Red Bank Mayor Pat Menna, wearing a pre-COVID mask, and Red Bank activist and Board of Education member Sue Viscomi. photo via Viscomi’s facebook page
By Tommy DeSeno
“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by
those who hear it.” – William James
A regrettable development in American culture is that racism
is being obscured by false claims of racism.
Both destroy their targets.
If a racist is one of the worst things a person can be, then
falsely claiming someone is a racist is one of the worst things you can do to a
person. We are in a current whirlwind of
Cancel Culture and instant ostracization by social media. Those who are
careless labeling others as racist can easily ruin the life of someone who had
been careful not to be one. No one should have such power over the reputation
of others, but in these odd times where the Internet is forever, everyone does.
I dare not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron. Shakespeare, Henry V, II:1
The Star Ledger is running a story about the fate of Tillie (I’d
add a puke emoji after saying his name if I knew how).
If you can’t get past the paywall, the Star Ledger story is
about the non-art cartoon mural of a psycho named Tillie that was once on the outside
wall of the old Palace Amusements, knocked down long ago.
We’ve met a few times.
Not in any way you’d remember.
Just a fan running into you at Asbury’s bars. I have a picture of us meeting at The Jeffersonin
Asbury in the early 80’s. I was a
teenager working the boardwalk and racing Asbury’s “Circuit” in the 70’s. One of the kids “huddled on the beach in the
mist,” if you will.
“I do not intend to prejudge the past.” – William
Whitelaw
There’s a right way to do an Indigenous People’s Day and a
wrong way. Leave it to today’s Asbury
Park to choose a bigoted way.
The right way to do Indigenous People’s Day is to host a
celebration of them, where all their cultural markers are observed.
The wrong way is to spend most of the event haranguing
Italian Americans for celebrating Columbus, which is what the Asbury Park event
turned out to be. What low self-esteem
Native Americans must have if all they can muster at a celebration of
themselves is a complaint about other people. That’s who you are? A complainant? That’s how you define yourselves?
Thomas DeSeno, an attorney from Asbury Park and frequent MMM contributor, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to buy safety vest for Asbury Park Press reporters.
DeSeno seeded the $200 campaign with a $20 contribution.
Asbury Park, NJ, USA – March 5, 2020: Madam Marie’s fortune telling booth on the boardwalk
By Thomas DeSeno
A review
of the pleadings filed on Friday in State v Mayor John Moor and Asbury Park,
docket number C-56-20, shows that Governor Murphy filed a complaint against the
City and sought an emergent preliminary injunction. The purpose was to restrain Asbury Park from
enforcing their resolution of last Wednesday, where they tried to allow Asbury
Park restaurants to conduct indoor dining.
People
waiting to read the pleadings to finally see the “data that drives the dates”
as Murphy likes to put it, were greatly disappointed. There was no scientific material attached to
the pleadings.
Revolution is delightful in the preliminary stages. – Aldous Huxley
Tom DeSeno
By Tom DeSeno
Asbury Park feels like we are dancing on a volcano.
An Asbury Parker named Felicia Simmons is running a rally on
Monday, at 5 pm, on the sidewalk in front of the Post office. At this writing, 3,000 people on the event
page are either going (1,023) or interested in going (1,947).
I justify the cause.
George Floyd suffered the only thing worse than death; he was tortured
first. Face down in the gutter, knee on his carotid artery, knowing he was
dying and begging for a life endowed by his creator especially for him, for
which no one had the right to take or make him beg. He died terrified. It didn’t last 9 minutes.
It lasted George’s forever.
Photo by Kevin Sanders courtesy of New Jersey Globe
Senator Vin Gopal (D-11) submitted the following response to Tom DeSeno’s column criticizing his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Senator Vin Gopal
I appreciate Tommy DeSeno more than he knows.
I know we disagree on a lot, but I firmly believe that if we hadn’t implemented aggressive social distancing measures over the past 2 months, we could have 80,000 deaths instead of the 10,000 horrific deaths that we’ve seen in New Jersey. That’s not my opinion: That’s according to every public health report–including the President’s.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
before a fall. – Proverbs, 16:18
By Tom DeSeno
I thought the award for worst political reaction to Covid-19
was going to be Senator Vin Gopal’s support of a bill to put people in jail for
a year who violate the lockdown order of our Governor, Prince Philip of Goldman
Sachs. Proving my old contention that
Democrats list toward Fascism when given power, it speaks little of Gopal that
his response to someone looking for work to feed their
family was to jail them.
