Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks in Yorba Linda tonight, but protesters may have a hard time getting themselves, their noisemakers and their picket signs near Maricopa County, Arizona's no-shit-taking, immigrant-jailing, pink-underwear-dispensing lawman.
That's because he'll be inside the gated, guarded Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, which is as protester-friendly as the tortured statesman buried there.
Tin soldiers and Sheriff Joe's coming . . .
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But it's not the National Archives-operated public facility that's hosting Arpaio and conservative talk-radio man Larry Elder. Nor is it the private Richard Nixon Foundation, which routinely brings the likes of Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter to the YL, yo.
Tonight's gig is brought to you by Philip Liberatore, the conservative activist and radio yakker who snagged a spring 2010 endorsement from Arpaio in a tea-baggy and ultimately failed bid to unseat fat cat Representative Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar).
Liberatore obviously ponied up the five grand or so it takes to book the sprawling complex's East Room.
The only time I personally witnessed Sheriff Joe moseying into town was to headline a November 2009 fund-raiser for Bill Hunt, who mounted a tea-baggy and ultimately failed bid to unseat OC's Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. Time will only tell if Arpaio will ever get behind a local winner.
Arpaio was in rare form that night at the Phoenix Club in Anaheim, raising yuks with his references to the undocumented, the mostly Latino protesters outside and the undocumented, mostly Latino protesters outside.
Weekly bloggers, meanwhile, are forever grateful for Sheriff Joe posing next to Hunt and Huntington Beach Mexican hate-ress Barbara Coe. We've recycled Beth Stirnaman's shot more often than a Trader Joe's bag. Hell, I believe Gustavo even managed to use it on the food blog. For those who've missed it . . .
If you can even still get in tonight, tickets are $50. But $150 VIP tickets will likely allow you to pose with Sheriff Joe and his tight lips. Asylum gates open at 7 p.m. Phone (877) 676-5837 for ticket info.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.