Shithead Hall of Fame Inductee: Jack Krier

This is a column I’ve been pondering on for quite some time. It doesn’t necessarily need to start off with a bang, but it also needs enough steam to actually facilitate it’s singular presence as a column. Mind you, there are plenty of future shitheads lined up. But I wanted one that I could flex a little, and not seem to being instantly going for the jugular on celebrities, minor comedians, politicians, the usual ilk that spawns these pieces. So with that in mind, I submit the first ever shithead hall of fame inductee: Jack Krier.

Of course, you probably don’t know who this man is so I will enlighten you. He is the publisher of a myriad of small town papers in KS. His major bent is mostly an editorial where he rips off Jeff Foxworthy redneck musings, old timey grandiosity, small town fetish fever dreams, you get the idea. Typically his various papers editorial/opinion pages are packed with up to three of his musings. Aside from the collection essays, are usually two other editorials about the D.C. goings on. I have read letters to the editor wondering why he never writes about local things, seeing as his papers literally swamp most of the state. The answer is “he’s just so focused on the bigger picture”, etc. etc. I have the same question Jack Krier: Why not focus on the local government? Honestly, how many regurgitation's of the hypocritical, fear bating, ignorant, spreading conservative hive mind bog stink do we really need to be bombarded with?

Obviously not enough, it seems. Jack Krier is yet another old white dood with enough money and boredom to instead of going gently in to that night, buys up publishing and writes his saber rattling nightmares, and knows full well he isn’t alone in his ramblings. I get it old man, you’re scared, and you have every right to your ignorance, it’s America dammit! But you do have the responsibility, to my mind, as a publisher of multiple papers, to enlighten and not spread your ignorance as fact. The temerity that you couch your bullshit in the “I’m just saying, you know me: old man, small town Jack” to support your nonsense is even more sickening than your poisonous rhetoric.

Much of my rage isn’t directly at Jack Krier. No, it’s mostly directed at these old white farts who will not rest until they shake every last ounce of pent up bile at the rest of us, and our need to rid ourselves of these roadblocks to progress and time. I respect their elderliness, I respect the time it took for them to foment their ignorance and save enough money to buy themselves a soapbox to prattle from. But I don’t have to listen to you ignore the decades of progress the younger generations are trying to stake out. You older generations kicked the proverbial can, and now want to tell us to fix it. You demand that we have boogiemen to fear and wage war against, and frankly I’ve spent most of my life fearing something or another, and am very, very tired of hiding from a boogieman that isn’t there. Sure, I’ll agree that the threat is very much real, but the amount I let it consume my life and my peers is completely up to us.

You can at least concede that your parents generation thought you were going to ruin the country too, unfortunately for us, you continued the same bullshit they were selling decades before you were given power.

This is the problem with the baby boomers and the old geezers, these generations are such that these old white doods will never let go. There will always be another scared white old man a few years younger, just waiting to tell the other generations what for. We as the current progressive generation need to stop chalking up their xenophobia with culture cuteness, and call them the bigots they are. Just because you live in a small town, doesn’t mean you get to feign ignorance to spread your hate. We need to let them know: “Yes, this is how things are going to be!” and to use some of their verbiage, “If you don’t like it, then you can get the fuck out!”.