“I fought the whole war in Oklahoma … You need to remember, there was not one Japanese aircraft that got past Tulsa.”
– George Gobel, 1969
It is just short of half a century since I enlisted in the Arizona Air National Guard and 44 years since I left with an (against the odds) honorable discharge. I’m proud of my military service; during my entire six-year deployment not a single Viet Cong made it north of Mexico (rim shot). In reality, my greatest military accomplishment was probably avoiding court-martial but, in any event, I have satisfied my military obligation to my country and state and needn’t worry about it any longer.
Or so I thought. David Stringer has other plans in mind.
Stringer, a Republican member of the Arizona legislature from Prescott, whose hairpiece looks like it dropped onto his head from a balcony, wants every adult in Arizona, even those well into Medicare and Social Security eligibility, included in Arizona’s state militia.
Isms of the Czar
I interviewed him again in 2004 during the “Inside Track” radio show with the late Emil Franzi, the show’s founder. I asked Sweeney about his racism and he quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. (“they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”). I expressed surprise that an avowed racist quoted MLK and told him, “Joe, I’ll take your word for it that you’re a racist. But I have to tell you, you’re not very good at it.”
I remember Sweeney as the media arcade pinballs the term “racism” from one speaker to another, all wondering if the American Czar is a racist and, more importantly, whether racism influences his policies. When a self-designated racist is unsure of the definition, it reminds us to use the term cautiously.
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