Angle black-gate counter-spin
After a column in the Pahrump Valley Times reported that Sharron Angle campaigned in 1992 against black football jerseys for the Tonopah high school team because she said the color was “evil,” the Angle campaign has tried unsuccessfully to change the subject.
(A bit of backstory for those who haven’t heard: Angle came out against a coach’s decision to don black jerseys instead of the usual red-and-white to mark the “black day” in 1991 when Tonopah lost to rival Laughlin. Angle and her supporters won the fight, the team wore its traditional colors at the 1992 homecoming but won anyway.)
The campaign’s statement, shared first with the Los Angeles Times and later with me, goes like this:
“The state has bigger things to worry about than high school football games from 20 years ago, like 14 percent unemployment thanks to Senator [Harry] Reid. But I’m glad that they won their game.”
That’s Angle’s Communications Director Jarrod Agen, who should get points for humor, but not for the attempted slight of hand.
See, this isn’t about a high-school football game from 20 years ago. This is about whether Angle is willing to impose her religious beliefs on public policy in a secular democracy. (Although, it must be said, there is no biblical warrant for the color black being evil, so this is more superstition than faith.) It’s about whether a relatively minor decision by a coach at a secular high school should be overridden by the religious concerns of those seeking public office. And it raises the perfectly legitimate question: If Angle is willing to crusade against the color black because she thinks it’s evil, what would she do to confront other things she thinks are evil?
* She’s already said she favors a ban on abortion with no exceptions, not even for rape or incest.
* She’s already said social programs promote a dependency on government that leads to idolatry.
* She’s already said she thinks alcohol should be treated like marijuana, i.e. made illegal.
* She was once chairwoman of a PAC in Nevada that had as one of its goals to ban pornography and that said the “radical homosexual movement” was out to destroy the traditional family structure.
* And she’s already said the doctrine of separation of church and state is “unconstitutional.”
So these are not petty questions about a two-decade-old football game, but important and contemporary questions about the kind of leader Angle would be, should she get elected in November.
Or, as Bill Roberts, who originally reported Angle’s opposition to the black jerseys, says at the end of his column:
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 [Review-Journal] 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.