So I’m watching MSNBC last night and Ari Melber is filling in for Rachel and the news just broke that Trump pardoned that motherfucker, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when, happily, Ari has on Arizona Rep. Rueben Gallego, my congressman, a young Latino veteran who’s been in Joe Arpaio’s grill for years (one reason he entered politics to begin with), so of course Rep. Gallego knows all about that racist dickhead’s crimes, which is a long, long list, not just the recent contempt of court conviction, and he also knows how to say that motherfucker’s name, which is “ARE-PIE-OH” with the stress on the second syllable, but except for Rep. Gallego half the guests on Ari’s segment (and later into the night) say “ARE-PAY-OH” or they go back and forth between the two pronunciations or they put the accent on the wrong syllable, but if you’re going to denounce and shame that POS, and he deserves it huuugely, those of us in Arizona at least want to hear that guilty name said correctly because, hey, I’ve lived most of my long life in Phoenix and I’ve known that bigot with a badge since he started shitting up our town, from when he beat friend Tom Agnos for county sheriff in 1992 (running, get this, on a cost-saving platform because a lawsuit against Agnos cost the county $4 million—a figure Arpaio soon doubled in just one case when Scott Norberg was killed in his jail and the county had to cough up $8.25 million, and today the number is around $170 million), so you can trust me, I don’t care what it’s spelled like, it’s “ARE-PIE-OH,” a name we’ve heard for far too often in these parts, as he terrorized minorities with his goose-stepping immigration sweeps through businesses and communities, looking for “illegal” burger flippers and car washers for more than 20 years, tearing apart hard-working families while ignoring hundreds of child rape crimes as well as a judge’s order to stop being such a racist dick, ending with Arpaio finally being held to account when he, like Trump, thought he was above the law and could defy a friggin’ court order (or could even spy on the judge’s wife to get dirt), but this time Arpaio couldn’t wiggle out of the verdict by paying a fine, which has been the usual course of action here, with that bigoted bozo costing the people of Maricopa County millions in lost court cases (not counting tens of millions he misspent on tanks and other boy toys), like for killing veterans in his jail or rounding up journalists in the middle of the night because they wrote something nasty about the sheriff, then demanding the newspaper turn over the IP address of all online visitors to the paper’s website, and the First Amendment journalist guys telling Arpaio “Fuck You,” then winning a big lawsuit against him ($3.75 mill) for the illegal middle-of-the-morning rousting, just like all the other judges, elected officials, government workers and families of victims who successfully sued that mofo for illegal arrests, indictments, torture and just plain harassment, as Arpaio and his Sancho Panza sidekick, then County Attorney Andrew Thomas, along with Senate President Russell Pearce and bony-fingered Gov. Jan Brewer, went about building their police state during that 2010 Year of Hate, with racist tea party Obama signs everywhere, wrinkled Sun City denizens telling government to keep out of their Medicare, and Arizona passing Arpaio’s wet dream, SB 1070, which gave him cover to do what he’d been doing for years—stopping brown people and demanding papers, then illegally detaining them when they don’t have ID (which is what the Melendres racial profiling verdict was all about), all the time cavorting with anti-immigrant turds of the first class, like border hawks running for Congress who molest kids, or other far-right congressional candidates who blackmail their undocumented boyfriend, not to mention your garden variety Nazi shitheads, like J.T. Ready, who Sen. Pearce supported for Mesa City Council, a sieg-heiling Storm Front nutjub who ends up murdering a family of four, including a baby, before putting the rifle in his own ugly mouth, but that family tragedy and J.T. Ready’s close association with Arizona’s racist leadership is a tipping point, signaling a sort of overreach by white nationalists, and before long jackass Andy Thomas is disbarred for giving Arpaio’s fascism legal sanction, while at the same time Sen. Russell Pearce, a follower of Fundy Mormon screwball Cleon Skousen, is recalled in very red Mesa for being even too much of a racist pustule for the conservatives there, and while these bigots are going down most of Arpaio’s top deputies are either fired or indicted for crimes, most of which involve fucking over Latinos, and Joe Arpaio is left hanging by his own saggy balls, until presidential candidate Donald Trump comes along and tells him what a super job he’s doing on immigration, because Mexico isn’t sending its best, only rapists, not to mention he’s got a hard-on for the sheriff’s birther industry—consultants, authors, private eyes, press conferences, deputies in Hawaii and all, because that’s what a county sheriff in Arizona should do—spend time and resources looking into a racist, not sponge-worthy conspiracy theory—but that’s what Trump’s doing too, sending investigators to Hawaii (where they’re finding, he says, “interesting things” but then he never says what this interesting shit is), so Trump and Arpaio, old farts of my dad’s generation (white racist goobers from Pennsyltuckey), form a manly bond over long neckties, Obama’s birth certificate and immigrant bashing, and every time Trump visits central Arizona during the campaign Arpaio appears alongside him, and together they get their racist mojo on—frothing about immigrants raping grandma, stealing your job and taking advantage of free healthcare, but the stench is even too much for Republican leaning Maricopa County, and Phoenix and other Dem-leaning communities finally outperform the retirement havens, where they’d like it to be 1950 all over again, and voters boot the criminal and expensive lawman to the curb by more than 10 points, at the same time he’s fucking convicted of contempt of court, more than once, and his 85-year-old ass could land in the pokey, so as former Sheriff Joe Arpaio (how nice to say that!) sits in his tony Fountain Hills rich white world awaiting sentencing in October, Donald Trump swoops in with a presidential pardon, because that is surely what the founders intended it for—setting criminal racists free and sending a message to your white supremacist base that you have their back, but when an emailed version of the pardon shows up at ARE-PIE-OH’s house the peckerhead’s first question is, “Is this a fake?” (because, he says, he knows a thing or two about fake documents, har har) and we can only hope. . .