From 2003, when State Auditor candidate Guy Glodis was a State Senator. "Jaw-dropping" doesn't really do justice to it.
… Glodis is generating controversy over his decision to distribute what Muslim activists charge was a racist flier to his 39 Senate colleagues. On June 25 [2003], the pol sent out an e-mail with the message, "Thought this might be of interest to you." To it, he attached a leaflet purporting to tell the story of General "Black Jack" Pershing, a US military man stationed in the Philippines. In 1913, so the story goes, Pershing was combating his own brand of terrorism: "Muslim extremists." He executed 49 of them with bullets soaked in pig’s blood because Muslims believe, the flier states, "touching a pig … is to be instantly barred from paradise (and those virgins) and doomed to hell." Then, he buried their bodies in pig entrails — an act that supposedly deterred terrorism for 42 years. The flier closes with this final sentiment: "Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq? The question, where do we find another Black Jack Pershing?"
Glodis, for his part, seems untroubled by the matter. … Glodis stresses that he never meant to offend anyone. "If I have," he says, "I regret it." He received the "news item" — this is what he calls the leaflet because, he says, "It was news to me when I read it" — from a constituent, and he thought he saw the past event's relevance to today’s war on terrorism. Do we take a passive approach to terrorism? Or do we fight terrorism by the same means?
It's not just that he read it and found it "interesting" … he thought it was credible enough to forward to his 39 Senate colleagues.
The mind boggles. What insanely warped judgment. This dude wants to be the next auditor — the supposed sober, Joe Friday, straight-down-the-middle guy of state government?
(???)
That is some despicable stuff. I don't care who's running against Guy Glodis. I'm not voting for him.
Thanks Hoyapaul for the link.
UPDATE (by David): For the record, the Globe’s Yvonne Abraham broke the story about the Glodis email about three weeks before the linked Phoenix piece was published.
As far as I knew, this was common knowledge that Senator Glodis sent this. There was quite a bit of publicity at the time.
A reminder might be useful anyway.
It was widely covered in the local press around here, complete with a copy of the cartoon.
<
p>I think it’s hard for people outside of greater Worcester to truly appreciate what a __________ (fill in your favorite pejorative noun here) Glodis is. Really. I’m not kidding.
before I recently saw that Phoenix story from 2003. Now that Glodis is running state-wide, it’s fair that everyone state-wide learn about this.
<
p>While this doesn’t have to do with the job of Auditor directly, it should cast some doubt on Glodis’s qualifications to be the Democratic nominee for any office. At the very least, he needs to explain himself very quickly.
Put this whole thing in its proper context. This is an email forwarded back in 2003, 18 months after 9/11, a few weeks after “Mission Accomplished” and before the electorate realized that the War in Iraq was based on George W. Bush’s fraud. The sentiments in that email were not outside of the mainstream of public opinion at that time.
If your point is that vicious, hateful, racist and eliminationist sentiments were within the mainstream of public opinion in the early to mid 2000s, well, that’s true. In fact, they still are! That doesn’t mean they’re acceptable or excusable.
For one, Glodis didn’t just have these “sentiments” — he sent a blatantly false urban legend to his 39 colleagues in the Senate (presumably using the taxpayer-supported state email system to do so). One would think that a public official would have more common sense than that, not to mention common decency.
<
p>Secondly, he’s not some dude down the street. He’s running for the Democratic nomination for a statewide office in Massachusetts. I’d hope that as Massachusetts Democrats we’d have (1) higher standards of decency for our candidates than Glodis showed during this episode and (2) realize that while we may need to run conservative Democrats in Idaho and other rock-ribbed Republican states, it’s unnecessary in the Commonwealth. We can afford to run the best liberal candidates and still win statewide.
for an elected official to forward this sort of stuff to his/her colleagues because they are likely to be as bigoted and ignorant as the worst of their constituents? Sorry, there were plenty of reasoned people who saw this thing for exactly what it was. Glodis was a big fan of the “diaper” head sort of humor and people in political circles around here knew it.
<
p>This stunt, btw, was and is typical Glodis. He is not an intellectual individual, shall we say, and prefers the company of some of the most bigoted of people Republicans (like some of the political operatives in my town) versus, let’s say, the Jim McGoverns of the world.
<
p>As for “proper” context, it’s also fair to say that Glodis has not matured or improved with age. What you saw in 2003 is what you saw in the 1990s and what you see now in the 2010s. He is banking on the ignorance of the voter to ensure his election, and he is likely to succeed given how little scrutiny he has gotten thus far.
elected officials. Not then, not now.
Though as I said above, I certainly don’t mean to say they oughtn’t be criticized and condemned, I think racism and xenophobia are absolutely mainstream views in American society. They aren’t the whole of the mainstream – large, multitudes, etc. – but it’s foolish and dangerous to pretend they’re strictly fringe beliefs.
Especially after 9/11, it was clear that the U.S. needed all the Muslim allies we could find. If we wanted good intelligence on what extremists were planning, it was not going to come from Methodists.
<
p>The “us vs. them”/”good vs. evil” crowd made things more dangerous not safer with such rhetoric. IMHO, the 9/11 context makes it less excusable.
Now it needs to become a mission to stop this guy from getting in office.
<
p>All aboard the Bump Train…
<
p>She’ll be in Swampscott tomorrow, a fellow member of the town dems invited her over for sweets and conversation. If anyone wants to come meet her (or me, lol), send me an email. My email is available on my profile.
Mike Lake is not beholden to the pols and the insiders on Beacon Hill. Because of that, he will act independently in discharging his duties as our next State Auditor!
<
p>Democratic delegates join the team!! It’s not too late to commit your vote to MIKE LAKE. Follow the link below:
<
p>http://www.electmikelake.com/
What precipitated this sudden and strong change in support from Glodis to Lake?
because we all know you’ve been Shilling for Glodis. South Shore Dem‘s comment history is pretty clear.
<
p>You like Glodis. Now, you’re pushing Lake because you perceive Bump as your biggest threat.
<
p>Just be honest about it — and maybe even let us know if you’ve got any affiliation with Glodis or his campaign, paid or unpaid.
if the nominee is Glodis, Lake, or Bump.
<
p>I must say, I do like Glodis’ presentation, his war chest, and the fact that he has spent an awful lot of time in Plymouth County. However, I took a suggestion from another poster on BMG to consider Lake as an option. Since that time I have met with Mr. Lake and had several conversations with him to get a feel for his vision. Now I am committed to seeing that he stays in this race by voting for him at the convention. I am actively calling my town delegation to do likewise. Mike Lake’s youth, energy, and passion is quite refreshing. The bullying (Bump supporters) that goes on is disheartening – back off! Suzanne Bump does not need this kind of support.
<
p>Make no mistake though, at the end of the day, I will support the Democrat.
<
p>God Bless.
…what bullying you are refering to on the part of Bump supporters. I’ve seen it neither here on BMG or out and about.
..there are only a few “bumps” in the road..just a handful of elitists that are controlling the Auditor’s race discussion.
The witness is nonresponsive.
Permission to treat this individual as a hostile witness?
<
p>(Why, yes, I do watch Law and Order, why do you ask…)
People tried to raise it again when he ran for sheriff, but any attempt to define him thusly–even if true– were more than offset by what seemed like his personal visit to the home of every voter in the county, and persistent but not annoying follow up by a very well organized campaign.
I’d be interested for him to be asked point blank if he holds these detestable views. I think it’s an even greater concern that a chief law enforcer of a county holds such views than an Auditor.
I would say that my recollection is that it came up quite late, and well after he had spent ENORMOUS time wearing his shoes out campaigning. He visited everyone on my street, twice, during spring and summer before the election (he helped my WWII vet neighbor start a stubborn lawnmower), and made a very, very good impression on everyone, which impression a late-in-the-game “dirt” story did little to dispel.
At Snopes. Money quote:
<
p>
Coming next from the Glodis campaign, no doubt, will be a series of offers for viagra at rock bottom prices.
That Philippine counterinsurgency was also the beginning of our use of “the water cure” – what we now call waterboarding. It was terrifically effective, and a number of the soldiers and Marines who employed it found it equally useful in their subsequent careers in law enforcement back in the US. Let’s hope that part of history does not also repeat itself.
Yet much of the political establishment and labor unions are with him. Why?
<
p>I hope this info reaches delegates ahead of the convention so people can carefully consider their vote. Stopping him at the convention while not likely, is a noble goal after reading this.
I’d ask Striker57 for a positive picture of Glodis rather than a tear down of Bum[p.
<
p>I generally try not to indulge my first impressions of someone… especially when all I know of that someone is via the internet. But my first impressions are re-enforced by the repeat of these revelations: Glodis is a garden-variety bully and my impression of his supporters amongst the establishment, et al, references that jaded old saw: “He’s an asshole. But he’s our asshole.”
Or Somerville, Amherst, and Northampton. Or in the liberal blogosphere. But in the towns where regular people live, this won’t bother too many people.
People in Amherst aren’t “Regular”?
The Partisan Voting Index number for that town is probably in the “D+20s”, so I would think it is fair to say that the politics of that town deviate far enough from the statewide mean to say that as whole it is not a “regular” town.
<
p>(Then there was that time that they wanted to host Guantanamo Bay detainees…)
Though I will admit that their politics are far outside the mainstream. As people, they seem regular to me — two ears, hair, legs, etc…
clearly not.
<
p>I can’t speak to that….
Seems to me a politician ought to be looking for votes among those people who vote. If people in those cities vote, Glodis would do well to be concerned about them, whatever their political stripe. I don’t think there’s much he can say.
<
p>Add it up: Liberal places where this won’t go over well: much of Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Arlington, Northampton, Amherst, the hippier/liberal places of Berkshire County … after a while you’re talking a fair # of voters.
<
p>And I think enough moderate folks might find this repulsive as well.
You are probably right, this Democrat will not be voting for Glodis in the primary or the general. But it is typical that voters will blindly vote D no matter what kind of asshole it is. De Nucci is prime example of that.
While it’s fair to question how effective DeNucci has been (as I have done in the past), I’ve never heard anything about him as a person that’s even close to the stuff about Glodis referenced in this thread. To the contrary, pretty much everyone seems to really like the guy.
about Muslims or any other ethnic group.
I meant to say voters will blindly vote ‘D’ regardless of how corrupt, incompetent, or racist they are. I do not think De Nucci or Galvin are racist, but I do believe that both have become lazy and tend to give hack jobs out to their supporters. In that case they should be disqualified. Glodis should be disqualified on all three counts, he has done a piss poor job as sheriff (an easy job to begin with and one that should be merged into the state police and done away with as an elected office), corrupt since he has given county jobs to campaign workers and vice a versa, and racist because of this email and an incident during his college days.
<
p>We have a lot of Reagan Democrats in the State House who are anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and are addicted to other regressive politics. I am sorry if I painted with a broad brush regarding Diamond Joe. My grandma was a big fan way back to his boxing days and he seems like he was a nice guy, albeit one who stayed in office for too long and did little to innovate it. But there is a tendency to assume any of the D’s are good progressives, when in reality a lot of them are not.
What I was surprised by when Guy Glodis came out with this is that nobody said that the pork-dipped bullet strategy simply would not work.
<
p>Muslims have fought Muslims in many wars, and there is no record of dipping bullets in pork. Muslim clerics have stated, quite plainly, that there is no such doctrine in Islam.
<
p>If this strategy would work, then why did the US Federal Government not commandeer all of the pork from the grocery stores and slaughterhouses after September 11?
<
p>I eat pork. It is a meal, but 6 months to a year without it to get Al Qaeda would be fine with me and 99% of the people, IF IT WOULD WORK.
<
p>But it wouldn’t.
<
p>The story was perhaps a little boorish. He may have done it deliberately to get an image that is “politically incorrect” for electoral purposes.
<
p>Many tuned-out people vote based on cultural image rather than on policy positions.
<
p>I know that I will sleep well at night with Guy Glodis, Mike Lake, or Suzanne Bump as auditor.
<
p>What concerns me MUCH MORE is politicians who are polished but who voted for and support the immoral war in Iraq.
<
p>From the days of Jamestown, VA (1607) until 2003, IRAQ NEVER ATTACKED US.
<
p>Between Iraq War I and Iraq War II, we starved Iraqis and 500,000 children died.
<
p>Kuwait went slant drilling under Iraq before Iraq War I, and hired a US PR firm to sell the war to Congress.
<
p>Obama is not ending the Iraq war fast enough.
<
p>And, a few decades ago there was an “old ruler” who dipped Al-Qaeda types in acid while he drank whisky and smoked a cigar.
<
p>Who was the “old ruler”?
<
p>SADDAM HUSSEIN AL-TIKRITI.
<
p>I’m old school anti (Iraq)-War. I just wouldn’t worry about this sort of silly story.
You may not think that if, for example, you were an American Muslim.
It’s not wonderful. It’s probably not a good thing to say.
<
p>American Muslims, and anyone else for that matter, can make fun of Guy Glodis or anyone else for that matter.
<
p>The story is just simply absurd. There have been Muslims involved in wars for centuries, and a pork-dipped bullet strategy is UNHEARD OF in the real world because it is absurd.
<
p>If it’s like anything, it’s like trying to fill a car’s gas tank today with mulch and thinking that it will run fine.
<
p>I just see no reason to be too concerned with what is, if anything, an absurd tale whose premises are impossible.
It’s “probably” not a good thing to say? Seriously? You think Muslim Americans “can make fun of Guy Glodis?” You just don’t get it, do you?
<
p>It wasn’t “probably” not a good thing to say, it was definitely not a good thing to say, because it showed that he had an irrational fear and hatred of Muslim people. American Muslims — and all good people who oppose bigotry — shouldn’t “make fun of” Glodis, they should be fucking furious and do all in their power to make sure he goes NO WHERE close to statewide office. What he’s said is so hurtful and so bigoted that not only should all good and rational people work against his auditor bid, but we shouldn’t stop until he’s completely driven out of any single office in all of Massachusetts, period. I wouldn’t want him on my freaking Town Meeting slate.
<
p>If you can’t see this, you’re deranged.
<
p>But what is in question here is not the urban legend itself, which is indeed absurd. The relevant thing involved here is Glodis’s temperament and fitness for office. You would agree that is relevant, no?
Sometime in their life, everyone has put their foot in their mouth.
<
p>I, personally, have no problem with forgiving and forgetting this.
<
p>Although Mike Lake and Suzanne Bump would be fine as auditor, too.
<
p>I have seen realities that are so horrible going on that they dwarf any boorish jokes such as these.
<
p>About 500,000 Iraqi children, about, died because of the sanctions that the US put on Iraq after Iraq War I.
<
p>We bombed plants that purified the water. They drank sewage.
<
p>Those sanctions continued through the Bush I presidency and through the Clinton Years, until Iraq War II was started.
<
p>These poor people and their rulers NEVER did anything to us, and we starved those little children for nothing.
<
p>This policy was supported by politicians with polished manners who “played it safe.”
<
p>With this level of death and destruction for no good, in my mind, there is no time to worry about this sort of thing.
<
p>And the economy? HUGE unemployment, not enough being done for jobs, a new effort to bust unions.
<
p>THIS is horrible. These realities dwarf anything any local guy could say.
<
p>
You put your titles in ALL CAPS!
<
p>I don’t want a guy who thinks this sort of story is either serious OR a joke. That sort of guy is an embarrassment to the state. He deserves to be lambasted for this and sorry if your guy can’t take the heat, but then again maybe it’s because he did it to himself.
…about the “reformer” Guy Glodis. Instead most voters will only get the story about him that he PAYS for. That is how our system works.
…same for slots/casinos and the corruption that is already here with money in politics….good people silenced by fear and cynicism; holding probation aka “patronage departments” harmless from budget cuts; insipid and ineffective fourth estate, Big Dig….blah, blah.
Granted it was from his college days from UMASS Amherst in the 80’s. I believe it was in Worcester Magazine.
That’s Guy Glodis’s slogan – highlighted on his webpage. Anyone but me remember the last politician who used that phrase? Back in the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, after McCain smoked Bush in New Hampshire, where McCain had campaigned as a reformer, George W. Bush came on strong in South Carolina with the same slogan that Glodis uses – “Reformer with Results.” That was the same point in the campaign where Bush spread lies about McCain having an illegitimate black child, and where Bush, the draft dodger, questioned McCain’s patriotism.
<
p>Should anyone be surprised that, given everything that George W. Bush and Guy Glodis hold in common, that they’d both use the same slogan?
The last politician who used that phrase was Howard Dean in 2004.
<
p>The alliteration, combined with the insider/outsider two-fer makes it a perennial favorite.
Wouldn’t this hue and cry have been more important during ANY of his Sheriff races? Seeing as how he would have been responsible for the treatment of Muslim offenders as a law enforcement official, and all? (I know, I know, but on PAPER he WAS…)
<
p>Yes, this was reported here, and yes, it was condemned. But NOW that he’s leaving law enforcement behind, and going to cook the books for Democrats…uh…beginning his QuickBooks training…uh…running for Auditor – NOW you’re horified, Capt. Reynaud?
<
p>What will he decry – the Arab invention of’zero’? Without which, the legislatures budgets would cease to function?
Your misconception is a common one.
The sheriff runs the jail and house of correction, as well as the work release program for the inmates thereof.
that if was revealed that a Republican candidate for Auditor or any other position openly had strongly-held racist views of African-Americans, you would be troubled — even though the candidate’s “private” views on this matter would not directly relevant to the job. It’s reasonable to expect at least a minimum level of common sense from public officials.
<
p>
<
p>I gotta admit, this was funny, though!