It is absolutely unbelievable that Florida Agenda would provide a forum so that Nick Stone, vice president of the “socalled” Sunshine Gay Republicans, could verbally and relentlessly accost and insult U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a great friend and supporter of the gay community.
While Rep. Wasserman-Schultz and other trusted and respectable politicians and pundits urged the media and other politico’s to tone down their rhetoric in the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, Mr. Stone, provided us with the usual rant of distortions, distractions and, in his own words, “bald faced lies,” we have come to expect from right-wing extremists.
Going back 30 years, Mr. Stone’s diatribe included the well-debunked myth, but often repeated right-wing talking point, that Jimmy Carter and John Wayne Gacy were friends; they were not, nor was Gacy a friend of Roselyn’s.
President Obama was never a “friend” of William Ayers or Bernadette Dorn, however, Mr. Stone, along with others on the hateful right continues to repeat that lie. It didn’t work in 2008 and it doesn’t work now.
William Ayers and the president did serve on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education initiative focused on mainstream thinking among education reformers. Known as CAC, Walter Annengerg and his wife Leonore, funded that project.
Stone should be reminded that it was President Richard Nixon that appointed Annenberg as ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in the United Kingdom. And, it was Annenberg who introduced President Reagan to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Reagan’s often celebrated New Year’s Eve with the Annenbergs.
Leonore Annenberg was named by President Ronald Reagan as the State Department’s chief of protocol, and served as an assistant to Mrs. Reagan. Therefore, using the logic of Mr. Stone one could easily say that the Annenbergs, Nixon’s and Reagan’s, were also friends of Bill Ayers and Bernadette.
Democrats, left wingers and liberals are the first to admit they have experienced their share of turbulent and violent acts, dating back to the Kennedy assassination. But trying to equate Democrats, liberals and “lefties” to Stone’s other examples of the past 30 years is not only worn and dated assumptions, but ludicrous!
Not sure where Mr. Stone has been during recent history, or where he was during the Oklahoma City bombing, when rightwing extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people.
Has he forgotten The Centennial Olympic Park bombing? July 27, 1996 in Atlanta, during the 1996 Summer Olympics, the first of four committed by Eric Robert Rudolph, a right-wing extremist and former explosives expert for the United States Army. Two people died, and 111 were injured.
Then there were the 2001 anthrax attacks, letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. The accused was not a Liberal.
How will we ever forget the Fort Hood Shooting, a mass shooting that took place on November 5, 2009, or February 18, 2010, when Andrew Stack, another right-winger flew his airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas killing one other person and injuring many more. Mr. Stack was a Tea- Bagger Republican.
Not to mention, the murder of George Tiller, an abortion doctor from Kansas, and how can anyone forget, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting on June 10, 2009 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.? These were not the work of Democrats, liberals or left-wing nuts.
It is time for Mr. Stone to put his “bigboy” pants on and “man-up.” If he thinks our memories are shorter than Newt’s junk, he is wrong! Words do have consequences and we are witnessing that today.
Who would have ever thought, we as a gay community would have and promote an extremist right wing hate group propagating within our midst?
Mr. Stone and his colleagues on the far right don’t want civility, because that would weaken their cause. Mr. Stone and his organization, offer no solutions, only more attacks, rants and non-stop whining. While the country is trying to heal from the assassination attempt and murders in Tucson, Mr. Stone continues to ramble on, pointing fingers and lashing out.
The Sunshine Republicans take great pride in bulldozing their way past every reasonable person that doesn’t agree with their party’s manufactured poll and result driven drivel. Their words have no meaning, and their organization no credibility when Mr. Stone’s only defense is that “they” did it too.
Joe McNamara Fort Lauderdale, Florida
