Apparently I have horns, or breathe fire– because the leadership of the MCDC seem to be running scared.
This weekend’s muster didn’t work out– again– but I’m not that surprised at it falling through. Instead, I’m incredibly shocked at the treatment I recieved by Simcox and the other leaders of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. following the e-mail I sent to Garza and copied the others on after he requested me not go this weekend.
Up until this point, I knew most of the leadership wasn’t fond of me, but I had mistakenly thought Simcox at least agreed that, as a journalist, I was entitled to attend the muster like all other press. I was dead wrong.
Barely 15 minutes after copying Simcox on the e-mail, I received one of the nastiest replies I have ever received. Although it upset me on a personal level at first, it revealed the founder’s ugly side, and lead me to the conclusion I had been trying to avoid up until this point– Simcox is the king of manipultators in his organization, drowned in paranoia that everyone is out to get him.
Here is what he wrote me, his e-mail written to look like I was copied by “accident”:
“Guys,
I respected Gene’s wishes and did not have Kendall attend musters – his decision, his edict.
Gene, now that you have stepped away I just wanted to give the young lady what she wants- I gave permission to Kendall to sit the line and freeze her ass off with the rest of us. We have nothing to hide. I know she has been a conniving little pain in the butt, but then most liberal art college so-called journalists are the same way, even the 20 something reporter from the Ukraine we spoke with this week was a flaming liberal – so what. She will do a hit piece on us like all the rest and it will make no difference – we are winning this fight for law and order and to fix our broken borders and our broken immigration system.
She is after me and wants to create this situation to see how I will react – she wants as many people as possible to criticize me from inside the organization – this goes much bigger in scope but considering she is working with Stacey O’Connell, well that ruins her credibility with me, but then it’s my credibility that she’s after.
I try and keep things simple and move on to the next problem.
We don’t need this friction.
If you guys feel so strongly that she be banned then we will deal with how she spins it.
If we let her go on the line – we will deal with how she spins it – we are damned no matter what we do -so I will stand behind your decision.
I pretty much feel the whole thing is ridiculous and not worth any more of our time.
Chris Simcox”
I thought the reaction Simcox had was especially interesting, however, because from the beginning of this project I have tried my hardest not to automatically believe what articles written in the past have said. Instead, I have tried to give every Minuteman the benefit of the doubt as much as possible.
And while Simcox and the others feel that associating with former Minutemen like Stacey O’Connell makes me discreditable, trying to get both sides of the story is what any journalist should do– and well, his reaction just lets me know that I am doing my job!
