I wrote that it was getting tedious posting about the daily travails of Maricopa County when there was nothing, from where I sit, coming of it from the locals. Mark Bennett took me to task,
Here’s my problem. Certainly the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio needed a darn good airing, and I’ve tried to be helpful in that respect. I think I have. But there will come a time when the entire blawgosphere will be unable to shine that light on every nook and cranny of Maricopa County, and Crazy Joe’s antics reflect nothing if not a vigorous strategy to win at all costs. He can keep a swarm of blawgers busy for hours on end, every day. He knows we’ll eventually tire, or find a shinier object in the blawgosphere to watch. He can wait. You don’t keep power like this for a generation without patience and tenacity.
What then? Life in Maricopa County goes on as it always has, with Crazy Joe in charge and everyone else hiding under their desks or engrafting themselves to his backside to bask in the shadow of power. Nothing has been accomplished. Nobody saved. Aren’t we special?
The problem, as I see it, is that the blawgosphere has a certain amount of power to focus our bright light on impropriety, but it is hardly omnipotent. We can help, but only so far. Ultimately, it’s the people on the ground who have to take over the fight. both because they are the only ones positioned for the real battles that must be won, and because this is their world. If they lack sufficient interest, or sufficient guts, to fight their own battles, our little ray of sunshine isn’t going to accomplish much.
Contrary to Bennett’s assumption, I had no intention of leaving Maricopa completed behind. This was not a choice between enable or abandon. It was, however, a decision to stop doing the blow by blow, the color commentary, on every daily twitch out of Crazy Joe. Maricopa County will not be my full time beat, both because there are other things in the world that interest me and that it’s time for the locals to pick up the slack. Of course I would still post about the craziness from time to time, and if there was an incident like Stoddard going way over the top, I would likely be inclined to go way over the top on my end as well.
But the strong, inspiring words by my good buddy Bennett made me think of something else as well. Blawgers are far more insular than many readers realize. We get to know each other, we communicate amongst ourselves, we come to take the things that happen here as pretty real. Maybe too real. Maybe when we talk to each other, we lose perspective about the weight we carry, the importance of what we do in the blawgosphere. Maybe Sheriff Joe Arpaio couldn’t care less what we blawgers have to say about him. Maybe nobody in Maricopa County cares. We may be shining a light, but is anybody really looking?
For all the efforts of the blawgosphere, and Bennett has provided a good list of posts about Sheriff Joe and Maricopa, and certainly Nick Martin at Heat City has done more than his share to keep everyone informed, we have failed to make the mainstream media take real notice. Did you read the editorial in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal about Maricopa County? Neither did I.
Perhaps we give ourselves more credit than we deserve. I want to believe that the thought the comes from the blawgosphere has sufficient merit to persuade real people to do real things, but maybe it does nothing more than offer a cathartic outlet for the very small percentage of humanity that bothers to read it and actually cares. I don’t think Crazy Joe loses sleep at night worrying about what some blawger is going to write about him. We might be a thorn in his side, but not a knife in his heart.
I think the best we can hope for is that some of Arpaio’s adversaries know there are people behind them across the nation, and hopefully that will give them the strength and support they need to fight back. If we can do that much, then the blawgosphere has a good reason to exist. That’s a lot to accomplish by a bunch of distant lawyers tapping at keyboards.
Are we mere blawgers? Yes. We are mere blawgers. Let’s not forget that, both for its strengths as well as its limitations.
The mainstream media are paying no attention, and everybody from the voters to the judges in Maricopa County seems to be either effete or complicit. Why should guys like Scott spend any more time or bandwidth on Maricopa County? Because tyranny must be stopped somewhere, and it thrives in darkness.Those are strong words. Inspiring words. But are they inspiring only to us blawgers? What about the Phoenicians (as Jeff Gamso calls them). Had anybody in Maricopa County been sufficiently inspired yet? I know they’ve been outraged, but enough to put themselves at risk and do something about it?
Here’s my problem. Certainly the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio needed a darn good airing, and I’ve tried to be helpful in that respect. I think I have. But there will come a time when the entire blawgosphere will be unable to shine that light on every nook and cranny of Maricopa County, and Crazy Joe’s antics reflect nothing if not a vigorous strategy to win at all costs. He can keep a swarm of blawgers busy for hours on end, every day. He knows we’ll eventually tire, or find a shinier object in the blawgosphere to watch. He can wait. You don’t keep power like this for a generation without patience and tenacity.
What then? Life in Maricopa County goes on as it always has, with Crazy Joe in charge and everyone else hiding under their desks or engrafting themselves to his backside to bask in the shadow of power. Nothing has been accomplished. Nobody saved. Aren’t we special?
The problem, as I see it, is that the blawgosphere has a certain amount of power to focus our bright light on impropriety, but it is hardly omnipotent. We can help, but only so far. Ultimately, it’s the people on the ground who have to take over the fight. both because they are the only ones positioned for the real battles that must be won, and because this is their world. If they lack sufficient interest, or sufficient guts, to fight their own battles, our little ray of sunshine isn’t going to accomplish much.
Contrary to Bennett’s assumption, I had no intention of leaving Maricopa completed behind. This was not a choice between enable or abandon. It was, however, a decision to stop doing the blow by blow, the color commentary, on every daily twitch out of Crazy Joe. Maricopa County will not be my full time beat, both because there are other things in the world that interest me and that it’s time for the locals to pick up the slack. Of course I would still post about the craziness from time to time, and if there was an incident like Stoddard going way over the top, I would likely be inclined to go way over the top on my end as well.
But the strong, inspiring words by my good buddy Bennett made me think of something else as well. Blawgers are far more insular than many readers realize. We get to know each other, we communicate amongst ourselves, we come to take the things that happen here as pretty real. Maybe too real. Maybe when we talk to each other, we lose perspective about the weight we carry, the importance of what we do in the blawgosphere. Maybe Sheriff Joe Arpaio couldn’t care less what we blawgers have to say about him. Maybe nobody in Maricopa County cares. We may be shining a light, but is anybody really looking?
For all the efforts of the blawgosphere, and Bennett has provided a good list of posts about Sheriff Joe and Maricopa, and certainly Nick Martin at Heat City has done more than his share to keep everyone informed, we have failed to make the mainstream media take real notice. Did you read the editorial in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal about Maricopa County? Neither did I.
Perhaps we give ourselves more credit than we deserve. I want to believe that the thought the comes from the blawgosphere has sufficient merit to persuade real people to do real things, but maybe it does nothing more than offer a cathartic outlet for the very small percentage of humanity that bothers to read it and actually cares. I don’t think Crazy Joe loses sleep at night worrying about what some blawger is going to write about him. We might be a thorn in his side, but not a knife in his heart.
I think the best we can hope for is that some of Arpaio’s adversaries know there are people behind them across the nation, and hopefully that will give them the strength and support they need to fight back. If we can do that much, then the blawgosphere has a good reason to exist. That’s a lot to accomplish by a bunch of distant lawyers tapping at keyboards.
Are we mere blawgers? Yes. We are mere blawgers. Let’s not forget that, both for its strengths as well as its limitations.
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Yep. That straw man is sure dead now.
Likely Warlord Joe doesn’t lose any sleep over what the New York Times writes about him either, but there’s a better chance that someone with decision-making power and a little creativity in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ will read the NYT on any given morning than Simple Justice (to say nothing of any lesser blawg).
Our lights are little—candles, maybe, instead of spotlights; distant stars instead of the sun—but they are still lights.
The NYT won’t bother with stories like the courthouse thievery because they see that as purely local to AZ. They will get on immigration because that is ‘national’ and fits their self-image.
It’s going to take blog readers at DOJ–or their offices in AZ–and the AZ media to make something big of this. The AZ media seem to be intimidated, if not supportive. DOJ likely doesn’t see it as having much of a priority.
I’m still trying to figure out what the limit is on the MSM’s determination to ignore police and prosecutor outrages.
I think at this point the limit is that no matter how bad the outrage, it is ignored if the only people complaining are the victims (who have already been cast in the narrative as “criminals”) or their lawyers, who are essentially regarded with the same contempt as their clients.
An outrage by police or prosecutors only becomes an outrage in the MSM mind when it is recognized as such by other police and prosecutors.
You see, in the MSM’s ongoing narrative of how the world is, any genuine and significant outrage or problem is vigorously addressed by government officials. If government officials are not addressing it, it doesn’t exist.
I would have thought that the views of lawyers on this kind of thing, as opposed to just their clients, would count for something. But they don’t.
So if there’s a problem with the Maricopa County Sheriff, the MSM will pay no attention unless and until the state police or the feds do.
You wouldn’t think it would require any further demonstration when the Sheriff and prosecutors indict a judge that has just pissed them off. Within days, even, so that the purpose cannot be mistaken.
But the MSM is really obtuse about this kind of thing.
I should also mention that the MSM is not simply obtuse, but has a profound bias in favor of police, and I have to agree with what I have read from the other bloggers that we’re wading into very deep water all over the country, not just in Maricopa County.
There’s a story in our local newspaper today relating how two local police officers went all the way to Seattle for the funeral service of the four police officers who were murdered a week or so ago. The story mentions that the service was closed to the public, but open to law enforcement officers from anywhere in the country and was well attended.
Isn’t that odd? Of course this was a terrible crime, but doesn’t this smack of a dangerous insularity among the police, like some kind of siege mentality vis a vis the “public” they are supposed to be serving?
And it just seems to be assumed that police officers all across the country feel likewise. And the assumption is justified, apparently.
I begin to wonder if there isn’t an element of the system bending over so low for law enforcement all the time, no matter how much advantage they take and how wrongful their conduct, that it’s starting to backfire. It may be the classic situation where people’s grievances have no hope of getting a fair hearing so they some of them turn to violence.
Not a justification, of course. But maybe an explanation. And if it’s true, digging in for a siege and “getting tough” might be exactly the wrong thing.
Nicely written. Your call to arms has inspired me to write another post of my own about Arpaio, which I am too modest to link to.
Here’s a little focus from the MSM – LA Times has a big story on Sheriff Joe this morning. No mention of the Stoddard hijinks, but pretty comprehensive nonetheless.
I think there are probably important DOJ people reading this blog. As well as more than a few NYT reporters.
Maybe it will take some time, but keeping an issue alive here seems to me one of the best ways to eventually get a NYTimes editorial.
I’m sure the press in Arizona is intimidated. As the judge who dared ask Arpaio’s troops for an apology has been indicted without evidence, most in the judiciary probably are too.
Thanks as always Scott, for what you do. You should only write what interests you, but I believe your impact is big.
The LA Times piece, to me, is typical in that it does not provide a complete picture:
It asserts that the Sheriff defied the Feds by arresting people who are in the country illegally, but then later acknowledges that he was acting under valid state authority;
It mentions that deputies raided [Mesa] city hall, but fails to mention that they arrested a number of illegal immigrants who were working there and who had been hired by either the city or the city’s contractor;
It acknowledges that the DOJ has been investigating the Sheriff and states that he has refused to cooperate, but the truth is that initially he did cooperate (sorry I don’t recall why he stopped, but I think it was because he felt they were fishing, rather than following actual leads);
It mentions that the Sheriff alleges mismanagement in the construction of a new courthouse, but does not mention that, as a columnist for the Az Republic put it today:
“county officials and judges who are, among other things, blocking the county’s top prosecutor from investigating their $340 million court tower. Specifically, from looking into questions about why attorneys Tom Irvine and Ed Novak and their law firm have collected well over a million dollars from the cash-strapped county over the past year to analyze designs and go to meetings.”
I’ll repeat what I wrote in another thread: There is dysfunction in Maricopa County, but it involves the, Sheriff, the Board and, if I can believe the Republic, the courts. The LA Times also mentions 2 of the supervisors who have been indicted. Yesterday (12/11) the Republic had an editorial stating (in effect) that it was wrong for these 2 to be charged with felonies, because normally the crimes are charged as misdemeanors or not at all. In my opinion, that the Sheriff and County Attorney are not willing to turn a blind eye to these alleged crimes, is part of what is driving the dysfunction.
To be sure, I am not complicit, so I must be effete, which, no doubt explains why I’d like to see actual proof of wrongdoing on the Sheriff’s part before convicting him of anything.
I’m going to be honest, my big fear right now is that the Republican king makers here in Orange County see this Kafkaesque nightmare and realize that, given the electorate here, they too can ignore the Constitution and the rule of law and gain political favor for their trouble.
Maybe it’s best the coverage is not too widespread.