City Paper Scolds WilliamsonTNGOP Anti-Kurd Grind House; Fails to Attribute Story to Blogs

The Williamson County GOP's animosity toward ethnic communities had been advertised on the party website since July, but the City Paper is just now wading in with a so bold scolding, given it's "healthy readership" in Williamson County:

The real problem here is that Grindstaff appears to have painted some 8,000 Kurds very broadly as robbers and drug dealers, something that is simply inexcusable. The charge, which he has publicly stated was poorly worded, is wrapped in a criticism of the media. Grindstaff should pay more attention as this newspaper, which has a healthy readership in Williamson County, covered the Nejad trial closely.

Nashville Kurds are demanding a public apology from the Williamson County GOP, and they should get a sincere one. This kind of dismissive, insulting charge leveled at an entire immigrant community made up of hard working, honest people is inexcusable.

Gee. You really think so?

Take note: in the future the City Paper may want to avoid the utter hypocrisy of criticizing the Tennessean for failing to attribute one story in the same edition where editors fail to attribute the WilliamsonTNGOP story to bloggers.


UPDATE: The City Paper has interviewed Williamson County Republican Chair Doug Grindstaff in the past. And they couldn't predict that this guy might be magnetic for controversy or spoiling for a fight on culture issues with previous comments to the City Paper like this?

I guess some people don't know tar baby means sticky; it doesn't matter what color it is .... If tar was white, it would still be a tar baby. I don't understand why people don't get a life.

Grindstaff does not sound like the savviest diplomat in the world.

The Latest Racism Spawned in Williamson County

What exactly are they putting in the water in Williamson County, Tennessee that spawns the kind of belligerent prejudice we have seen recently? There was the Williamson County Republicans blaming Nashville's entire Kurdish community for the crimes of two gang members. There was vandalism of a car owned by an African American family in Franklin, Tennessee with racist graffiti telling them to "go back to Africa."

And now comes news via the AP, that Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss from Franklin, Tennessee traveled to what conservatives are ironically calling a "Value Voters Summit" and "briskly" sold boxes of waffle mix with Barack Obama caricatured in a racially and culturally insensitive fashion:

[The waffle box drawing] plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian. On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero."

Are these Williamson County's best and brightest citizens? Are they typical of what make Williamson County "America's Greatest County"? Are these the kind of values that conservatives at the "Family" Research Council mean when they apply the label, "Value Voters"? Doesn't calling people who deal in racist stereotypes "value voters" amount to Orwellian doublethink ("up is down," "right is left," etc.)? How can they be said to have values properly called human?


UPDATE: Franklin, Tennessee's good ol' boys rationalize their prejudice and the false innuendo they advertise on their mix. It's even more despicable than the AP report let on:

UPDATE: No surprise here but both mix makers have strong conservative evangelical ties. Bob Demoss has collaborated with religious extremist and theocrat, Tim LaHaye. According to his blog, Mark Whitlock has worked with Focus on the Family, which is run by Christian rightwinger James Dobson, who prayed for the weather to impede this year's Democratic National Convention.

DeMoss was unapologetic at the Christianity Today blog:

Does [Obama] have Muslim roots or not? That's a legitimate question. That might offend somebody, but you know what, that's part of the political satire.

Sounds like a page out of the TNGOP playbook to me.


UPDATE: A post celebrating Lou Dobbs' promotion of Obama Waffles has been scrubbed at the obama waffles blog. Not only did the CNN show host buy a box, but he exclaimed that his wife would love it. The story has gone national, hitting newspapers around the country, which is probably more racist-alleging publicity than Lou wanted.

Grind House II: The Revenge of the Kurds

These 8,000 gang members [referring to the Nashville Kurdish community, the largest in the nation], we were the first in line to donate blood when the Sept. 11 tragedy happened .... We're treated worse than second-class citizens. Most of this community has become naturalized citizens and try to earn a decent living.

- -Tennessee Kurdish Community Council member Kovan Murat

The Tennessean follows up on a previous piece on the Williamson Co. Republicans' Chair Doug Grindstaff and his prejudiced TNGOP website commentary that 8,000 Kurds living in Nashville are all responsible for robberies and drug deals. (Grindstaff also writes screeds in the Williamson Herald, which calls itself "The Voice of America's Greatest County.")

Tennessean reporters Chris Echegaray and Harriet Vaughn convey the responses from Kurds who are demanding an apology from Grindstaff. Kovan Murat was quoted as saying that the apology is necessary because Grindstaff's comments were racially motivated.

Grindstaff's puzzling reply yesterday was that he wasn't writing about the Kurds but about the media in writing specifically these words:

There are 8,000 Kurdish immigrants living here in Nashville trying to repay our hospitality by robbing us and dealing drugs.

Does it sound like he's talking about the media? What do 8,000 Kurds have to do with the media's response to two gang member's trial? And as for the media's response, the wife of one of the gang members has a totally different take than Heir Grindstaff. She told the Tennessean:

If anything, I think the media focused on the Kurdish gang and not on the others [in the Nashville Kurdish community].

The Tennessean reporters noted today that Grindstaff's prejudiced commentary was discovered by bloggers. I posted about the targeting of Kurds on WilliamsonTNGOP.com on Monday after finding it on a perusal of the Republican website. It was subsequently picked up by News 2 (thanks Christian Grantham and Tiani Jones) and given more publicity. Here is News 2's exlusive report from Wednesday:

Grind House: Williamson Co. GOP Scrubs Kurd-Hating Commentary off Their Website

Author of the GOP commentary that attributed blame for robberies and drug deals to 8,000 Kurds in Nashville and Director of the Williamson Co. GOP Doug Grindstaff has scrubbed his commentary from the party website as of this evening. I saw it up on their website as late as early this afternoon before a Tennessean story ran on the commentary and the critical Kurdish response that it drew.

Doug Grindstaff told the Tennessean that there was nothing wrong with writing that 8,000 Kurds are to be blamed for robberies and drug deals, but that his comments were going to be removed at the end of this week anyway because they were "old." It's a curiosity that Williamson Co. GOP weeks end on Thursdays.

Nonetheless, the Tennessee's premier red county may have washed it's "big tent" slate in real time, but the prejudice will live on here in the form of a self-indicting glimpse into a Republican caught candid and authentic:


It couldn't have been worse if he had shouted, "We hate Kurds! We hate Kurds!" And still no indication from the state GOP Chair Robin Smith on whether they support Chairman Grindstaff's cultural sentiments. They do have a lock on the culture war, after all.

All You Ever Wanted to Know about Music City (Except for Proper Attribution to Local Blogs)

I constantly link the Tennessean whenever I post news that comes from their site. But they may not be too interested in returning the favor.

From their visits registered on my statcounter I could deduce what prompted their version of the story of prejudice at WilliamsonTNGOP. So, couldn't they have at least mentioned that this story was discovered by bloggers? The details have been sitting on a political website for two months and they sure as shootin' did not find it themselves, yet the Tennessean writer Harriet Vaughan reports without reference to any other source. You could almost believe that she scooped it herself.

And then there is "Nashvillest" a local journalism blog that claims that it encompasses "everything you want to know about Music City," including where to go to vote for them for Nashville Scene's Best Local Blog. Christy Frink and Morgan Levy, who run Nashvillest, conveyed the WilliamsonTNGOP story and linked News 2. No big deal. Right? I mean at least they're linking and not acting like they broke the story. Coverage and publicity of the story with some attribution is a merit unto itself. No worries.

EXCEPT, that they bothered to also link my Enclave screen shot of the WilliamsonTNGOP website showing Grindstaff's picture and his reference to 8,000 Kurds. That tells me two things. One is that they knew I got to this story on Monday, well before the mainstream media, and still they refused proper attribution alongside News 2. There is no indication on the webpage holder of the screenshot that it was published on Enclave; you can't get to Enclave from the page holder itself. The other thing it tells me is that they did not have the same regard for me that they show others who take shots and get credit at Nashvillest. In fact, they even attributed a photograph in the same post on WilliamsonTNGOP to the source. What is up with that?

These writers may be technically ethical in linking and writing without proper attribution, but to do so is at least bad form. And Nashvillest has another thing coming if they think that this local blogger would ever collude in their shameless self-promotion. There's just something twisted about writing a blog and failing to link bloggers that makes calling yourself "Nashville's Best Local Blog" arbitrary and caprious. But I'm sure that they've Twittered their friends enough to put them over the top.


UPDATE:  The Nashvillest editors reply:

When we're rounding up stories for our morning posts, we do our best to link our readers to the original source. When we saw the Kurdish story pop up from WKRN on our RSS reader, we tried finding the original article on the GOP site to link but couldn't find it. Figuring they'd already scrubbed it, we did a quick Google search and found the screen shot. We were running behind (we have full-time jobs and are usually writing 6-7 posts per day before work or over lunch breaks) and didn't think to throw in a credit. We're still new at this and we definitely make mistakes. For what it's worth, we've added the credit and apologize for the confusion it caused. In the few months that we've been running the blog, we've had a couple of stories ripped off by local publications and not credited and we know it sucks. It's never our intention to do it to other bloggers. If you poke around the site a bit, you'll see that we're all about attribution whether it's a blog post, a story, a picture, or a tip. We're also huge supporters of the local blogging community, as all of our readers well know.

That said, we feel like your response was as unnecessary as it was unwarranted. We made a mistake that could have easily been remedied in a professional manner had you emailed us or left us a comment rather than publicly accusing us of maliciously taking material and refusing to credit the source. And to publish an entire post suggesting that we run our site on stolen material before bothering to contact us is bad form on your part. 

And with regards to the "shameless self-promotion" accusation, we're part of a community. We ask for support in Best of Nashville because we're proud of what we do and we want to share it and grow it. We're also proud of our friends, and that's why we ask our readers in the same post to support them too. We also feel like the Scene has a great thing going with this contest each year and are happy to send as much traffic their way as we can.

As long-time readers and fans of Enclave, we apologize for the oversight, but are honestly pretty shocked at the lack of professionalism in this post. We do our best to keep it friendly around here, but things like this need to be addressed.

Best regards,

Christy Frink
Editor & Cofounder
nashvillest.com

Tennessean Covers Williamson County GOP Hatred Toward Kurds; Gets Comment from GOP Chair

Early today my statcounter told me that someone at Gannett/Tennessean was bouncing between the News 2 story and my blog post on the GOP's latest prejudiced actions against local immigrant communities, so I figured that we would see something on it from the publication soon.

Sure enough this afternoon they followed up on the News 2 piece. Their story came with comments from the author of the statement that 8,000 Kurdish Nashvillians were responsible for robberies and drug deals. It the same WilliamTNGOP official who appears in a video on the same site claiming that they are a "big tent" party accepting of diverse cultures. He is Doug Grindstaff, Chairman of the party’s Williamson County chapter.

His response to the Tennessean are nearly as eyebrow raising as his commentary about Nashville's Kurdish community and crime:

Grindstaff says his words were taken out of context.

“The piece is not about the Kurds but it’s about the fact that he media refused to carry the gang issue. It’s an outrage that we have this level of gang activity and no one reports it,” said Grindstaff.

Grindstaff adds that he was surprised any one noticed it let alone was offended by it.

Mr. Grindstaff must think we're all stupid and not attuned to prejudice when we hear it. He could only take us for simpletons, hayseeds, and dolts. After all, he is the person who wrote:

There are 8,000 Kurdish immigrants living here in Nashville trying to repay our hospitality by robbing us and dealing drugs.

How is that even remotely addressed to the media? It's just prejudiced red meat that plays to those who hate non-Christian immigrants. But, seriously, how much does a bloody red county like Williamson County need to be whipped up to put it into the Republican column? He couldn't have been Kurd-hating for strategic reasons. Perhaps he and the GOP are as anti-Kurd as his awful commentary suggests. Why the hell didn't any Williamson county or Tennessee state party members complain?

When you hate a group of people that much because of their culture, maybe you don't deserve to hold any reigns of power.

Video Report of Williamson County GOP Racist "Outrage" against Kurds by News 2

Here's the WKRN interview with Isa Tayip of Tennessee Kurdish Community Council. Reporter Tiani Jones tried to reach Williamson County GOP without response. Mr. Tayip warns the GOP that many Kurdish immigrants are citizens who can vote:

The priceless part of Jones' report is when she plays the website recording of the head of the GOP who claims that they are a "big tent" organization that includes people of diverse religions and races. The Williamson County Republicans. Yeah, sure. Their diversity tent is likely huge, if dog houses can be huge.

Here is my original blog post on the story from Monday. Please post and share the video (to get embedding code, click on the envelope icon in the bottom bar and then click on the "grab" button), especially with immigrant communities in Tennessee to keep them informed about Republican Party prejudice and hatred that may be directed their way.


UPDATE: Thanks to Christian Grantham at News 2 for generously linking my post as the "original blog report" on the text version of their story.

News of Williamson Co. GOP's Racism Hits Mainsteam Media; Blogs Get Some Credit

News 2's first story tonight on the 10:00 broadcast was on the Williamson County Republican website's racist references to the Davidson County/Metro Nashville Kurdish community. It seems that WilliamsonTNGOP blamed every single Nashville Kurd for robberies and drug deals.

News 2 interviewed a Kurdish community leader outraged by the Republican Party's prejudice, and he said that they are working on a petition to send to the red county's GOP in protest. News 2 also credited unnamed blogs with breaking the story. Whenever WKRN posts a link or video, I'll pass it along. It is gratifying to see the media finally aiming its probes at smug Williamson County Republicans.

It would also be nice if the state head of the GOP stopped trying to defend Jesus (I'm sure he doesn't need her help) and motivated WilliamsonTNGOP to stop smearing Nashville's ethnic and immigrant communities.





UPDATE: News 2 video of Tiana Jones' report on this story posted here.

Where Was the Push for "English Only" Amongst the Praise for Purple Fingers?

Above: Sample ballot used in Iraqi National Election held in Nashville (which has one of the largest Kurdish populations in the US) in January 2005. Clearly not printed in English for foreigners who should learn our language if they are going to live here, it must have been generated and distributed by politically-correct, liberal elites at English-tongued taxpayer expense. Or perhaps Kurds are simply not as threatening to monolinguistic proponents as are Mexicans.

HT: R. Neal

English First Only Bill Passes Council

The vote was 21-10. It was pointed out in the debate that there is no enforcement mechanism for requiring Metro meetings and office business to be conducted in English beyond the Charter's standard $50 fine for violating a Metro ordinance. Council member Michael Craddock said that the English Only resolution was not about the law; it was about "making a statement." He also said that he almost never leaves Madison, so he has no need to learn a foreign language. Bill opponent Ginger Hauser expressed her concern that council members whose constiuencies included Hispanic or Kurdish populations might feel inhibited in communicating with their constuents as they saw fit for fear of appearing to violate a Metro ordinance.

Do Kurds Engender the Same Local Conservative Backlash That Hispanics Do?

The Mexican Border has become a symbol in Nashville's political life because it is a lightning rod for many on the right who claim to have a problem with speaking Spanish and harboring illegal Mexican aliens. But Council Member David Briley pointed out to me at lunch the other day that, because of INS policy, large numbers of Kurds have relocated to Nashville. This morning's City Paper brings word of violence involving Kurdish gangs (but whom is NCP reporter Jared Allen assuming are the traditional gangs? The Jets and the Sharks? Cue music: "When you're a Jet you're a top cat in town ...").

Yet, I have not seen any political ads with candidates walking a Kurdistan border and telling us that these immigrants bring gang violence to our shores as they tell of Mexicans. What are the chances that we will see an anti-Kurd backlash rivaling the anti-Mexican one in Middle Tennessee?