Skip to main content

Today is a day of crisis. The Bee has flipped out.

The Sept 9, 2012, issue of the Sacramento Bee with its headline " 'Drive-by' homeless aid angers business owners, residents."
I hope to report fully on the Bee flip out tomorrow, when I should have ample time to do so.  But let it be said that a headline item in today's Bee, "Drive-by homeless aid angers business owners, residents" and, especially, a Marcos Breton editorial inside the paper, "Stench of hypocrisy surrounds homeless issue in Sacramento" are unacceptable, homeless-hate-baiting items that need a severe response.

With regard to the Bee's homelessness reporting before this, the paper was already in the toilet with hatefulness coming from associate editor Ginger Rutland and the editorial board.  But now the Bee is making a very direct effort at promulgating hatred toward the homeless. The Breton editorial is well beyond the pale, trying to engender a violent response to a situation where homeless campers are merely trying to survive.

The Breton editorial ends with this bizarre sentiment:
What is it going to take for authorities to take action [against the homeless]? When I was on the parkway, I could imagine unspeakable things happening in remote areas where no one would hear the screams of, say, an abducted child.

It's only a matter of time.
If Mr. Breton is concerned about possible violent behavior forthcoming from any particular individual, he should make his specific non-imaginary concerns known to the police. If there is something evidence-based (as opposed to just something crafted in his head), then, certainly, he should do something to prompt the prevention of violence.

But, rather obviously, Mr. Breton is stoking flames of hate by dreaming things up.  The danger that is afoot is him.

I submit that the publisher of the Bee must put Mr. Breton on a leave of absence immediately such that an evaluation of what all is happening at the Bee can be conducted, preferable by outside parties. I submit that Mr. Breton has become Sacramento's own version of Lt. Pike. He has taken a bridge too far, at the very least. His conduct as an opinion writer is deleterious to the well being of the community.

The headline article in the Bee on Good Samaritans feeding the homeless is, too, fully bizarre.  It is outrageous that in these difficult days a Bee reporter would take old threads of complaint from a very few business owners and residents in the proximity of Loaves & Fishes and manufacture an attack on suffering homeless people.  The "problem" that the reporter identifies can be remedied by just a trash barrel properly placed. The homeless community, itself, can make sure that there is less improperly-disposed-of trash, noise and bother

Some of the homeless people that great good citizens feed are truly saved by the food that come from mostly Christian people DOING PRECISELY THAT WHICH THE BIBLE INSTRUCTS.  It would be a violation of religious freedom for the independent feedings to be disrupted or regulated or put under the auspices of the totalitarian administraitors of Loaves & Fishes.

The cold season is coming all too soon.  This is no time for the nonsense of those with a stick up their rear ends adding heaps of misery to already quite miserable homeless people.  Stop it!

Comments

Well written and so true. These articles by the Sac Bee are prone to produce hate crimes against the homeless. If there is anything in our blog you feel will help please feel free to use it, and keep up the good fight !

Popular posts from this blog

Sex, Lies and Exegesis

Definition: exegesis [ek-si-jee-sis]: critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of a text, especially of the Bible. Painting by He Qi , a prominent artist from China who focuses on Christian themes. This piece is inspired by The Song of Solomon. In his May 21 column, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stirred up a hornets’ nest. His column wasn’t really a column, it was a quiz, titled “ Religion and Sex Quiz .” The questions and what he provided as the answers were provocative, to say the least. We would later learn, in his follow-up, a post to the Times online in the afternoon of the same day, “ Reader Comments on my Religion Quiz ,” that the information that was used to create the quiz came with the help of Bible scholars, “including Jennifer Knust, whose book inspired [the quiz], and … Mark Jordan of Harvard Divinity School.” Kristof doesn’t name Knust’s book, but a quick googling reveals that it must certainly be Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s...

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons. At the beginning of their June newsletter , Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology . The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear. Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles th...

In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day

Calvin [a "green hat" in Unfriendly Park] makes the argument for continued incompetent management. Hobbes represents me — only, in real life, I don't have that good a coat . In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day In one respect — and only one — that I can think of, Loaves & Fishes is NOT hypocritical: The management hates the way America is run and wants to turn it into a backward communist country . Consistent with that, Loaves & Fishes’ management runs its facility like a backward communist country. The People’s Republic of Loaves & Fishes. A seemingly minor thing happened on New Year’s Day. A couple of people smoked a joint in Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park and one of the park directors, or both of them, determined, at about 10am, that, in retribution, they would punish all the homeless there by closing the park for the day. This is something the managers of the park do all the ...