First, the IDIOT OF THE DAY award has to go to Rob Blair of KTNV-TV in Las Vegas. Blair, the ABC affiliate's weekend weatherman, made the following statement on-air.

"For tomorrow, 60 degrees, Martin Luther Coon King Jr. Day, gonna see some temperatures in the mid-60s."(Underline added)

Do you think there was a collective "Oh shit!" muttered in the control room followed by blank looks among colleagues as the import of the happening was realized. I wonder if the Station Manager was sitting at home sipping a cup of coffee watching his crack weekend news crew when he suddenly blew coffee out his nose and raced for the telephone?

Well to make a long story short, Blair has been fired, and gave an on-air apology; he'll probably be working as a weather assistant in some backwater burg or possibly get a job with the USMS as far away from cameras and microphones as they can probably get him. More than likely, his career as a weatherman is completely over and he'll be simply staring up at the sky rather than reporting on it.

Yep, he's definately the IDIOT OF THE DAY.

Next, we can move on to the VILLIAN OF THE DAY, and this award has to go to Sheriff Victor Hill of Clayton County, Georgia. Apparently, Sheriff Hill was planning for some time his moves on the day he was to take office, because in one of his first official actions, he took the extreme step of firing 27 of the County's senior officers without notice of cause. To add insult to injury, the new Sheriff had the newly unemployed peace officers escorted from the premisis under SNIPER COVER FROM THE COUNTY SWAT TEAM. Of course this was AFTER they had been stripped of their firearms and badges. He then had the former officers loaded into inmate transfer vechicles and driven home.

Now I know that there seems to be more to this story and I'm sure there is. Here's a short list of what we know so far.

1. The officers fired were white.
2. The officers were replaced with new black officers.
3. The firings did not follow standard dismissal procedures for the county.
4. Sheriff Hill, if you hadn't guessed already, is Black.

Now had this been racially reversed, the public outcry would be horrific. I'd imagine that in nearby Atlanta there would be rioting in the streets and cry's from Florida to Washington state of the horrible state of race relations in the South. There would already be calls for Congressional inquiry and you can bet dollars to donuts (pun intended) that the Governor, Georgia Senators and Representatives, the Georgia Legislature and any other elected official the media could get ahold of would be paraded in front of TV cameras far and wide to decry the situation.

But NO, not in this case. In fact, the story "broke" over a week ago. Most Americans today haven't heard a peep. The New York Times covered the story (buried), and so did the Washington Post (on the back page of the news section). CNN put it on their website but didn't broadcast a story about it. Basically the main stream media has been quiet as a mouse on the story.

Since first reported on January 4th, a judge has ordered that the officers be reinstated to "status quo" and Sheriff Hill is being tight lipped about why the firings took place. Needless to say his motives for the "sniper cover" have not been sufficiently explained either. He does point to the assassination of another Sheriff that occured 5 years ago in a nearby county (in that case, the Sheriff who was voted out of office shot the incoming Sheriff, no deputies were involved) to try and give some credence to his actions, but that excuse is tenuous at best.

There are more curious questions here as well, where did these "new" black officers come from? They were obviously hired prior to Hill's first day because they had uniforms, guns and badges. How did Hill hire these officers before being sworn in? How did he authorize the uniforms, guns and badges; what policies and vetting procedures did he bypass to amass this personal squad of black officers to replace the white veterans?

Needless to say, this story won't get legs in the main stream media. Personally, I'd be willing to give Sheriff Hill the benefit of the doubt if any of these officers could be said to be under investigation for anything. I'd be willing to listen if Sheriff Hill was out there saying that these guys were bad eggs, or accused of some malfeasance. Noteably, none of this is coming out. Hill stands by the dismissal and even in the face of judge's rulings to the contrary, he hasn't returned the officers to duty, he's put them on "administrative leave" (some status quo).

On the surface this seems like an extreme case of "reverse racism". The 27 officers have all had their careers effectively ruined, they will always carry this damage inflicted by a racially motivated attack. No matter what the outcome, these officers will never be able to carry the law with them and will always be subject to some doubt as to their legitimacy as deputies.

But lets be honest. In America, the only people that can be racist, apparently, are white.

(Full disclosure: I am white. Yet had this situation occured in the same way as this is playing out, and Sheriff Hill was white, I'd be just as outraged. I'm outraged at the actions of the Sheriff, the so-called "keeper of the peace". I'm also outraged at the media for not bringing this issue to the light of day. I'm outraged at the Congress of the United States and the Legislature of Georgia. I'm outraged at the black community that is supporting this, and I'm outraged at the white community that isn't screaming "holy hell" because they are afraid of being branded as "racist" for opposing this. How's that some irony for you.)

Yes, the VILLIAN OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY, is quite ironically, Sheriff Victor Hill of Clayton County, GA.

I'd love to have something more positive to report today. I wish I could say that Jesse Jackson and Jerry Fallwell met on the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church here in Birmingham and proclaimed the Civil Rights Struggle over, that black and white in America are living in harmony. I wish I could report that today we judge a person on the value of his acts and deeds rather than on the color of his skin. That's what MLK wanted. That's what Harry Truman wanted (yes, Harry Truman, ya'll probably forgot that he got what we call the "Civil Rights" movement rolling with the integration of the US Army). I think that's what all Americans want.

I believe in the equality of man, I believe that "all men are created equal" that they all are endowed with "certain unalienable rights", and I truely wish we could have an honest discussion of the issue of race in America today. I wish we could come together and talk about what's happening today with some intellectual honesty. We can't though, at least not without someone screaming about slavery and reparations; we can't without someone screaming that Affirmative Action is actually "reverse discrimination". We can't without someone screaming about how the South is to blame for all the ills of Black America (nevermind that Vermont kept slaves until well after the Civil War ended). We can't discuss it because the two sides can't come together and realize that it's 2005, and what happened yesterday isn't necessarily going to be repeated tomorrow, unless we continue the denial we're wrapped in today. We can't because there are people that believe that because I'm white, that my ancestors must have been holding their ancestors in bondage and that somehow I'm guilty for that.

We can't discuss it because just discussing it if you're white and not willing to accede to any black accusers charge or demand, you are branded racist. We can't because just by writing this piece, there are many people out there that will call me racist.

I wish we could discuss things with honesty, but that requires that we open our eyes to the excesses of both sides. We can't because any deviation from the Politically Correct line on racism supposedly invalidates the argument. I charge that being Politically Correct in this discussion invalidates it. To have any real progress in this issue requires that we be HONEST FIRST and politically correct second (or not at all).

We have another year until we hit Martin Luther King Jr. (Civil Rights) day. Perhaps in that time each and every white person out there can find a black person to sit down with and discuss the situations and problems of race relations in the country honestly. Hopefully they can get past the cries of reparations and bigotry and affirmative action and get down to what people really are. JUST PEOPLE. Brown, Black, Yellow, Red, White, and Purple (Goths are people too) people, perhaps we can begin to "recognize" that without having to "react" to it.

I'm doubting it, but at the very least I will try to do my part.

--Jason