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Eminentoes
The Wicked Witch of the West
Or at least of Boise, Idaho.
I find this on Page 24 of my dog-eared Signet paperback edition of George Orwell’s 1984.
“It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the ‘Times’ did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak — ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.”
Orwell was obsessed with the totalitarian figures of his time, especially Joseph Stalin, from whose regime he got the model for the above. The great Soviet purges of the 1930s systematically used children as political informers against adults. One wonders how many people went to the Gulag based on the forced, twisted testimony of kids. Which brings me to a school bus full of the latter in Rexburg, Idaho, though I find them for the most part innocent, and not malignantly Orwellian. Their value here is as an exhibit for their potential as tools for manipulation.
The day after Election Day some grade-schoolers on the bus were heard to be chanting in singsong “Assassinate Obama.” When bored with that, they switched to “Assassinate Obama and Kate” (poor little Kate, whoever she might be, but her presence does illustrate the episode’s trivial nature). Anyway, the bus driver overheard this, and some parents got wind of it secondhand from their kids. In short, the Madison County School District was notified. An official e-mail was sent to all administrators, teachers and bus drivers stating this behavior should be met with strong disapproval. News of the scandal reached a Twin Falls TV news station, which devoted a short segment to it. It seems that due to the kids’ ages (six to eight) that the United States Secret Service wasn’t interested. But Jill Kuraitis was.
Kuraitis is the “Idaho Editor” for “New West,” a Lefty regional website based in Missoula, Montana, and devoted to Western politics, culture, recreation and business (mostly Green). I find it amusing and visit everyday. It’s Missoula’s own online New York magazine. If you want to know where to get good coffee, wine or sushi in Missoula — check New West. There are local blogs (New West-Missoula, New West-Bozeman, New West-Boise). I’ve always thought of it as a sort of home-away-from-home newsletter for a million expatriate Californians. But back to Jill Kuraitis.
She’s one of the website’s “citizen journalists” and writes regularly. In September she penned a hysterical screed about Sarah Palin. It was impressive; worthy of the Huffington Post or Daily Kos. “She was the head cheerleader who got there by bullying others and having her mother pull strings. She was the girl who would be your best friend one day, then turn on you the next and use your confidences against you….Winning was everything.” You get the idea. It was a species of trite sputum usually found in biohazard containers in the exam room of your doctor’s office.
On November 13, Kuraitis posted a column about those naughty kids in Rexburg. She called the Madison County School District to ask: “What is being done to find out if the parents of these kids have created a home atmosphere where that kind of language and thinking is okay?” E-mails were exchanged with a district “spokesperson” named Janet Goodliffe. Goodliffe’s final communication: “I don’t know what you mean. It’s not even like that. It was the day after the election and the kids were just chanting, really little kids, like six, seven and eight.”
But Kuraitis is undeterred. She writes: “I’m not saying all six year olds would have known what they were saying. But most would [Really?], and some kind of swift and serious action should be taken to figure out where they got the swill they were regurgitating. The kids and parents should be questioned by law enforcement, if only to emphasize how serious the incident was.” Kuraitis continues her piece by decrying yet another one of those hangman’s noose incidents, this particular one in rural northern Idaho, with a man named Ken Germana under investigation by the Spokane office of the U.S. Secret Service. “I hope authorities throw the book at him.” I would guess that Kuraitis found nothing wrong with Sarah Palin hanged in effigy in California as a Halloween prank.
Since the election especially the left has adopted a paranoid stance concerning President-elect Obama’s safety. The fact that President Bush has for the last eight years stoically endured the most vicious opprobrium the left had to offer, including starring in the plot of novel that speculated on the virtues of assassination, doesn’t faze the Jill Kuraitis’ of the world. The double standard is glaringly apparent.
But Kuraitis can’t comprehend that. With her laser glare focused on six year olds and misanthropic hermits living in the woods, she ends her piece wallowing in histrionic gobbledygook: “I’m at a loss about how to stop this stuff, but that doesn’t stop me from using my fury to try to think of something constructive. It’s an enormous concept with thousands of years of history to try to fight hate and violence, but we have to start somewhere.”
I think George Orwell would have been fascinated by Jill Kuraitis. In one tiresome piece she has managed to display both definitions of the word “Orwellian”: that related to the political and to the linguistic.
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (26) | Leave a comment
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Michael L. Hauschild| 11.20.08 @ 6:29AM
The thought of comparing Sarah Palin to the "bad cheerleader" in one of the Bring It On movies should be the extent of taking Kuraitis as anything other than another lunatic zealot. Public figures, little girls on a bus, is there no end? I wonder what she would say about me?
Kitty| 11.20.08 @ 7:18AM
Is Jill Kuraitis a good Party Member true to The Cause? If push came to shove, would she turn in her own parents to the Thought Police?
From Orwell's "1984" (pg. 24):
"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HMByO1RA4M
...
blackelkspeaks| 11.20.08 @ 8:37AM
It is obvious to any thinking person that there will come a day in the not-too-distant future when the Jill Kuraitis's of the world will have to be directly confronted and bloodily fought by any one of us who values individual liberty. She is emblematic of the kind of leftist jackasses that pervade this country like a cancerous plague. These scumbags have even insinuated themselves into communities like Idaho and Montana that, up to now, have resisted the worst effects of the liberal lunacy that has swept over this country. We are now at the point where every single Democrat is now an unabashed enemy of freedom. The battle lines are not being drawn, but have already been drawn, and are now laid out in stark and unmistakeable terms.
Kitty| 11.20.08 @ 9:45AM
blackspeaks, I know what you mean. I'm not trying to be facetious but seriously, "sushi in Missoula"? Praise the Lord and pass the ammo.
...
Speedbump| 11.20.08 @ 10:40AM
Blackelkspeaks, I truly understand what you are saying...and it does frighten me...though I've had the same thoughts...the brainwashing of the left is so insidious, and so pervasive, I despair that there will never be any way our nation will get back on track without blood being shed...
Back when Kruschev declared, "We will bury you", everyone thought they would do so militarily...but once the old Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of it's Marxist oppression, the old Marxists joined with the underminers already positioned in our society, and have produced the situation with which we are now faced...will they indeed bury us after all?
Bahb| 11.20.08 @ 11:57AM
You know all you people are on her list now... especially blackelkspeaks :-P Not me though- I renounce this subversive thought! Renounce it I tell you!
*g*
Einah| 11.20.08 @ 12:13PM
You'll find that leftists aren't content with controlling what you do and say. They're quite concerned with controlling how you think and feel as well.
Tulius| 11.20.08 @ 1:18PM
Two quotes come to mind.
"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side", I calmly say , "Your child belongs to us already..." -- Adolph Hitler, re the Hitler Youth Corps.
"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." (Albert Camus)
Big Elk| 11.20.08 @ 3:38PM
Obviously, Jill Kuraitis is an American-hating, First Amendment, free-speech, racist psychopath. Of course, she suported the black racist pig mohammedan Obama. Kuraitis should be locked up in the nut house.
RyanT.| 11.20.08 @ 5:21PM
We need to make a stand if the liberals try to silence talk radio. The stomping out of free speech needs to be resisted by all means!
Daphne Kenward| 11.20.08 @ 9:00PM
America will be Bankrupt before the end of the year. Stop paying your mortgage to ensure you can buy food, and fuel. America is finished, they are trying their best to sell you another war, don't go there, let the Bankers start it and fight it themselves.
Secret rulers of the world 1-29 check it out, good luck folks
ruth| 11.21.08 @ 3:58PM
Why do you protect Daphne Kenward's vicious posts? She should be called out on her lies. Why are you acting as her enabler?
marsha| 11.21.08 @ 4:42PM
Somehow you fail to grasp that in Idaho, Democrats may be afraid to put a bumper sticker on their car for fear of causing it to be vandalized; that in Idaho, business owners who are Democrats hide it to refrain from harming their business; that in Idaho, the cowboyish audiences attending John Marvel's speeches routinely make "jokes" about wanting to shoot him. The vitriol spewed on this very page by "blackelkspeaks" and "Big Elk" represent exactly what is so very frightening, and all the while their texts are to the effect that it's the liberals who want to control others. Why have Idahoans forsaken debates in favor of threats of violence? That's what I'm talking about, and the pity is that even the editorial writer fails to accurately gauge the extent of fear generated by troglodytes whose idea of political discourse is "Assassinate somebody!" I'll respect them a lot more when they learn to behave like civilized adults. But I'll continue to watch my back, unfortunately......
ruth| 11.21.08 @ 5:19PM
Troglodytes reside in both parties. I didn't place a McCain sticker on my car because I knew it would be keyed--or worse. Foul epithets about Governor Palin were worn on t-shirts in public, her private email account was hacked into and displayed on the inter-net, I also saw cartoon pictures of her being violently attacked, knocking her teeth out-- on numerous web-sites. President Bush has endured broadway plays and novels written about his assassination. Are these behaviors examples of civilized adults? Do you object to the vitriol on your side, do you even acknowledge it? I deplore this vile behavior regardless of its source but it sounds like you are blind to the hatred being spewed from your side. We, on the right, fear the liberals' propensity to call in Big Brother to police unpleasant speech--only when it is to punish us.
marsha| 11.21.08 @ 5:34PM
My contention is that more virtriol comes from the right. This story was not about anybody chanting "Assassinate Bush". And it was the Palin rallies where the audience was shouting "Kill the N_____!" and accusing Obama of being Moslem, a terrorist, and so on ad nauseum. In the reddest of red states, methinks you protest to the point of silliness. In a 67% majority such as Idaho, who's afraid???? Certainly not the majority. In Idaho, I know of no Republican who's wary of publicizing his party affiliation. You had to be searching hard to find the stuff you claim to have seen; cerainly you are aware that there were many such right-wing attacks, and they were much more public (Palin rallies, i.e.). The Left has no Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, despite their current and pathetic fears that their right-wing radio will be "taken away" as the one writer worried. The story from the beginning was about what was said about the Democratic president-elect. In thirty years in Idaho, I have not seen one left-wing attack. I have, however, seen nooses in yards, raical epithets defacing property, burning crosses, and as I mentioned earlier, "jokes" about shooting the head of the Western Watersheds group from his audience. The poor picked-on majority!
ruth| 11.21.08 @ 5:46PM
Marsha, I was hoping you were a reasonable liberal--guess not. Provide proof of your claim that 'kill the n.....' was shouted at Palin rallies. You can't because it wasn't and that was corroborated by the secret service. I don't know what cave you've been living in--but there has been plenty of hatred spewed by the left. Do you know who Keith Olbermann is? You are the majority, why the need to whine?
pullupyourdamnpants| 11.22.08 @ 3:02PM
Another piece of poor writing by someone who doesn't check the facts. I've met her several times - she's lovely and incredibly friendly and nice - and I read Ms. Kuraitis' writing all the time (she's the editor of NewWest, not a citizen journalist, and the publication came in second for general excellence in news sites for the entire state from the Idaho Press Club) and she wouldn't put any of you "on her list." She has written about her career-Army father whom she adored, who would have approved of her column about the school bus according to what she's written, her son who spent four years in the military in Iraq and is home safe, her long and happy marriage, traditional family values and many other columns which give a rounded picture of who she is. I don't always agree with her politics but I assure you she does not want to make laws or rules against free speech, just find out where hate comes from and let it be exposed and repudiated. She has written about close friends of hers who are very right-wing Republicans, her admiration for Republicans Idaho Senator Mike Crapo and Governor Butch Otter, and many topics which have made me a fan of her writing. Read something else she's written and get a different pictures. Here: http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/protecting_teachers_who_protect_free_speech/C559/L559/ and here is the wonderful story of her son http://www.newwest.net/city/article/after_four_years_hes_under_homes_roof/C108/L108/
If you continue to criticize, which is everybody's right and Ms. Kuraitis would defend that right, kindly keep in mind that people with whom you disagree are not evil devils. She wouldn't think you are evil even though you've been so incredibly rude in stating your opinions. It's not your opinions which are rude; it's the personal-ness of the hatefulness. Address issues. I thank you.
Daphne Kenward| 11.22.08 @ 6:16PM
I heard that Americans are buying up guns in huge numbers, they are expecting civil war. Quite often when their is a recession or rather Depression, often followed by war. From what I can understand many foreign troops are in America because the dept of this Depression is far worse than George Bush even admitted. Many major Companies will go out of business, people losing their pension, health care, jobs. I understand in the short term unemployment will be extended for a further 20 weeks in badly hit areas.
I think George Bush was not fit for office he has destroyed the American economy for good, and no country on earth has any confidence in the American economic system, many people think it was a desaster waiting to happen.
I heard upto 2 MILLION people will lose their job before the end of the year. Some are saying America will become a has been in less than 10 years. Petrol is coming down in price though, only trouble no one has any money to afford to buy new cars.
The Chinese will take over America George Bush May well decide to sell America for two dollars for tax purposes. Truth is you never can tell, if America is in 10 Trillions of debt, and now the debt will increase to another 2-3 Trillion plus interest Payments to the FED. America is dug into a hole they will never get out of, the power is shifting to ASIA.
Daphne Kenward| 11.22.08 @ 6:28PM
I know as a fact no one on this page has ever read George Orwell. If they had, they would have a different mind set on POLITICS, and can see it for what it is.
ruth| 11.22.08 @ 6:52PM
I love my country and wouldn't live any where else on earth. There are those who screech hate and lies but they do not matter because they bring nothing positive to the discussion. I believe in God and I know that He has a plan for all of us, and if we are facing perilous times in the future, my faith in Jesus Christ will sustain me. So rant all you want, evil naysayers, in the scheme of things, you matter not one whit.
ruth| 11.22.08 @ 7:01PM
I think the author was trying to make the point that the left doesn't police their own vitriol spewed toward republicans. We just wish their outrage was a little more balanced, that it wasn't so one-sided.
getalifevirginia| 11.23.08 @ 9:25AM
Poor, Poor Marsha. She is seriously in need of therapy and a good dose of how cause and effect works.
brutus| 11.24.08 @ 3:04PM
Maybe Marsha would be happier if she just moved back to Kalifornia....
Daphne Kenward| 11.24.08 @ 7:03PM
Loving one's country is one thing, but most people like Ruth one can tell has vever been anywhere in their life, hence the narrow tunnel vision, mentality. Has no mind for open debate in an objective way. Each person has a right to their own opinion, we don't all have to agree.
ruth| 11.30.08 @ 2:17AM
Daphne, just how much open-minded discussion do you find in that nut house inwhich you reside?