[Distributed via OtherWords.org]
[Note to BfAZ readers: I’m posting here my op-ed piece for OtherWords.org, the free syndication site operated by the Institute for Policy Studies. Although the discussion of Huppenthal has shifted in the past few days from his demonization of the poor to his apparent racism, the message here I think still is important]
When I unmasked an Arizona official who made outrageous and anonymous comments on blogs, it revealed more than his bad judgment.
By Bob Lord
For years I’d wondered about the identity of a gaggle of anonymous commenters on Blog for Arizona, the website to which I frequently contribute. These guys weighed in a lot and were very eager to burnish the reputation of Arizona School Superintendent, John Huppenthal.
Ultimately, my fellow writers and I explored the source of the comments. With only modest effort, we figured out these commenters were all aliases of Huppenthal himself. Among other things, the 60-year-old official was posting from the Arizona Department of Education and providing details of his own childhood.
Nonetheless, we were stunned. By then, I’d had a year-long dialogue with “Thucky,” (a riff on one of his aliases) and knew his economic views were beyond extreme and demonstrably wrong, and that he resorted to intellectual dishonesty without hesitation.
As this strange tale draws increasing media attention, it’s clear that one of his many unvarnished and outrageous opinions is drawing the most fire: Huppenthal believes that people who benefit from food stamps and other features of America’s safety net are “lazy pigs.”
Huppenthal said plenty of other incendiary things under his pseudonyms. But that particular gaffe epitomizes his disdain for the millions of people he’s supposed to serve. The “lazy pigs” line also sums up an extreme philosophy gaining popularity among influential Republicans.
It’s essentially a corollary to the Prosperity Gospel, a strain of Christian belief that emerged in the 1950s. The Prosperity Gospel casts financial wealth as a blessing from God, turning Mark 10:25 — “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” — on its head.
Prosperity Gospel suits the religious right movement. It justifies the personal wealth belonging to its leaders and televangelists and puts those folks on the same page as major conservative funders, like the Koch brothers.
What could be more in sync with idolizing the rich than demonizing the poor? Huppenthal hardly invented this demonization.
President Ronald Reagan sneered at “welfare queens.” During their failed 2012 bid for the White House, Mitt Romney wrote off the “47 percent” while Paul Ryan disparaged a majority of Americans — as “takers.”
John Huppenthal is a Roman Catholic but his no-longer anonymous blog comments reveal him to be more partial to the Prosperity Gospel and its companion ethos that the poor are bad people than to his own church’s emphasis on charity.
Pope Francis would surely disapprove of the Arizona official’s comments, such as this one: “You have an ethnic majority, Hispanics, oppressing an ethnic minority, small business owners, exacting a property tax and paying to force students to undergo a toxic indoctrination.”
In other words, he sees the poor as un-Christian bullies, forcing the wealthy to pay taxes to fund everything from food stamps and child protective services to Mexican-American studies.
Huppenthal’s comments are out of step with the growing number of Americans who aren’t willing to blame the poor for their plight at a time when wealth and income are increasingly concentrated and the rich are getting absurdly rich.
His compulsive commenting isn’t the only odd online behavior exposed so far. Huppenthal also spent an alarming amount of time scrubbing anything he didn’t like out of his own Wikipedia page as an “editor.”
It’s not clear yet what this will mean for his career. He’s running for re-election and faces competition in Arizona’s August 26 Republican primary. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce yanked an award it was about to bestow upon him and is considering whether to call for his resignation.
Before this scandal erupted, Huppenthal was already taking heat for his promotion of private school vouchers while serving as chief of the state’s public schools.
Conservatives abhor his support for Arizona’s version of the Common Core. Now he has to explain his extreme views and why his anonymous commenting on websites, including items entered during the workday from the Education Department’s offices, was an appropriate use of his time.
I hope Arizona voters see Huppenthal for what he is — dangerous and wrong — and reject him. His defeat would send a strong message: Characterizing the poor as un-Christian is politically off limits.
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
MRHs litany of complaints could have been written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. It could have been written in any culture or any civilization on earth. The conditions he describes have always existed, exist now and will always exist. The complaints he voices are perenial complaints of mankind. No solution has ever been found and no attempts at correcting it have ever been successful. Such disparity is the state of man.
MRH speaks as if this is a recent phenomenon of haves and have nots, and the solution is for the law to exercize justice and purge the system of those who have gained their excess at the expense of others. This is naivete in the extreme. Power always corrupts and reformers always find themselves becoming oppressors for the good of the people. It is okay to dream, MRH, but don’t take yourself seriously…were you among the wealthy you would be just like them and would argue that you had worked hard to get where you are.
“…..were you among the wealthy you would be just like them and would argue that you had worked hard to get where you are.” First you are arrogantly presumptuous as to think that you know what I would or have been like nor do you know that I am not wealthy…sir.
I take my life seriously because its MY life. I am sad that you do not appear to do the same.
Just playing the odds that you are not wealthy now and that you would very likely rationalize seeing the world differently should you become wealthy. It is human nature and happens all the time.
I do agree with you about the disasterous effects that have occurred to our economy because we changed from a production economy which kept us healthy economically. However, I think we became a service economy rather than a consumer economy. Consumerism has always been with us, but the nature of our jobs has changed from production to service oriented. I fear it is a crippling blow from which we will likely never recover.
His comments don’t hurt him with his Republo base and anything negative from the Chamber of Commerce will also help him. The primaries are about the base voting. His still heading toward the general election ad the Republican candidate.
I wouldn’t be so certain that this has not hurt him with the Republican base. Even if they overlook his offensive comments (which I doubt), his blubbering, unmanly, crying and insincere apology will hurt him. I am a Republican and I am prepared to vote him out of office for both reasons.
I am at a loss as to why so many folks are blowing this up as if the statements made by Huppenthal are not part and parcel of not only the wealthy, white political and corporate world but of most people who are one check from poverty themselves; across the board, each and every ethnic group has expressed these same sentiments ad/or POV publicly and privately.
Americas beginnings, how it came to be, is littered with racism, genocide, opportunism, exploitation, greed and manipulation of its populace. Along with being a very young country, America’s problems have been compounded with rampant corruption in all levels of government, the calculated and systematic manipulation of the public who have become as polarized as any other nation in the world and the literal invasion of people entering the country illegally, makes for a poisonous soup.
The inequities between the working class, the poor, the pawns who are our veterans; government and corporations have become so vast and treacherous it makes the Grand Canyon seem like a post hole.
The fact that America has become a consumer-based country instead of a productive country is why there are less jobs and innovated, self reliant, creative people; all of which inspire and drive prosperity and encourages hard work and entrepreneurship of small businesses.
We the people have in fact ALL been civically, intellectually, psychologically and emotionally lazy. We the people have ALL lacked the desire for vigilance; requiring both government and business and their enforcers to be accountable and liable to prosecution for their corruption, greed, power and fear mongering.
The formula used to control the masses is the same as that used on Pavlov’s dog. Stalin, Hitler and our present and past governments knew it and still use it for their own gain.
It truly IS a good thing for governments that the people Do Not Know How to Think as autonomous beings. They just respond to specific stimuli in exactly the way they have been conditioned to do.
America, as a united nation, no longer exists; if it ever has in reality. We are in deep manure as a people and NO ONE, NO government, NO Group has a shovel big enough to even show us how to start shoveling it out.
Well said!