The Civil Rights Act protects everyone, except maybe circus people. Next to race, creed, color, gender, and whatever else is PC these days, does the Act need to include Halloween characters? What are witches in a small town to do? A story for those not wary of slippery slopes from the
Chicago Tribune:
ROSSVILLE, Ill.--Things were already going downhill in this small farming community when the witches arrived.
Area factories had shut down. So had the local high school. A suspicious fire had gutted much of the downtown. The use of methamphetamine was destroying families.
So when a group of Wiccans from out of town moved into a storefront this summer and erected a sign advertising "Witch School," it was only a matter of time before alarm bells sounded and tempers started to boil in this village of 1,200, about 125 miles south of Chicago near the Indiana border.
Sounds like a spooky story, complete with 'alarm bells' and boiling tempers. The culprits? A reporter's favorite boogie-man-cum-whipping-boy: Church folks. What did these benighted dimwits do next? Why they handed out literature! In 2007, in America, that kind of Black Art is still practiced.
This
is getting scary. Better get some pancake makeup for that guy with the pitchfork.
"Remember the Salem witch trials?" resident Adam Marganski said. "That's what is happening here."
After percolating behind the scenes, anger erupted into public action last weekend when several churches canvassed the community with literature blasting the witches and organized a meeting to plan further steps.
Take a quote from the pastor. Isn't it convenient how the media always conveniently finds an intolerant minister quote when they need them?
"Rossville has fallen on hard times," Thomas said. "The school closed. This is a popular place for meth. We're like, 'Great, now a witch school.' It feels like we're being attacked."
The heroic Director of Witches, or whatever he's calling himself rebutted all this.
Donald Lewis, who serves as CEO of Witch School International, said it was the other way around.
"They're trying to make us scapegoats," he said as he slipped into the meeting unannounced.
The
CEO of Witch Schools International? Who knew they were a franchise deal? Finally, the persecuted witch guy delivers the money quote.
"It was like a lynch mob," Lewis said.
Except there wasn't any mob.
And no one got lynched.
Just exactly like a lynch mob, almost. Next, expect some enterprising trial attorney, looking to make a reputation by suing the townspeople in the name of the poor downtrodden witches. Then another small town will get awakened about how things really work in 2007 rural America.
With the Internet, satellite radio, cable TV and modern transportation, Small Town America is slowly slipping away. The witch story is not the harbinger, just a reminder, of that change.
The witches, in pursuit of a warmer welcome, moved several times before settling on Rossdale. Alas, things are no better there: they still remain a bunch of witches in a small town.
The witches had moved to Rossville in the first place, to escape the headaches of the city. But to many of the residents of this small community, a coven of witches
is one of the headaches of the city.
Their feeling are: The EEOC can go to hell on this one.
by Mondoreb & Little Baby Ginn
[image:corvusrecords]
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