Horrifying new columnist in my area newspaper:

[murielm99]

http://conservativechristianwarrior.blogspot.com/

http://www.journalstandard.com/opinions/x639771319/My-view-Are-public-schools-unconstitutional

The first link leads to the blog of the young viper who is the newest columnist for the Freeport Journal-Standard, in Freeport, IL. This blog entry, entitled, "The column of the week," appeared in Tuesdays J-S as an editorial entitled, "Is government medical care the answer?"

The second link leads to the column that appeared on July 21, 2009 in the Journal Standard. It asks if public schools are unconstitutional.

I wish you could see the picture of the columnist that accompanies his illogical drivel. He has a sneer on his young face that makes him look like he is auditioning to be the GOP's next Dick Cheney.

I called the publisher of the paper this morning. I remained cordial and polite. I told him that this columnist was too far outside the mainstream to appear in a local news publication like the J-S. I asked him if this was going to be a regular feature on their editorial page. He said, somewhat defensively, yes. I asked him if there was going to be a liberal counterpart. He said yes. I asked if this was going to be a strong writer, or some weak kneed person who misrepresented what liberalism is about. He said yes. I told him I would wait and see.

Further, I told him that I was deeply offended by the untruths and factual errors in both columns.

Then I called some of the people on my central committee who subscribe to the paper. I asked them to write LTTEs. If they are uncomfortable with that, I requested that they at least call the editor or the publisher.

Then I called the Stephenson County chairman. He is going to call attention to this on the agenda of his next meeting. I am going to do the same thing at the next Ogle County meeting.

Of course I intend to write a letter myself. Sometimes it is easier to fight this sort of thing at the local level.

What responsible publisher would allow this tripe in their paper?

Does anyone here have any comments on the content of this spew?

I am going to cross-post this in the Illinois forum. Maybe I can drum up some local LTTEs over there.

Thanks for reading my rant.

[lapfog_1]

1. I'm going to bet that this is the guy

and he would appear to be a HUGE freeper type. Totally nutso and ignorant. Sarah Palin can count on his undivided support, except she might be just a little too liberal for him.

[murielm99]

2. That's him.

Who the fuck IS he? I Googled him and did not find much.

His blog says he is nineteen and a Freeport IL native.

Please tell me what you know about him.

[hootinholler]

8. WTF is a 19 year old doing writing editorials?

:shrug:

-Hoot

[marshall]

21. Free speech often comes with an age limit

For instance kids are not allowed to write whatever they want in school newspapers.

[hootinholler]

38. Touche` n/t

[JHB]

10. From the column...

"Andrew Gillingham is a volunteer for the Republican Central Committee and currently attending college."

Who is he? The above says it all. He wants to be the new generation of Dinesh D'Sousas/Laura Ingrahams/Anne Coulters/David Brock (early Dark Side version)s/etc., so he's cultivating his place on the conservative dole.

[lapfog_1]

17. Here is the family blog

A huge amount of stupid here...

http://gillinghamgazetter.blogspot.com/

homeschooled... and the visit to the "creation museum" in pictures!

children from 20 to 1 (6 children total)...

[imdjh]

31. I think I saw these people on Wife Swap nt

[mzteris]

40. Poor Aaron -

I wonder how the family will handle it when he comes out in a few years? Or if he'll have the courage to do so? Unfortunately he'll probably end up a closeted case with the host of problems/issues that entails for everyone with whom he comes in contact.

BTW - the problem isn't that they're homeschooled - it's that they're ignorant fundamentalists.

[zbdent]

3. God, it looks like Norm Osborne ...

and I bet he's not too far from Norm in mental problems, too ...

edited to add:

[jonnyblitz]

6. i think he looks like Matt Damon. nt

[imdjh]

32. Yeah, he does, a slightly cro-magnon Damon nt

[JHB]

11. More like Harry Osborne...

...more mental problems, plus a drug addiction.

[zbdent]

13. Harry redeemed himself ...

[JHB]

14. So did David Brock...

...but for both the real guy (Brock) and fictional one (Harry), it took years, and they did a lot of damage before getting away from the dark side.

[murielm99]

4. This disgusting little twit bears a strong resemblance to the

has-been child star from "How to Eat Fried Worms." I did not think that kid was nineteen yet.

And what would he be doing in Freeport IL?

Please tell me I am imagining things.

[lapfog_1]

19. I think that they are different people

The actor was born in 1995 (now fourteen) whereas the blogger/x-ian is 19 years old.

The actor is attending high school in Houston, the blogger/x-ian idiot is home schooled.

But there is a resemblance

Here is andrew the blogger/idiot



He is in the red shirt.

And here is Andrew the actor

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm783913472/nm2018706

Still, I think they are different people.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. That film is just two years old

And the kid was a teen. Calling him a has been is really just mean and unthinking. Many youthful actors take time off to attend college, and for all we know he could have many films coming out that he's already shot. Some kids act to make piles of money to pay for future plans. Because unlike the work you most likely do, that kid is still getting paid for Fried Worms, even if he's sitting around eating bon bons and crying about yesterday.
If you refer to the child I think you mean, no he'd not be 19 just over 2 years after the film in question was made, now would he? How much work do you expect children to do to avoid being called mean names by adults? How much does a child need to earn before graduating high school to avoid being a 'has been'?
And of course, a has been is always better than a nobody. When was your last nationally known contribution to the culture? Never? Of course those who do nothing will criticize those who do things, every time.
A 16 or 17 year old kid is a has been? Wow.

[lapfog_1]

35. The actor is only 14 (born in 1995) according to imdb.

and I'm certain that they are not the same person.

[murielm99]

5. Kick for the morning crowd.

I want to know more about this guy.

:kick:

[zbdent]

7. after a drought of writing opportunities, for the period of 2001-1/20/2009,

of criticizing the sitting President, there's going to be a glut of opportunities now ... no recession in the "Attack Obama" career ...

[JHB]

9. Wasn't it the conventional wisdom that the columnist market was saturated with cons?

The old "George Will got his start because he was something different when he started, but now there's a dozen just like him" line?

Maybe it's still true, because this kid is no George Will; Will at least has the pretension to intellect.

[Enthusiast]

12. Good for you, murielm99.

A local paper here in Southeast Ohio even has the occasional Ann Coulter article. Most of our newspapers are like this. Pathetic.

[jotsy]

15. Is the right wing arsenal so tapped that their pimpin' out the kiddies?

I recall at some big conservative conference, last year, the year before maybe, a pre-teen key note speaker and now this wet behind the ears boy man thinks he's got all the answers as a true expert of what?
The position of his article can be picked to pieces, point by point. He hasn't a clue but the dogmatic flat world his parents and other conditioning influences have built all around him. It's pretty pitiful really. If that is his work we've read, he's intelligent, just sadly misinformed by those he should have been able to trust.

Do we know if his middle name is apple pie?
He's little more than a propaganda poster child being exploited by a desperate and broken political machine that doesn't know how to accept the end of its influential reign.

[raccoon]

16. Good on you.

:yourock:

Der viper says:

"... However, the Census Bureau has said that almost 40% of that 46 million had an income of over $50,000, indicating the reason they did not buy insurance was not they couldn’t afford it, but they for whatever reason did not want to spend their money on it."

I don't believe that.

[JHB]

24. And more tellingly, he doesn't bother to indicate a source...

...and there's nothing to indicate he does any thorough research himself. The most in-depth sourcing I've read so far is him quoting at length a guy basing his argument on a Thomas Sowell book: third-hand sourcing of a single source. He doesn't display any expertise in anything, nor any piercing insight that might make up for it. He has the sources he trusts, with others being the opposition, and that's that. It's as if he's never run into anyone who could knowledgeably argue the other side, which may very well be the case.

I don't know if he's literally following the blogger smeareotype of "in his underwear from his parents' basement", but he might as well be. There's nothing here I can't get from a "Mallard Fillmore" strip. I really hope he learns to question some of his assumptions in college, because otherwise he's wasted his time and money, and those of the school.

[yellowwood]

18. What can you expect?

What can you expect from the hometown newspaper of State Rep. Jim Sacia? He is the guy who went against the wishes of one of his own counties, Jo Daviess, when a California mega-mega-mega dairy farm wanted to plant its polluting enterprise in the most beautiful county in the state. (They're running short of water in California.) He took a nice junket to California to inspect their operation and declared that it was just fine.
Yet that area keeps electing him

[guitar man]

22. so he's 19

He's never had to face holding a full time job for years on end, provide for a family and then try to provide healthcare coverage for them, but he somehow feels qualified to write a column on the subject and the paper prints it? Brilliant, just brilliant. :eyes:

[Douglas Carpenter]

23. now that is pretty wacko

"Therefore my biggest objection to public schools is not necessarily that they are pagan and teach our children to be pagan (which they are and do); I do care about that very much, but the root problem that causes all the rest is they remove parents and specifically fathers from the lives of their children, and in doing so rip apart the very family that child needs most. On top of all that, the government—perhaps unconstitutionally—stands behind the schools and mandates attendance, thereby ensuring that kids are taken from their parents and satisfactorily indoctrinated." - Andrew Gillingham

http://www.journalstandard.com/opinions/x639771319/My-view-Are-public-schools-unconstitutional

[JHB]

25. Does he also list what recipies public schools use...

...when they eat babies?

:sarcasm: (for anyone who couldn't tell)

[mopinko]

29. yeah, wrong. the supreme court has held

that parents like yours have the right to miseducate their children. it does not require that children go to public schools, just that they are educated. you can do that any way you want.
if they didn't even teach him that at his homeschool, i can't imagine what else he doesn't know.

those pics remind me of the neanderthals in the geico commercials.

[Lorien]

34. Does the Journal Standard have any journalistic standards?

Usually opinion pieces aren't published that are batshit crazy and filled with falsehoods. It's one thing to spin the truth, it's another to totally fabricate nonsense. "Pagan"? He doesn't know what the hell Paganism is! And that's just the start.

Newspapers must be desperate to stir up enough controversy to stay in print.

[Echo In Light]

26. He looks like he sounds...or sounds like he looks. Either/or

[LeftinOH]

27. Anyone can be a "journalist' nowadays, apparently. n/t

[snake in the grass]

28. Another sociopath in the making.

We must face the fact that they will always be with us.

[imdjh]

30. Want to punish him? Send him a pic of Fred Thompson, cause that's what he's going to look like in 30

[CrispyQ]

33. Kudos to you for questioning this 'conservative' voice.

I hope others will too. I hope the publisher takes your complaint seriously. It will be interesting to see if they really have a liberal voice lined up. If they wanted to offer both, why didn't they launch both columns at the same time?

[KharmaTrain]

36. Go The The Paper's Advertisers...

Hi Muriel...a fellow Illinois DU'er here.

My suggestion would be to contact advertisers of the paper and show them this...and ask them if this is the type of person/business you want to associate with...cause it will help decide if I, my family and friends will want to associate with your business. Always smile, but in these days when every advertizing dollar is gold, a call from an irate advertiser will do a lot more in the paper's editorial choices than a thousand nasty emails.

Good luck...

[Jazzgirl]

37. I couldn't even get through the article about public schools.

This person is too stupid to be writing any LTTE's. I can't call what he uses logic by any means. I sure hope you guys are successful in getting rid of this thing or at least making him the laughing stock he is.

[JHB]

39. I just love the start of his post from Wednesday...

...(see first link in the OP).

I have been saying for a long time that a minimum wage destroys an economy and instead of increasing employment actually does the opposite.
(He then links to a John Stossel column, with nothing to add.)

I'm willing to guess I have underwear that I've worn for longer than he's "been saying" this and other subjects he displays no expertise in.

Definitely, if you include t-shirts.