So far, this column has focused on stories with headlines and subject matters–gangs in Santa Ana, white people voting more often than Latinos, Latina columnists being employed by the Register and daring to write sympathetic stories about immigrants–that are virtually guaranteed to attract racist comments. But as this week's installment makes clear, you never know what kind of a story will set off at least one nutjob with a keyboard. Even a column as seemingly non-racial and innocuous as Frank Mickadeit informing the public that he's going to study law at Chapman University can provide the setting for yet another…
Back to that Mickadeit column. All Frankie wanted to do was tell his loyal fans that, while he's going to continue writing op-ed pieces for the Reg, he's also planning to become a lawyer–ya know, just in case, this whole print journalism industry goes completely to hell.
“Exactly how a law degree will merge with my journalism, or if it
will, I don't know yet,” he opined. “On one hand, as I wrote in my application
essay, law would be a natural progression on a career arc that has been
one of increasing advocacy: objective news reporter, editor making
judgments about newsworthiness, columnist taking stands in the court of
public opinion, lawyer arguing in a court of law.”
Such observations reminded one reader of everything that's wrong with America today, a problem that can be summed up in just three words: Barack Hussein Obama. I'll leave it up to others to figure out exactly what Mickadeit ruminating on law school has to do with our current president, but here goes:
“Well, now that we have a POTUS that never accomplished anything in his life other than writing two fantasy biographies, I guess the OC Register thinks we need a columnist that tells us all about what he is going to do. In the bad old days (when we were all racist, sexist, homophobic warmongers) it was customary to write one's memoirs after having actually accomplished something.”
Ah yes, the good old days.
Now, back to the horrifying present. One of the biggest stories on the Register website this past week involves the naked body of a model who was found in a suitcase in a dumpster outside a Buena Park apartment building. The cops are currently chasing after her husband, a Canadian investment banker and reality show contestant. At last report, he was believed to have fled to Canada, a fact which reminded one observant reader that it was high time to use this tragic story to bash Mexico:
If this guy is in Canada, I hope its not as hard to extradite him for murder like it is was in Mexico. I know Mexico is starting to extradite Americans even with Latino last names, but American prosecutors seem to drop the ball when it comes to extradition.
Yeah, hosers; let's not allow Canucks who kill their wives, stuff them in suitcases, then flee to the Great White North to distract us from America's real enemy: Mexico's extradition policy.
Here's an uplifting story. Cops suspect juveniles may be responsible for “offensive” graffiti that was scrawled on the wall of a shopping center in Ladera Ranch. The story doesn't make clear what the vandals wrote, except to say that the message “included an obscenity and racial slur directed at African Americans.” Not wanting to be outdone by some teenage pikers from South County, one Register reader going by the online moniker “whitewomen” and whose little thumbnail icon is a headshot of everyone's favorite Little Rascal, Buckwheat, had this to say:
They ought to arrest them kid's mommas.
Thanks for sharing, whitewomen. Moving along.
In our next story, we learn that prosecutors are charging a 21-year-old Fullerton church leader named Timothy Han with smoking pot and having sex with a 15-year-old girl in a parking lot. No, no, no. Han, not as in Solo, but as in Han Chinese. You can guess what's next, right? Register reader Ralph Cramden, take us away!
stupid asians……teen girls and pot are for teen boys!
And last but not least, the Register ran a story about George Eugene Cross, an African-American who is serving life in prison for numerous sexual assaults and who, acting as his own attorney, has filed 251 pretrial motions in his latest case. Whatever most Register readers had to say about this guy has been lost to the delete button–the newspaper censors comments that contain racial slurs–but fortunately one racist reader named “Mac” figured out a way to fool the website's moderator by comparing this story to a heartbreaking and environmentally friendly drama starring Sigourney Weaver.
Sounds like gorillas in the mist all over again!
Oh snap!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).