Bill Roberts
By Bill Roberts
From the Tailings
With apologies to faithful readers who were expecting the final installment of this column’s series on Tonopah TV, it has been pre-empted and will grace this space next week.
I digress because another subject of immediate interest has caught my attention.
The subject is the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Harry Reid and Sharron Angle, a former Tonopah resident. More specifically, recent statewide and national reports which clamor about how religion has been inserted into this campaign.
Going back and forth, Angle’s campaign has been critical of Reid’s appealing “to the faithful,” and the Democrat has accused his Republican challenger of being unable to separate church and state.
Reid’s supporters have put a spotlight on Angle’s emphasizing religion in her campaign. Specifically, her statements that she is running as a “calling from God” and fighting the forces of evil who seek “to make government our God.”
Nice sound bites. But the events from 20 years ago might shine a better light on the mingling of religion and campaigning by Angle.
The heart of the story starts in 1991 and, perhaps surprisingly, with the Tonopah High School football team.
Mired in a dismal season, the Muckers traveled to Laughlin that fall. To nearly everyone’s surprise, the relatively-new Clark County school defeated Tonopah. It was Laughlin’s first-ever football win.
Tonopah coach Randy Jones was so incensed that he told his team in the locker room following the game it was the blackest day in Mucker history.
Springing ahead, Jones came up with an innovative idea to fire up his charges for their 1992 homecoming game against Laughlin. Utilizing the “darkest day” theme, he suggested the Muckers could wear black jerseys to remember the previous year’s debacle.
With no resources for his plan, the coach asked his players to buy their own black uniform shirts. Not all complied but many did and they mostly their parents ponied up the cash to buy black jerseys.
Enter the detractors, coming with two platforms.
The first were longtime THS supporters like Bob Frank father of school board member John Terras and alum William Tomany of Las Vegas. Their group argued that red and white were the Muckers’ colors and no other would do.
Also opposing the black jerseys was another group including Angle, a member, if not its leader.
They argued against our charges wearing black on religious grounds.
I cannot quote scripture as they did to justify their point but the gist of their argument was that black as a color was thoroughly evil, invoking the supernatural and especially the devil my take from dictionary definitions and not from scripture .
Angle may or may not have thought this a political statement. But she became a high profile advocate of a specific religious position during her very first campaign.
Whichever argument prevailed, school administrators caved in and prohibited the Muckers from wearing the black apparel.
As a parent and journalist, I was incensed and made my wishes known to Jones, imploring him to ignore his bosses and go ahead with the black jerseys. He told the “editor” he could not go against the administration but privately said he would follow through with the plan except the administration held the offensive apparel under lock and key and would not give them up.
In the end, the Muckers wore traditional red and white for the homecoming game, which they won, avenging their previous loss to the Cougars. It also was a benchmark for two dozen young men as it was their only victory that season.
But they went away from the affair knowing Angle’s group used religious arguments to deprive them of their innocuous and youthful black jersey statement.
Administrators held onto the jerseys and refused to either turn them over to the athletes or to return the money they had paid.
Angle, in her first successful political race, unseated incumbent school trustee Terras by campaigning like crazy in Pahrump, courting voters who would generally vote against anything “Tonopah” — like an incumbent school trustee.
So we come full circle to today.
Nevada voters who did not know so before now are learning that religion is a big part of any Angle campaign, just as it was so many years ago.
Before you get the lynching rope out for your columnist, I believe any candidate at any time or place can advocate any position he or she supports — be it having radioactive waste stored in Nye County or prohibiting 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds from wearing a revenge-inspired football jersey.
But in a Las Vegas R-J story last week, an Angle campaign spokesman insisted the candidate is tolerant of others’ views. That was not the case 18 years ago when her religious preference was displayed during a campaign for the county school board.
Bill Roberts is the former editor and owner of the Tonopah Times-Bonanza & Goldfield News. He writes a weekly column in Tonopah.
Um, don’t priests and clergymen wear black? Or is that “holy black” and different from “evil black?”
We must also abolish little black dresses and pumps, of course, and waiters must never wear black tuxedos…
Thank good ness all of the country’s real problems have been solved so our elected leaders can focus on this trivia!
I think the clergy who wear black would agree that Angle didn’t use religious arguments to advance her kooky claim. Rather, she twisted Scripture (itself a sin) to advance a bat%=*# crazy belief.
Nevada GOP: Is Sharron Angle really the best you can do? Really? Have you sunk so very low?
I wear Black EVERY day.. like Johnny Cash.. We wear black because we are in mourning for our country… The hatred, bigotry, prejudices that are turning us against each other instead of Osama Bin Laden, and the Bushies….. who thought to divide and conquer, which meant more power to the wealthy..
Please tell the Tea Party candidate. our forefathers included the “Separation of Church and State ” for a very specific reason.. Perhaps she might try reading the constitution, the bill of rights etc. to further her knowledge.
Ps.. Christ was poor, helped the sick and hungry… Perhaps Sharron Angle should do some faith based research before opening her mouth..
Maybe God will be good to us Nevadans and Sharron Angle will lose…. We do not need another fake God loving idiot…. in the Senate.. after all. We have Vitner.. who paid hookers, Ensign who had affairs with the wife of his staff member, Foley, of Florida who loved boys….. Burton, who had a bastard child, etc, etc etc…. Stop taking the American people as fools…. the old saying is “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but NOT ALL of the people all of the time”!
No more fooling around.. It is time for real people and representatives to do real work for the American people….
Stop the nonsense, stop the craziness, stop spreading lies and hatred…. We should be standing together against Al Queda, the Taliban, and all of those who want to kill us….. Wake Up…
Usually I sign respectfully, Not in this case….
Elizabeth Yost
Well, fellow liberals, I too avoid wearing black for emotional and spiritual reasons.
Emotional: when I wear black I feel more depressed. I was quite surprised when I discovered this, but wearing brightly colored — especially non-black — clothes helps me fight depression.
Spiritual: Hinduism has a long tradition that black clothing is “tamasik”: life destroying. Maybe it’s Hinduism’s way of describing the same phenomenon as I discovered for myself. But there are millions Hindi who wouldn’t wear tamasik black clothing.
I don’t mind that Angle expressed her religious beliefs, but making a BIG issue out of the black jersey seems over the top and unwise politically. She should have just stopped at speaking her mind.
But for me, personally, I can understand her position. So calling people “loony” because of these beliefs is, to me, offensive.
Peace.
Speaking from the perspective and experience of someone with a chemical predisposition towards seeing the glass half empty, I hardly think that referring to your own mood swings and citing a religion that throws Untouchables on funeral pyres necessarily gives you the rational footing to declare what does and does not deserve to be called loony.
Something else: I take umbrage at your slandering of the colour black. I wear it most days, not because I’m trying to be satanic or evil, or even to offend the delicate sensibilities of Hindus (most of whom I’m sure really aren’t bothered), but because it’s a good, practical colour. It doesn’t easily get dirty, it’s easy to clean. And like the man says, it goes with everything (at least, everything black).
So feel free to be offended on behalf of other people’s beliefs. We really don’t care.
Didn’t our Founding Fathers write the US Constitution using ***BLACK*** ink?
(brain explodes)
Our founding fathers were also PAGAN, not christian like everybody want’s you to believe.
Untrue, some were Deists, not pagans. Read a legitimate history book.
I love black, you can hide under it. It makes you look thinner.
You totally made this story up. You have zero documented proof other than your sudden recollection. Sorry excuse for a journalist.
Ah. “You Lie!!” as a retort. Where have we heard that before?
Ok, merriam webster’s online dictionary definition #7
#6 thoroughly sinister or evil : wicked
#7 : connected with or invoking the supernatural and especially the devil
So Bill Roberts tells us what the dictionary, not Sharon Angle, says about the color black, and says that’s the gist of what Angle said. Everyone is going around claiming Angle said something that ends up being a quote from a dictionary? But it’s Bill Robert’s quote?
WTF? What is that supposed to mean?
So the Board took away these kid’s first amendment rights because a crazy fundamentalist, and a few rich white guys told them not to? WTF?
So a small comment 20 years ago now has relevance today? Great job, on proving nothing and not creating any sort of point, Bill Roberts: the political intellectual that would rather trust an over spending incumbent that thinks all hispanic people are democrats.
I had no idea I was an evil person
Angle’s a wackadoodle nut job.
And you get PAID for this??? I suppose all you liberal, uneducated people here don’t see how your wonderfull Harry Reid is ruining not just nevada, but the whole country. If a turtle were running against him, I would vote for the turtle. He needs to be retired, period. Angle would be a junior Senator, not have the powere Reid does, and would vote no on any spending which needs to be done. Regardless of her motivation. Harry Reid, for cap and trade, for illegal health care, for justices that are anti 2nd ammedment. For illegal aliens and giving American jobs to them. You libs are right on track. All the while he has grown a fortune of over 60 million dollars in the last 30 years as a Senator???? And his salary is what 200,000 a year. Why did he buy up water and mineral rights for himself. He wants to control the people one way or another. More like back room deals and lieing to the public. Harry is going down by people that are waking up to the left wing Marxist agenda. Normal Democrats are waking up also. You left wingers will be left out in the cold this November.
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After Harry rammed Nationalized Health Care, The Failed Stimulus, and Bank Bailouts through the Senate you are going to talk about black sports jerseys from 20 years ago? And Harry isn’t done, he needs more time in order to pass higher energy taxes and single payer health care. Since the only chance the country ever had of stopping the insane spending was in the Senate Harry is more responsible for where we are today than any other person, because he is the person who threatened and bribed other Senators to get some very destructive legislation passed.
The biggest problem, to me, is that she used a governing body to inhibit an involved majority of people from making their own choices.
THAT is the hypocrisy.
Get government OFF the backs of the people…or use government to impose a set of beliefs on everyone? Which is it?