Erwin vs. Mueller

The Sacramento Bee takes a stand for good journalism

Between CNN’s Isaacson and his pathetic efforts to suck up to the far right, and the spectacle of the corporate media steadfastly ignoring Putsch’s isolationist and "feed the rich" policies, it’s easy to forget that there are still people in American journalism who want to be fair, accurate, and informative, and who aren’t afraid to expose some of the vileness that lies behind the new political order. Diana Griego Erwin and the Sacramento Bee have shown such qualities this month, and while the story they uncovered was hardly earth-shattering and will attract little attention outside of northern California, it does show a type of journalism rarely seen any more.

Diana Griego Erwin joined the Sacramento Bee in 1993, at a time when, according to the Bee blurb about her on its webpage, she had already won "national and regional reporting and writing awards, including the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service Journalism." Since then, she has been named California's top columnist four times.

I didn’t know any of that. I just knew that she was an interesting and informative writer, and that the local right wing had taken an instant hatred to her. The Bee has a group of letter writers who never got over the fact that the old, ultra-conservative Sacramento Union went belly up, and want the Sacramento Bee to become a mirror image of the old Union, presumably so it, too, can go belly up. This group greeted the new columnist, condemning her as a "big-haired liberal" like Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower, neither of whom have big hair. There were vague hints that her ethnic background might impede her ability to report accurately on conservatives.

Sacramento as a whole gave the letter writers the respect they deserved and made Erwin one of the most popular writers of the newspaper.

Another character in this story is Walter F. Mueller, a Austrian-American who is a regular presence in The Sacramento Bee’s letters to the editor column, and who has a perspective on the news that can be most charitably described as "far right." Mueller has written in condemning American and British "atrocities" against Germany during World War 2, and often ascribes various California social and political problems–real and imaginary–to a large influx of immigrants, particularly "illegal" immigrants. In one letter in the past year, he referred to the "supposed" death camps in Nazi Germany.

Mueller is chairman of the Northern California Council of Conservative Citizens, which is a regional branch of a national organization most conspicuous in the old South. Descended from the old White Citizen’s Councils which sought to put a respectable face on segregation and white supremacy, the Council of Conservative Citizens has some 18 congressmen as members, almost all Republican and all from the south, and had Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott as a "contributing editor" to their newsletter for several years in the 1980s.

Erwin thought that one of the Council of Conservative Citizens meetings might make for a good column, and it turned out she was right. The guest speaker was one Harvey Taylor, a holocaust denier. Also in attendance were representatives from the National Alliance.

The National Alliance are Nazis. Founded by "Dr." William Pierce, they are a direct spin-off from the old American Nazi Party, and they see themselves as carrying on the dream of Adolf Hitler to purify the white race and prevent Jews and blacks from degrading "our" culture.

 For a while, they were a major presence on the internet, flooding mailboxes and newsgroups with long strange tracts from their subsidiary groups, National Vanguard and American Dissident Voices. For those of us so targeted, this meant screeds of 5,000 words or more, explaining how Biblical Israelites had nothing at all to do with the "jews" that "infest" the world today, greedy and grasping and hook-beaked. Usually the pieces were written by the anti-Semitic bigot who founded the group, William Pierce. Parenthetically, he also published The Turner Diaries, a book about the ‘coming race war’ which supposedly served Tim McVeigh as a blueprint for blowing up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Their propaganda on the net back five years ago became so pervasive and overwhelming – thousands of long polemics every month – that we formed a movement in which everyone would make a small donation to a worthy cause that the NatVan people would hate each time one of their posts appeared: NAACP, Jewish Defense League, Special Olympics, ACLU. It worked; they went away.

These are not nice people. They are racists, and some, left to their own devices, would be quite happy to see the "Final solution" reimplemented.

Mueller explained to Erwin that while he didn’t hold with "that other stuff" (presumably genocide and hatred) he felt the group would benefit from the National Alliance take on "Euro-American rights" and the preservation of Euro-American culture. This is like inviting Pol Pot in to share his thoughts on leaving the city to enjoy "the country experience."

Writing about the meeting for an August 2^nd, 2001 column, Erwin pulled no punches. "Nationally, [The Council of Conservative Citizens] has been called a white supremacist, racist, anti_Semitic hate group, labels that sound pretty scary," she wrote, concluding with a quote from one of two protesters who stood vigil outside the meeting room: "I don't want groups like this becoming too comfortable," he says. "What if they think no one cares?"

Mueller wasn’t pleased with the attention. Oddly enough, he didn’t mind that Erwin called his group "white supremacist, racist, anti-Semitic" or a hate group. He didn’t mind much that she dwelled on the vile neo-Nazi spew uttered by the National Alliance representative. No, what upset him was a remark by Erwin that Mueller "once faxed everyone in town cheering the news that Mayor Joe Serna Jr. had cancer" in 1999. Serna, the first Hispanic mayor of Sacramento and a widely liked politician, subsequently died of that cancer several months later.

Mueller wrote a letter to the editor about it, which appeared  in the Sacramento Bee letters section on August 11^th. "Re: meeting offers potluck, U.S. flags, and a whiff of white supremacy," Aug. 2: if The Bee’s columnist Diana Griego Erwin has proof that I faxed to anyone in town, cheering the news that Mayor Joe Serna Jr. had cancer, I demand that The Bee print it. Of course, that is not possible, because I never wrote such a fax." 

The Bee wrote in italics beneath Mueller’s letter,

Editor’s Note– In a letter to the editor responding to The Bee’s story "Serna won’t run, cancer back," (June 25, 1999, Walter F. Mueller wrote: "Hallelujah! That’s the best news I’ve read in months in The Bee! And cut out the whining attitude because Serna has cancer. Who cares? A handful of Mexicans? I for one say that finally, it’s his turn to suffer."

The Bee decided that this probably wasn’t enough, and in an unprecedented move, ran an editorial about the letter in the adjoining "Our Views" Editorial column.

The Bee concluded:

The Bee included an image of Mueller’s letter.

For Erwin to attend that meeting and report on what she saw took courage. Certainly, she knew the nature of Mueller, and probably knew what lay behind the blow-dried and cheerful creatures from the National Alliance.

For the Bee to back her, as completely and openly as they did, also took courage. In a town that has seen synagogues bombed and burned, and that is in a part of the country that encompasses the White Christian militia and was home to Tom Metzger, they understand the risks inherent in confronting this vileness.

At a time when far too much of our media are content to "report" on handouts from groups like the Council – indeed, are designed to report such sources as legitimate news, and when what’s left of the mainstream press often goes along to get along, constrained by the desires of the corporate owners, the stockholders, and the sponsors, it’s refreshing to see a case of actual, honest reporting, and some editorial courage.

It wasn’t an earth-shaking story, and Mueller didn’t exactly make himself a difficult target. It probably won’t result in another Pulitzer for Erwin, or any Journalist Awards for The Bee. But it was a reminder of what the First Amendment and Bill of Rights is really all about. Mueller and the National Alliance are free to present their views. But the press is free to report those views, provided they do so accurately and fairly. The Bee, and Erwin, were both accurate and fair.

I doubt Mueller saw it that way. Tough. ". . .it’s his turn to suffer."