Sundown state

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

If you want a master class is hypocrisy and cynicism — and ever need a handy example for what irony truly is — look at what happened in a series of events in Coeur d’Alene and Boise over the past week or so,

First, on March 21, female basketball players from the Utah Utes had the great misfortune of being lodged in Coeur d’Alene for their NCAA faceoff with Gonzaga because there weren’t enough hotel rooms in Spokane. 

As they were walking to dinner, the driver of a pickup truck displaying a Confederate flag shouted racist slurs at the athletes and reportedly aggressively revved their engine. After dinner, as the players exited the restaurant, the same truck reappeared and was joined by another, and they repeated the same aggressive behavior while actually following them to their hotel.     

Outrage over the incident went nationwide, as both Utah and the UC-Irvine team (which was also staying in Coeur d’Alene) fled the state while shaking their heads in astonishment that they even thought to hazard spending the night in sundown Idaho.

“We should not have been there,” Utah Athletic Director Mark Harlan told KSL.com.

Meanwhile, on March 25, Gov. Brad Little proudly proclaimed in Boise that, “It’s official — Idaho has banned ‘diversity statements’ ACROSS STATE GOVERNMENT!,” as he posted on X, deploying the caps lock in an apparent expression of relief and excitement. (Because apparently asking job or college applicants how they approach diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace or classroom somehow doesn’t demonstrate “merit and hard work.”)

But wait — he had to jump back on X the next morning after the city of Coeur d’Alene tried to wipe some of the egg white off its white hood with a press conference addressing the harassment endured by the Utes, only to have the proceedings interrupted by no less than Dave Reilly, who shouted questions at the mayor and claimed to be a reporter, but refused to identify for what source. 

Yes, that Dave Reilly — the antisemitic troll who the Idaho Freedom Foundation and Kootenai County Republicans tried to bring into the sheets, but turned out to be too odious even for the political cankers they presume to speak for. Also the same Reilly whose wife Branden Durst hired to work for the West Bonner County School District during his brief, absurd and humiliating tenure as superintendent.

So, in response to Coeur d’Alene’s apparent inability to keep extremists out of its own mea culpa, Little dusted off the italics on March 26 to issue a message that Coeur d’Alene “is a welcoming, safe place.” Unless you’re one of the best college athletes in the country and happen to be a female and/or person of color out after dusk — or an LGBTQ+ person (or ally) gathering to celebrate Pride in a public park that’s been targeted by a U-Haul full of racist terrorists, or someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with masses of unaccountable militia members and assorted armed loons prowling the streets looking for imaginary Antifa infiltrators.

Yes, one day after banning “diversity statements,” Little wrote that Idaho, “fully reject[s] racism in all its forms. There is no place for racism, hate or bigotry in the great State of Idaho.”

Sure. Growing up here in the ’90s, I saw Aryan Nations thugs at the Sagle Flea Market and Richard Butler on local TV. I saw the fields along U.S. 95 south of the Long Bridge full of helicopters and other support vehicles for the Ruby Ridge Standoff. I remember in high school when Vincent Bertollini’s 11th Hour Remnant Messenger littered the parking lot with a load of racist propaganda. 

That was all just in the first 20 or so years of my life. I’m 43 now and can say without hesitation that things have not only failed to improve politically or culturally during the interim, but degraded in terrifying ways.

While it’s true that we don’t have people like Butler and Bertollini running around getting in trouble with the law, it’s because people like them went mainstream more than a decade ago and are running the asylum as elected officials, party apparatchiks, fake news purveyors, serial meeting disruptors and armed sidewalk bullies. 

Rather than saying “there is no place for racism, hate or bigotry in the great State of Idaho,” we should say, “there is no one place for racism, hate or bigotry in the great State of Idaho.”

For another take on this topic, read publisher Ben Olson’s “Dumb of the Week” on Page 12.