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SF Bar with 'Monasetah's teeth'- SFWeekly
he ever-overreaching Human Rights Commission launches an official investigation of ... a barroom display of a few Indian teeth
By Matt Smith
Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2005
News
Acts of Commission
The Human Rights Commission finds a Castro bar discriminatory. But the commission's investigation has its own bias problem.
Norman Hobday sits at the north end of his SOMA fern bar in a wrinkled T-shirt, stained overalls, disheveled short gray hair, and gray stubble, describing his astonishment at a group of activists animated by the idea that Hobday's an insensitive, arrogant boor. He's extending a riff begun in a conversation the day before.
By Matt Smith
Published: Wednesday, May 18, 2005
News
Acts of Commission
The Human Rights Commission finds a Castro bar discriminatory. But the commission's investigation has its own bias problem.
Norman Hobday sits at the north end of his SOMA fern bar in a wrinkled T-shirt, stained overalls, disheveled short gray hair, and gray stubble, describing his astonishment at a group of activists animated by the idea that Hobday's an insensitive, arrogant boor. He's extending a riff begun in a conversation the day before.
"A bunch of dirty Indians came in that didn't have jobs. They're bums. They're worthless, shiftless people making a mountain out of a molehill," Hobday says. "I told them, 'Why don't you guys get a job, go to work. Get off welfare.' It's easier sitting on your ass and running your mouth than doing something productive."
Hobday's at the vortex of a minor tempest among left-wing activists inspired by a box of teeth displayed in a case behind Hobday's barstool. According to a note in the display, the teeth belonged to Col. George Custer's "squaw." The renowned Seventh Cavalry Indian fighter knocked them "out of her mouth in a jealous pique by the 'General' for slipping into the tent of the handsome Lt. James Sturgis on a frosty 'Kansas morn,'" the note said.
Activists visited the bar several times to complain. They sent memos to Indian rights and other groups and posted missives denouncing Hobday's bar decoration on the Internet. After a month or so of this activity, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, a city agency set up 15 years ago to combat prejudice, stepped in. And earlier this month, commission employee Carolyn Hom paid a visit.
"I wanted to let you know it is under investigation at this time. But I can't comment because it is under investigation," Hom told me in a voice mail message.
For Hobday, the idea of a government inquiry was too much to bear. A couple of weeks ago, he says, he told a barkeep to take the teeth off the wall. And, Hobday says, they've been thrown in the trash.
"Now they're buried in San Francisco city dump, and the Indians will be happier, and they can pray over the debris in the city dump out there right now," Hobday says.
The Custer squaw tooth display was indisputably offensive.
Now it's gone.
Kudos for Carolyn Hom and the Human Rights Commission. Right?
Not quite.
As it's done numerous times during the past 12 months, the commission has taken on the role of self-assigned public censor. It's stepped into a quagmire where no government agency legitimately belongs. And the commission has once again made itself, the city and county of San Francisco, and taxpayers who pay the salaries of commission staff into fools.
The campaign against Hobday's bar, you see, is the brainchild of a notorious hatemonger named Ward Churchill, a fringe-paranoid-left-darling college professor. He's gained notoriety for calling the victims of 9/11's terrorism "little Eichmanns" in reference to the Nazi death camp czar. Churchill's current shtick involves also naming anyone who wanders into Hobday's bar the moral equivalent of a Jew-killing Nazi. Churchill's words inspired the campaign against the teeth display, and this same crazed rhetoric spawned a protest movement back in Colorado to try to officially censor Churchill.
So in Churchill and Hobday we have an offensive free-speech icon inspiring a movement to silence an offensive free speaker.
I can think of no better forum for the parsing of ideas of cultural sensitivity, freedom of speech, and, yes, human rights than this clash of noxious titans. But, thanks to Hom and the Human Rights Commission, instead of a fascinating and salubrious public debate, we have a government censorship action on behalf of a paranoid left-wing kook.
The Human Rights Commission has spent much of the last year putting the government's imprimatur on embarrassing censorship actions. Isn't it time taxpayers censored the Human Rights Commission?
The Human Rights Commission was chartered in 1990 to enforce anti-discrimination laws, create and run an anti-hate-crime program, and promote "mediation and conciliation of inter-group disputes and tensions."
The agency has interpreted this last phrase as a barn door wide enough to accommodate a policy I'll call Big Fat Buttinsky.
Last summer, commission officials sent a letter formally chastising the private, nongovernmental Police Officers Association trade union for accepting and distributing tickets to an event featuring a famous right-wing radio host.
(rest of fairly long article at: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2005-05-18/news/smith.html )
Hobday's at the vortex of a minor tempest among left-wing activists inspired by a box of teeth displayed in a case behind Hobday's barstool. According to a note in the display, the teeth belonged to Col. George Custer's "squaw." The renowned Seventh Cavalry Indian fighter knocked them "out of her mouth in a jealous pique by the 'General' for slipping into the tent of the handsome Lt. James Sturgis on a frosty 'Kansas morn,'" the note said.
Activists visited the bar several times to complain. They sent memos to Indian rights and other groups and posted missives denouncing Hobday's bar decoration on the Internet. After a month or so of this activity, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, a city agency set up 15 years ago to combat prejudice, stepped in. And earlier this month, commission employee Carolyn Hom paid a visit.
"I wanted to let you know it is under investigation at this time. But I can't comment because it is under investigation," Hom told me in a voice mail message.
For Hobday, the idea of a government inquiry was too much to bear. A couple of weeks ago, he says, he told a barkeep to take the teeth off the wall. And, Hobday says, they've been thrown in the trash.
"Now they're buried in San Francisco city dump, and the Indians will be happier, and they can pray over the debris in the city dump out there right now," Hobday says.
The Custer squaw tooth display was indisputably offensive.
Now it's gone.
Kudos for Carolyn Hom and the Human Rights Commission. Right?
Not quite.
As it's done numerous times during the past 12 months, the commission has taken on the role of self-assigned public censor. It's stepped into a quagmire where no government agency legitimately belongs. And the commission has once again made itself, the city and county of San Francisco, and taxpayers who pay the salaries of commission staff into fools.
The campaign against Hobday's bar, you see, is the brainchild of a notorious hatemonger named Ward Churchill, a fringe-paranoid-left-darling college professor. He's gained notoriety for calling the victims of 9/11's terrorism "little Eichmanns" in reference to the Nazi death camp czar. Churchill's current shtick involves also naming anyone who wanders into Hobday's bar the moral equivalent of a Jew-killing Nazi. Churchill's words inspired the campaign against the teeth display, and this same crazed rhetoric spawned a protest movement back in Colorado to try to officially censor Churchill.
So in Churchill and Hobday we have an offensive free-speech icon inspiring a movement to silence an offensive free speaker.
I can think of no better forum for the parsing of ideas of cultural sensitivity, freedom of speech, and, yes, human rights than this clash of noxious titans. But, thanks to Hom and the Human Rights Commission, instead of a fascinating and salubrious public debate, we have a government censorship action on behalf of a paranoid left-wing kook.
The Human Rights Commission has spent much of the last year putting the government's imprimatur on embarrassing censorship actions. Isn't it time taxpayers censored the Human Rights Commission?
The Human Rights Commission was chartered in 1990 to enforce anti-discrimination laws, create and run an anti-hate-crime program, and promote "mediation and conciliation of inter-group disputes and tensions."
The agency has interpreted this last phrase as a barn door wide enough to accommodate a policy I'll call Big Fat Buttinsky.
Last summer, commission officials sent a letter formally chastising the private, nongovernmental Police Officers Association trade union for accepting and distributing tickets to an event featuring a famous right-wing radio host.
(rest of fairly long article at: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2005-05-18/news/smith.html )
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What wasnt dealt with in either article is how the HRC is different from a court in that it doesnt have any real legal power. If the HRC were not publically funded there would be no issues whatsoever with their issuing a report aside from slander and they did get plenty of evidence to make it so neither report could be called that. But there are plenty of organizations in between. If KQED did a documentart about racism at Badlands would that be condemened in the same way by SF Weekly since they also received public funds? One wonders if the SF Weekly is just less sympathetic to racism than other forms of hate. If the bar with INdian teeth instead had swatikas and proHitler statements all over its inside would it make the same free speech arguments that the city has not right to condemn the bar. Free speech would seem to say that while the city shouldnt be able to close down a bar for disagreeing with a messege leaders should be free to condemn things that make minorities uncomfortible....