Fort Collins Holiday Display Resolution Still Lacking

The Fort Collins menorah/Christmas tree/holiday lights saga is still unresolved, according to one Fort Collins Councilman:

Though a Fort Collins City Council vote last week ended a months-long discussion regarding holiday decorations on city property, one councilman said the initial question of menorah placement still has not been answered.

Councilman Wade Troxell circulated an e-mail to other council members and staff saying the city had not satisfied the need for an inclusionary city square open for free religious expression and that it should scrap parts of the plan the council adopted 6-1.

Troxell said the council needed to work with Rabbi Yerachmiel Gorelik — whose denied request to place a menorah marking Hanukkah on city property two years ago sparked the debate — to integrate a menorah with the traditional Christmas display.

Troxell cast the lone dissenting vote Nov. 20 to the proposal that maintained traditional, secular Christmas symbols such as decorated trees and colored lights on city buildings. It also created a display for next year on the Fort Collins Museum property that could have religious symbols such as the menorah.

“The museum display isn’t inclusionary at all. It’s a perversion of inclusion,” he said. “It will be developed by city workers, which isn’t an expression of faith. It’s an interpretation.”

As with any bureaucratic/governmental solution, the results are often incomplete, inadequate, and dissatisfying. The requested menorah that sparked this unnecessary controversy is still at issue–and was the primary reason for this councilman’s no vote.

Previous coverage of the Fort Collins holiday display “task force” debacle here.

Boulder Moonbats Removed From John Ashcroft Speech At CU

Whether you like John Ashcroft or despise his very soul, the continued reprehensible behavior displayed by moonbats of every stripe to any conservative/GOP speaker at any place of higher education is getting old:

Several protesters had to be forcibly removed from the audience at a speech given by former Attorney General John Ashcroft at the University of Colorado at Boulder Tuesday night.

The organizers of the event called in extra security from the Boulder Police Department at the last minute after hearing rumors about the protests, said Jessica Forthofer, chair of CU’s Cultural Events Board, which was responsible for the speech.

“We thought that the conservative viewpoint isn’t very espoused on the CU campus, and that’s why we wanted John Ashcroft,” Forthofer said, but she added that the board’s guest speakers, who have included Rev. Al Sharpton and Charlton Heston, had never received such a heated reception.

About 20 student protesters from CU and Naropa University, wearing shirts with “shame” written on the backs and wearing American flags over their faces, welcomed Ashcroft to the stage by standing up and turning their backs to him.

But the small group of silent protesters from the Students for Peace and Justice were overshadowed by several other unidentified demonstrators who rushed the stage to confront Ashcroft repeatedly during his speech and the question-answer portion.

“I have a question,” yelled one woman who was removed several times but kept finding a way back into the auditorium. “What medication are you on that you could violate our rights with such a clear conscience because I’d really like to get some.”

Perhaps if she took her medication, she would realize that this sort of buffoonery does not really constitute the type of manufactured “dissent” that is able to persuade anyone outside the tinfoil-hat, moonbat camp.

Har har, medication joke. How original!

“The way we defend our country is to prosecute, but the threat of prosecution is empty to those who would willingly extinguish themselves to harm us,” Ashcroft said. “Prosecution is the re-creation of the past. My directive from the president was to prevent, so we changed the way we did things.”

Ashcroft remained calm while the crowd booed him loudly several times during his speech, including when he said Guantanamo Bay was a “good place” for detainees and that he was proud of the United States government and its self-policing of Abu Ghraib, but he lost his composure when a man in the audience called him a liar.

“For those of you who have nothing to learn,” Ashcroft asked. “Why did you come tonight?”

To act like fools–what, did you go to college to get stupid? To assuage their guilt, worship at the altar of diversity, and repeat their claims of oppression:

Jessica Evans, a Naropa student and one of the masked protesters, said the angry outbursts from the audience was evidence that the Bush administration did not give enough voice to the concerns of the public.

“What I saw out there was very real anger,” Evans said. “Unfortunately the message gets lost when the voice of a heckler is the only voice of dissent heard.”

Whereupon the BushCo jackbooted thugs . . . nope, no oppression here. Just removal for disrupting an event.

Anger does not count as a rational voice of dissent. Moonbats feel that there is real oppression here, that conservatives and Republicans squelch dissent. The message gets lost, not because of any concerted effort to silence opposition, but because those voicing such angry, often deranged diatribes tend not to make much rational sense.

Unless you are on some sort of moonbat/hippie medication, that is.

Denver Diversity Training Video–"Hammer The White Guy"

**Update 2–The city pulls the offending video, CBS4 has the full 8 minute video; the city responds:

Denver has decided to shelve a diversity-training video that portrays a white man as the sole bigot among a cast of blacks, Hispanics and women.

The decision to pull the video, titled Laughing Matters — Think About It, comes after Dennis Supple, a white man who works for the city, complained that it was racist and violated his civil rights.

The video has generated intense media interest from local and national outlets, including CNN, The Washington Times and the Greg Knapp Experience, a nationally broadcast radio program.

“We have clearly struck a nerve,” Kathy Maloney, spokeswoman for the Career Service Authority, said today in a news release.

“We want to use this revived attention and passion from our employees to open dialogue with the result being the best end product possible,” she said. “We will suspend the use of the video until we can facilitate this collaboration at an upcoming summit.”

**Update–Michelle Malkin links (thanks!) and has a snippet of the offending video

“Diversity, to me, doesn’t mean hammer the white guy . . . Diversity means you have respect for everyone, regardless of their race, their gender, their religion, their sexual orientation”–Dennis Supple, city of Denver employee

Diversity training in the workplace requires the implementation of awkward, cheesy indoctrination materials, and a convenient bigoted bogeyman to demonstrate the inherent/institutional -isms that diversity/multiculturalism seeks to eliminate. Luckily for Denver and its training video, they have found the perfect bad guy–you guessed it, a white male:

The city of Denver is showing its employees a diversity training video that portrays a white man as a narrow-minded buffoon – triggering allegations of “institutional racism” against Anglos.

“Right now, their diversity program is racially motivated against white males,” said Dennis Supple, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning mechanic who has worked for the city 1 1/2 years.

The video, titled Laughing Matters – Think About It, is meant to show employees how humor at the expense of others diminishes respect in the workplace. The character who breaks all the rules is Billy, a white, blue-collar worker who’s a racist, sexist goofball.

In one scene, Billy is told that another employee named Carlos can’t do anything because he’s waiting for supplies.

“What’s his problem?” Billy says. “He can’t sell breakfast burritos without the supplies or he takes a siesta?”

Supple said the video violates his civil rights and that he’s considering taking the equity in his house to file a lawsuit to stop the city from showing it.

“Diversity, to me, doesn’t mean hammer the white guy,” Supple said. “Diversity means you have respect for everyone, regardless of their race, their gender, their religion, their sexual orientation.”

The educatee has become the educator in this case, reminding the bureaucratic diversity-mongers that at best, having respect is the basis for a stable, non-discriminatory work environment. Sometimes, however, the diversity-trainers get carried away and have to fall back on excuses:

Kathy Maloney, spokeswoman for the Career Service Authority, said the video is part of a one- to three-hour facilitated discussion.

“The video itself is scheduled for updating in either 2008 or 2009, so (Supple’s) input would certainly be taken into consideration for the next video,” she said.

Maloney noted the last thing to appear on the 8-minute video is this phrase: “Remember, Billy could be anyone.”

She also said the teaching guide tells facilitators to “ensure participants recognize this video does not highlight or target any particular individual or group.”

“It’s meant to represent anyone who could (use) inappropriate humor in the workplace,” she said.

This would be true except that in most cases, only the majority’s jokes are abolished or cause for concern. Jokes or educational points, made at the expense of the white male in the room, are acceptable or even encouraged, as a way for trainers to indoctrinate facilitate discussion:

“If you portrayed a black woman (or a Hispanic or a homosexual) in that manner, there’d be hell to pay,” Supple said. “But it’s OK for them to portray a white man in this manner because you put down one little (disclaimer) at the end of the (video) that says, ‘Remember, anybody could be Billy.’ That’s a bunch of bull.”

The video, developed by the city’s Diversity Advisory Committee in collaboration with Channel 8, the city’s television channel, won second place in 2005 for Instruction/Training from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.

Don’t even want to know what the winning video looked like . . .

**Update–Drunkablog was, of course, on top of this story last week linking to an earlier version of the same story

Blogs For Border Video Blogburst 112607

Freedom Folks has this week’s edition.

Odds Ends 112107

Laying around in the queue for the past few days:

Appeals Court Asked To Overturn Smoking Ban

CU scraps joint journalism school in Pakistan

University of Colorado’s personnel checks get more stringent

Pope to purge the Vatican of modern music

Fort Collins Chooses Hybrid Holiday Policy

Audio of the “holiday display task force presentation”, Mayor Doug Hutchinson’s ground rules and clarifications, and citizen comments:

An immigrant from the UK describes the nefarious encroachment of socialism/multiculturalism and explains that the “celebration of diversity” really means more restrictions and less inclusiveness:

Rabbi Yerachmiel Gorelik explains his original request to display a Menorah that touched off the controversy, first when his request was denied twice, and then with the formation of the “holiday task force”:

Still legal in Fort Collins–at least this year

Citizens of Fort Collins prepare to weigh in on the “holiday task force” recommendations

Avoiding another battle in the “war on Christmas”, the Fort Collins City Council ultimately decided on adopting the third, hybrid option recommended by the “holiday display task force”–keep traditions by retaining current policy, while adding a new multiholiday exhibit at the Fort Collins museum:

All holidays are welcomed and celebrated in Fort Collins. City Council voted, 6-1, to adopt a Holiday Display Policy that honors current Christmas traditions and adds a new multicultural display at the Fort Collins Museum.

Council chose to adopt a hybrid plan which incorporates elements of both the existing Holiday Display Policy and a portion of the Holiday Display Task Force recommendations.

Consistent with existing policy, interior and exterior of City buildings may include traditional displays of trees, adorned greenery, wreaths, and other secular symbols or messages. Both white and colored lights are acceptable.

Based on recommendations from the Holiday Display Task Force, a multi-cultural educational exhibit will be placed on the grounds of the Fort Collins Museum. Both secular and religious celebrations and traditions will be included.

This decision, however, does not remove the responsibility the City Council bears for having put itself in such an awkward, attention gathering situation. It failed for two years to approve a request to add a Menorah, at no cost, to its existing display. It also punted the political football created by the controversy by overreacting and appointing a bureaucratic nightmare of a task force whose composition–widely derided by the citizens of Fort Collins–seemed to be predisposed to providing a multicultural mess of a recommendation that became media fodder overnight and drew even more negative publicity for the city.

The hybrid option did not please some task force members including, unsurprisingly, the lone ACLU member:

Some members of the citizen Holiday Display Task Force committee said Monday they are unhappy with changes city staff made to a holiday display policy coming before the City Council for a vote Tuesday night.

The task force, which met weekly for more than two months, made recommendations to ban colored lights and wreaths from the exterior of city buildings but to allow building managers’ discretion in determining what adorns building interiors – including flexibility for religious displays.

The “hybrid policy,” mashed together with parts of the task force recommendation and input from individual council members and the public, would allow for colored lights and Christmas tree displays on city building exteriors, including Oak Street Plaza, but limits what can be placed inside city buildings to items secular in nature unless part of an educational piece of artwork.

“My primary concern is that the (hybrid) recommendation includes aspects that were neither in the original policy nor the task force recommendation,” task force spokesman Seth Anthony said. “I am concerned that some of the things were not thought all the way through and carefully (vetted) like the task force recommendations were.”

City manager Darin Atteberry disagreed, saying the city has a long-standing policy and tradition of using citizen group input along with other factors when preparing policy for council debate and vote.

“That is why they are called advisory groups,” Atteberry said, adding these types of decisions are always left to the city’s elected officials.

Citizens Voice Strong Opposition To Holiday Task Force Recommendations

Complete audio of the citizens' open mic session will be posted later tonight.

Impressions:
–speakers criticize "holiday task force" composition as not
representative of Fort Collins population

–implore city council to be inclusive, not excluding the traditions
that have made this country great while at the same time not excluding
minority participation, including Menorahs and other religious symbols
appropriate for the season

Task Force "Reasoning"

From the agenda–because Fort Collins is now a "dynamic, culturally
diverse community", Christmas should be relegated to the city museum,
as the "common theme" of light replaces those obnoxious and highly
offensive Christmas trees and red and green lights!

Liveblogging Fort Collins City Council Vote

Well, trying at least, from the Fort Collins City Council chamber via
the new Slapstick Politics BlackBerry.

Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst 111907

This week’s edition courtesy of Freedom Folks.