The Cincinnati Beacon - Jim Schifrin: The national Imus scandal has caused him to fear

Jim Schifrin, who publishes the disgusting Whistleblower under the name “Charles Foster Kane,” has entered a panic mode given the national outcry concerning Don Imus and his racially loaded language. Schifrin, who used this edition of The Whistleblower to front himself as taking some kind of principled stand, fears that his access points will get cut. With no politicians to openly fraternize in public with the likes of his filth, Schifrin’s imaginary world will come crashing. So he is acting like his own trash is a first amendment issue, ignoring the reality that one’s right to speak garbage has no relationship to forcing other people to subsidize, approve, or otherwise use positions of authority to bolster the advancement of disgusting and sophomoric rhetoric.

No matter your opinion on Don Imus, the question of one’s right to be a bigot has nothing to do with whether others should be forced to support bigotry (or what they perceive as bigotry, whether rightly or wrongly).

No one disputes Jim Schifrin’s right to be a bigot—calling the Mayor a “gay darkie,” among other outrageous acts—but should Republican elected leaders openly fraternize with him? The KKK may have the right to put a cross at Fountain Square, but does that mean that State Rep. Tom Brinkman should be laughing it up with the Klan at campaign fundraisers? What would we think if the neo-Nazis threatening to march through Over-The-Rhine all had on Tom “Tax Killer” Brinkman neckties? (Yes, Schifrin typically adorns himself with just such an absurdity.)

In an attempt to change the subject, Schifrin tries to hide behind trumped up political rhetoric and slogans he’s used for over a decade:

And going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Left-wing bloggers who were taking time out from whacking off in their mothers’ basements earlier this week to call Imus a racist, are probably now calling the Whistleblower names too. Who gives a fat rat’s ass what they say? Nobody important reads what they write anyhow. We certainly don’t.

As we so often say, the reason for some people’s entire existence is to whine about having their feelings hurt, and we’re doing our best to accommodate them. We also say sometimes the Blower uses racial and ethnic slurs to show that bigotry of any kind is not appropriate in our society. This should be clear to anybody who isn’t a total retard.

Only a “total retard” (if I may beg apology from my readers to use Schifrin’s own course language against him) would think that calling the Mayor a “gay darkie” teaches any kind of lesson about the inappropriateness of bigotry. But this is Schifrin’s schtick: creating platitudes to indirectly call anyone who disagrees with his filth “a retard.” The truth is that Schifrin’s work teaches nothing about bigotry of any kind.

And, sources tell me that Schifrin actually has lots of conservative female readers, who have been known to blast him with letters when he becomes too sexist. Allegedly, these letters will cause Schifrin to back off, for a time anyway, until the cycle continues. That is quite different from the bravado Schifrin fronts when he writes things like this: “Our principles are not for sale. Neither can they be rented. It would only be a matter of time before the screws would be applied to the program director or news editor to tell The Blower to lay off That Lying Plagiarizing Meddling Overblown Bitch Mean Jean Schmidt, ease up on the Sniveling former Senator’s Stuttering Son P-P-P-Patrick, or be gentle to our testosterone challenged mayor because a sponsor or his wife was ‘uncomfortable’ with our uncompromising assault on the Fifth Estate and the cronies they try to shield.”

Maybe they can’t be “rented,” but apparently they can be punked around by his female readership.

Schifrin ends his misdirected rant by trying to characterize himself as some kind of victim:

They can take away our microphone, turn off our fax machines, and block our IP. They can threaten us with legal action, bodily harm, raise our taxes with drive-by reappraisals, or butcher our hedges, but we will not be silenced. What we say is what you think. In this world of estrogen enhanced news, PC Speech Nazis and Racial Racketeering Extortionists, we will say what others dare not speak out loud. We are your guilty pleasure, like the ones you keep in your sock drawer or a hidden bookmark on your computer at work. You think it, but we say it, without fear or malice. Like moths to the candle of truth, you will always find the light at The Whistleblower.

No one has suggested that Jim Schifrin will be forcibly silenced. No one. I have personally questioned Steve Fritsch, the person who currently hosts The Whistleblower online, why he would give bandwidth to such a project. And that is my own right, my own protected free speech which someone like Schifrin should seek to protect. And since we’re talking about freedom, there is also something called free-will. We have the will to either encourage Schifrin, or to discourage him. Community leaders have a choice—of whether they will bolster his work through public fraternization with Schifrin, or whether they will limit their interactions with him to off-the-record, private meetings, or no meetings at all.

It is time to hold these leaders accountable to their tacit encouragement of racist filth. Such demands are also protected free speech, as much as Schifrin wants to pretend they are something else.

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