I try not to speak ill of my elders in journalism and commentary. Generally speaking, I probably defer more to authority than I should; at the very least, I try to recognize when it’s a good and bad time to speak about something, even if I believe the person speaking is fatally wrong.
Terry Simonson will get no such respect from me.
Simonson is a columnist for Urban Tulsa Weekly and former two-time candidate for mayor for said city. He’s also, from the looks of things, very much a member of the Walled Garden Club. In recent columns for Urban Tulsa Weekly, he has seen fit to excoriate efforts to rename the former Brady District on the grounds of “race-baiting” (W. Tate Brady, one of the founders of Tulsa and said district’s namesake, was a Ku Klux Klan member and, separately, orchestrated the tarring-and-feathering of Industrial Workers of the World members), he has complained about local public union efforts to acquire more benefits for the rank and file, and his latest column loudly and proudly proclaims that the Tulsa community shouldn’t care about gang homicides because “it’s gang members killing gang members.”
He writes,
Those deaths are certainly a loss to the families of the fallen gang member, but is it actually a loss to the community? It sounds like good public safety work being done for the police by the gangs.
Hell’s blazes.
There’s more, of course. Like: “Another crime statistic is where someone attempts to break into someone’s home and the property owner defends himself by killing the intruder. Again, another act of wiping out crime and helping the local police. That type of killing shouldn’t be looked upon as a negative.”
And: “Citizens want there to be more visibility of police officers, especially in the neighborhoods. Right or wrong, citizens believe if they see the police then things must be safe and peaceful. That’s one reason why the city allows police officers to take their cars home with them if they live in the Tulsa city limits. A police cruiser in the driveway is seen as a deterrent.”
This is my favorite: “Wiping out gangs is, after all, the focus of local law enforcement, and they can use all the help they can get. If the gangs want to kill each other, we certainly don’t want to stop them. This is a callous, but true, assessment of the situation.”
Simonson was Mayor Dewey Bartlett’s Chief of Staff until 2011, when he resigned after getting caught trying to get his 30-year-old son a job in the Fire Department over everyone else.
After reading through several of his columns, one gets the impression that he fashions himself a rugged individualist, full of Horatio Alger spitfire and ready to tell off anyone who looks like they might be considering suckling off the teat of society. Which is interesting, when you compare that self-image to Tulsa blogger Michael Bates’ description of Simonson’s living situation:
I don’t know where Terry lives these days. When he was married to his first wife, they lived in a gated community across 81st Street from Holland Hall — I was at his home for a fundraiser once — and I suppose if you lived in such surroundings you might believe that you could be insulated from the effects of gang warfare. Stay behind your walls, order everything through amazon.com, and all will be well.
Does Simonson believe that we can establish no-go zones, wall off whole sections of Tulsa, and the savages will destroy each other and leave decent folk alone?
I mean, it’s a valid question.
When The Purge came out, everyone thought that it was what a future under anarchism — at least for 12 hours — would look like: wealthy members of society gathering together in walled compounds while the rest of the population tore itself apart as soon as the state was out of the way.
People like Simonson seem to actively root for that future as a way to eliminate the riff-raff and create his twisted vision of utopia. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s something worth fighting against.