[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Could the Left’s first crop of political enemies really have ripened so fast?
Although spring traditionally is regarded as the season for planting crops rather than reaping their benefits, the crudely worded warning that Butch Napolitano, the director of Homeland Security, sent out to law enforcement agencies nationwide about “right-wing extremists,” prospective terrorists, prowling the countryside, may already have paid off.
Late yesterday afternoon, two weeks to the day after the bizarre memo was fired off, a restaurant in Claremont reacted with fascinating alarm.
Hours before Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was to address the Mountain View Republican Club, Buca di Beppo abruptly declared he was unwelcome. They summarily canceled his appearance, which had been energetically promoted for weeks around the Claremont section of East Los Angeles.
In the last four years, Mr. Gilchrist — who has been through this tiresome scene before — has become the best known and most outspoken activist in America for standing vigilantly against a daily flood of illegal aliens pouring across the porous 600-mile border with Mexico.
It remains unclear whether there was a direct link between Butch Napolitano’s heavily criticized “warning” and the restaurant’s late-hour retreat.
Only One Voice
The only explanations available in the first printed reports came from Lt. Dennis Smith of the Claremont Police Dept., who spoke to the newspaper this afternoon.
Indicating that the restaurant was his source, Lt. Smith gave two reasons for the curiously-timed cancellation.
On the telephone, he came across as folksy, charming, convivial, exactly the profile of an ideal small-town police officer.
Why, I asked him, were the police announcing the cancellation of the restaurant program?
“We just happened to be in the area,” he said.
Now if the cops were on alert, what took the left-winged minds of the restaurant so long to move?
You see everybody within cheering or protesting distance of Claremont had known for weeks that a genuine hot personality was coming to the neighborhood — where, when and the time.
Being a small town, “all of us know each other,” Lt. Smith said, regardless of which political pool locals wade into.
Jim Gilchrist does not slip into any neighborhood anonymously — not as long as one left-winger remains alive.
Lt. Smith said he was from a small town , which, we know by now, does not mean that one has a small mind.
He knew where the action was going to be in Claremont yesterday, during the daylight hours and after dark.
Playing Ping-Pong with the Truth
The restaurant not only emerges from this sloppy situation — we hope Butch Napolitano is listening —without clean hands but with very dirty digits.
Here is why: The restaurant chain did not grow to 88 locations by lying or playing dumb. Boys, boys. Even left-wingers, who traditionally emote rather than read, know who Jim Gilchrist is.
The cowardly restaurant, however, has chosen to crouch behind the safe apronstrings of a lovely small-town cop and an equally congenial spokesman whom they handicapped by placing him in handcuffs. He was only permitted to send this cryptic message to the newspaper:
“My apologies for missing your call. Please see below for our statement regarding this subject. Thank you.
“ ‘Buca di Beppo is a family-friendly restaurant and the nature of this event is different than the provisional reservation that was initially communicated by the organizers.’”
I heard Butch Napolitano smiling all the way across the country when this email arrived a few minutes ago because this was exactly the reaction she was hoping for.
Returning to Lt. Smith, he was empowered to word the restaurant’s position similarly.
He said the restaurant did not think that Mr. Gilchrist’s presence would be agreeable with its family atmosphere.
[Comment: Did they mean Mafia families atmosphere?]
Lt. Smith further said the restaurant “was not aware” of the speaker’s background.
[Comment: It occurred to me the restaurant easily might have confused Mr. Gilchrist with the Peoria Gilchrists, the Guernseyville Gilchrists, the Georgetown Gilchrists, the Gallipolis Gilchrists and the Gildersleeve Gilchrists. All of them are quite white, very likeable and are said to look so darned similar that even their parents have trouble separating them.]
More people knew Mr. Gilchrist was coming than were warned about Paul Revere.
For weeks, border activists and Republican partisans publicized his tough guard-the-border speech in the newspapers, at churches, online and to their friends.
The Pomona/Claremont neighborhood long has been a hotbed for college students to act out their beliefs, and that did happen last night, quietly, according to police.
About 20 students from nearby Pitzer College, organized by sociology Prof. Jose Calderon, demonstrated in front of the restaurant.
Apparently, the scene was not adversarial.
Lt. Smith said the professor has staged student protests in the past, and there never has been any trouble, probably because “we all know each other.”
