Right Wing Radio Blowhole Mocks High School Student Running Against Paladino

Rightie Radio Blowhole Sandy Beach Claims He Was Not a Wimp in School 

The other day someone made the point that in any other city a high school Senior running for a seat on the Board of Education would surely enjoy a little sympathetic "David vs Goliath" media attention. And when you consider Austin Harig the Hutch Tech 12th grader is running against a millionaire developer with resources, connections and a self financed run for governor under his belt you almost wonder if the David and Goliath metaphor is sufficient to express the disparity between Paladino's heavy clout and the home printed signs fresh from someone's desktop that can be seen tacked on porches on Austin's street.

 However you look at it Ausin Harig showed for a debate put on by a local Black Journalist's group but Carl like Dick Cheney during Viet Nam had other things to do. Since then Paladino's campaign manager filed to have Austin's signatures scrutinized in the hope of throwing him off the ballot. No luck. Austin did his homework -- unlike Board President James Sampson, DPCC officer Patricia Elliott and Carl's handpicked choice for the East District Colleen Russell, who were all three tossed from the ballot for having ineligible signatures. For all of the time guys like Carl and Sampson spend screeching about failing schools it's pretty amusing that a kid from a Buffalo School is schooling them on how to take care of business in a Board of Education election. 

As I've noted previously, The Buffalo News didn't think to describe a millionaire Buffalo developer with close ties to Donald Trump as "powerful." Nor did they trot out the word "powerful" to describe recently ballot booted Board President James Sampson even if he was the chair of the Fiscal Stability Commission, the CEO of Gateway Longview -- a position in which he was chastised for splurging with taxpayer funds on fresh flowers and social clubs as well as handing no bid contracts to cronies -- and he's a Trustee of West Buffalo Charter School. Nope, neither Jimbo nor Carl earned the News label "powerful." NYSUT was the only entity deemed worthy of that description and it was used in the headline as well as the lead paragraph an inch below. So much for that simpatico media attention... 

Sunday on  local Trump media arm --WBEN Radio -- Carl Paladino was being interviewed by professor Kevin Hardwick about his involvement in the Trump campaign. In the middle of the interview  candidate Austin Harig called to challenge Paladino to an on the spot debate. I guess not everyone's as interested in hearing Carl extoll the virtues of the Trump campaign as Carl is. So they traded a few pleasantries and went about their business. I am not sure it exactly fits the bill of what I referred to earlier as sympathetic media attention but I think Austin calling to interrupt Carl's Trump spiel has a nice David Goliath angle to it. Kind of a "Little Brother is Watching" theme.

Early this afternoon I was messaged and told to listen to the first hour of Sandy Beach's show this morning by a friend who'd heard the whole thing. When I asked why I should punish myself thusly I was advised that about the 11:20 mark of the first hour I would hear the aging, doughy host say  -- in referring to how tough he and his buddies in "radio school" were -- 

"We weren't like the wimps they have now... "Oh Missster Paladino, I'm jussst pro-sssstudent...  Oh please..." 

The elongated sibilance, of course, is intended to imply a feminized voice at very least and in the case of this radio host and this station I'd nudge it a little further to say he was really aping a gay man's voice just to show what a hateful angry old white man he really is. And in classical dog whistleese, the way bigots and racists communicate with each other, the host avoided naming the person he was belittling or feminizing or whatever it was he was doing. But to use that hissy/lispy stereotypical voice in a comment directed at Carl Paladino leaves nobody wondering who the host is ridiculing. 

Very classy stuff from a senior citizen with the backing of a nationally ranked right wing talk show to take a run at the masculinity and manliness of an 18 year old who's dared to challenge a guy that blew through ten million of his shits and chuckles fund on a failed run against Andrew Cuomo for Governor. And lest I forget, when Austin called Paladino out for ducking the debate, Carl's response was about as contemptuous as Sandy Beach's impression: "I've got better things to do than debate you," Carl snarled. People like Sandy Beach and Carl Paladino  think they know what's best for the Buffalo Schools. They couldn't be any more wrong if they tried. 

You can fast fwd to about 11:15 and listen for yourself HERE or thank me for listening do you didn't have to.