn Sign Stealer” for the Huffington Post.
Busse is teaching a class on media studies this semester at St. Olaf and is currently director for the Northwest Institute for Social Change. He unsuccessfully ran for the mayor in Portland, Oregon in 2004.
Busse said he realized he committed a crime and expected to be charged with misdemeanor theft of trespassing in the piece.
It would have been nice if they'd provided a link to the HuffPost piece. I had to go there and find it myself.
Perhaps a fitting punishment would be for the perp to walk around town wearing placards advertising the political candidates they do not support ?
ReplyDeleteThis guy sounds like a wack job.
There's the prevailing attitude that the end justifies the means in the Democrat party. That means breaking into private emails, stealing signs, threatening supporters-whatever it takes. All they need are brown shirts and Sam Browne belts and they would be right in line. I just have to hold up my hands and ask IS ANYONE GOING TO SPEAK UP FOR THOSE OF US WHO DISAGREE? It's pretty pathetic that this man gets a rush from this kind of thing. But then again, he wouldn't do that down here where we have guns and religion to forgive us for shooting him.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of thing makes me sick. If someone on campus told him he could not speak politically in front of his classes, he would scream bloody murder. Yet he is doing the same kind of suppression by stealing signs.
ReplyDeleteI can see that. Why can't he?
(Ah well, it doesn't matter any more anyway.)
Wow, Ellen, are you saying you would actually condone killing the man for stealing political signs?
ReplyDeleteatlas
No, Brave Anonymous, I am saying-tongue in cheek-that he's a creature of his culture. His culture lauds those who make actions against the current administration. They see such actions as a type of emancipating act. In a culture where the end does not justify the means-as in most places in American Life-those types of actions are not sanctioned and celebrated. But since you so obviously are of the predilection to believe that most conservatives are idiot yahoos who shoot first and ask questions later, then why not pursue the stereotype for some good end? After all, if the ends justify the means for some, then they justify the means for all, right?
ReplyDeleteSo Atlas, do you condone the stealing of political signs or at least the stealing of the signs of opposition candidates?
ReplyDeleteMy lord, those are two rather wild extrapolations from my comment.
ReplyDeleteIf the gentleman is a creature of his culture it must be a rather small culture. I know of no person or group coming to his defense.
Anon, I think the public scorn he received, resigning, slinking off in humiliation, was about the proper punishment. No need for actual gunplay.
brave atlas