[Richard Kimball]

FWIW, here's the email I sent the editor:

I have to tell you, the subject editorial was not just bad, it was embarrassingly bad. Horribly bad. Pathetically bad. It's impossible to create a compelling argument based on history when you are utterly ignorant of history.
She claims that 1910 was the era of "Manifest Destiny." Manifest Destiny was a term coined by John L. Sullivan in 1839. Similarly, she seems totally ignorant of the fact that the Swastika had no implications whatsoever of Nazism in 1908, when Lord Baden-Powell founded the scouting movement. She cites sources claiming that he used the symbol because he was a Nazi sympathizer, but can anyone take seriously a claim that he used the symbol in 1910 because he admired a movement that didn't even rise to power until the 1930's? She also cites a source that claims he was naive because he believed it was a symbol meaning "good luck" in sanskrit. This claim is beyond idiotic, as it WAS a sanskrit symbol meaning good luck, and was used for over 3,000 years by many groups, back to 1000 BC, even predating the Egyptian symbol, Ankh.
I could tear apart the rest of her article as easily, but after looking at your web site, it is obvious that politics is more important than fact, to you. You will accept any argument, no matter how ludicrous, if it advances your agenda. To you, Boy Scouts=Bad, because Boy Scouts believe in God and heterosexuality. Therefore, any argument that supports the thesis that the Boy Scouts are bad is good, even if it is so pathetically false as to be embarrassing.

[Das Outsider]

Excellent criticism. My point in that farcical little post was that the history presented in the article is so bad that one may as well just fabricate it. The amount of editorial gymnastics required to connect such unhistorical, non sequitur links rivals that of Dan Brown himself.

[Das Outsider]

Did you happen to catch this one on the PW site?

Impeach

I've many times lamented the neglect and degradation of the printed word in favor of primarily image or entertainment based learning. Pasadena Weekly takes both, puts them into a blender, and sets it to 'Crapee.'