One of the fun things about living in Orange County (aside from the Ayn Rand hallucinations of the Orange County Register) is the assorted nut jobs that seem to pop up here all the time. This is the land of Orly Taitz, of Marilyn Davenport (the local Republican committeewoman who sent around the cartoon of Obama's parents as apes), and of course the gone but not forgotten craziness of Bob Dornan.
I hate to give notoriety to manifest idiots, but we have another name to add to the county's Hall of Shame. A San Juan Capistrano city councilman has named his dog Muhammed, supposedly as a lesson in free speech for his kids - but, of course, also publicizing it in the process.
By almost any measure, Derek Reeve is a real piece of work. He's offered proposals to allow open carry of (unloaded) guns in San Juan (the purpose of which isn't entirely clear- perhaps it's a method of self defense in which you beat an attacker senseless with the butt end of your pistol. Or maybe the sight of the piece will scare some of the swallows away.). He's broken with council colleagues on efforts to protect the city's redevelopment agency, claiming (with, of course, no evidence to support it whatsoever) that the agency funnels money to "politically connected cronies". And he's introduced a proposal to investigate and punish local employers who hire undocumented workers (San Juan is one of the oldest cities in Orange County, and certainly the oldest in South County, dating back to the founding of its famous mission by Fr Junipero Serra in 1776. As a result, it has a proportionately large Hispanic population, and a baeutiful old Hispanic area that's maintained today as a living museum. Length of residence, however, does not apparently equate to respect.).
At the council's September 6 meeting, Reeve happily announced (apropos of nothing, of course) that he'd named his dog Muhammed. Whether the other council members were too stunned to respond, or too insentivie, the matter passed by at that time. After the meeting, however, local protests grew apace. In a blog post at Patch.com, he later explained that his two dogd were named Muhammed and America, and noted that "Muhammed is the bitch." He later thought better of that one, and delted it from the blog. he also took his bio off the city's website.
A little background here: not only is the name, likeness etc of Muhammed considered sacred by Muslims, but dogs are particularly regarded as unclean. Hence the classic (and cliched) curse in which someone in some Arab/Muslim setting calls someone else a dog.
Reeve didn't reckon with the fact that some San Juan city staffers, including some present at the meeting, were Muslim. He also didn't reckon with the revulsion that even this county would have to his comments. San Juan's mayor and the other council members all issued public statements of rebuke. Even the Register carried a number of columns telling him what it thought of his stunt. The next council meeting, on September 20, turned into a woodshed moment for Reeve, as members of the Council and the public tore into him.
Reeve's response was, to say the least, lame: he named the dog that, he claimed, to teach his children a lesson about political oppression in other countries. (All those who believe that, please line up over there on the left, we have bridges and Everglades land to sell you). And when council members questioned how he was raising his children if that was his idea of a valuable moral lesson, he became emotional, and said (among other things, " To hell you say – I will teach them and educate them on these principles until the day I die." (Of course, if his lesson was one about courageously standing up for free speech, why did he recant the "bitch" line and hide his biolgraphical information? His brand of political statement is, to say the least, a tad muddled.)
We're in the land of Nixon here, so the old Nixon White House line that "contrition is bullshit" gets played out a lot, as you can see.
The story actually is a fairly happy one. Even in this land of nut jobs, conspiracy theorists, and open bigots, Reeve's stunt has been met with widespread condemnation. Sadly, some in the audience at the Council meeting praised him, but that's just show business around here, The point is that the local officialdom has been uniformly condemnatory. Here we even need to give credit to Bill O'Reilly (stop hacking, please), who did a short piece on Reeve and labelled him a "pinhead". Reeve's reaction: a posting on his Facebook page that read "I'm a pinhead lol".
Reeve is, clearly, relishing his fifteen minutes of exploitive fame. While, as I said, I'm hesitant to add to that cheap thrill, I hope as many people as possible will contact him and let him know what they think of his sleazy little move. It's time for some good old moral obloquy, to teach a bigot a lesson.