So Bill Schmalfeldt is will have some charges dropped (more on that next week, but Mr. Hoge's charges remain in place), but he is still facing a final peace order hearing related to his harassing conduct and I wanted to share
with you a quick vignette about just how dishonest he is about his Parkinson’s.
Now let me start by
clarifying. I do not doubt that he has
Parkinson’s. I have seen him using his walker first hand and I don't entertain for a moment the idea that he is faking that. But what I object to is his using the disease falsely to excuse his
criminal conduct.
He has declared, for instance, on
the radio that because he has Parkinson’s that these charges against him
represent an effort to literally kill him.
There are of course several things wrong with that. First, it assumes that I, Lee Stranahan or John Hoge knew for a
fact that stress can harm the health of a person who suffers from Parkinson’s. There is a wide gulf between knowing a person
has a disease and becoming an expert on it.
I can’t speak for them, but truthfully I don’t know a whole lot about
the condition, except that it can be significantly debilitating. Second, since he has
actually engaged in the conduct complained of, if he has stress endangering his
life, there is no one to blame for it but himself. Seriously, if you have a condition that makes
it dangerous to experience stress—including the stress of being charged with a
crime—why on earth would you crawl in bed with a convicted terrorist and then
issue threats against his enemies and harass them in general? Is that a route to a stress-free life? Next I suppose he will join the Columbia Cartel, for relaxation purposes.
But lying about his condition is
simply despicable and that is apparently exactly what he did in this clip from
his show. In it he is discussing how he
managed to set up an “email intereview” with Lee Stranahan, before Lee
apparently caught on to his dishonesty.
So Lee suggests a phone call and that is where we pick up on his story on his radio program:
And as you can hear, Schmalfeldt explains
that his Parkinson’s makes it very difficult to use the phone... as he
explains, on his radio show.
That is right, he is claiming
that the Parkinson’s makes it very difficult to use a phone while talking on a
radio show. I mean, sometimes disability
accommodation requests are quite counter-intuitive but really? He can talk on his show for well over an hour
at a time with no trouble. So what is
the difficulty in calling Lee? Indeed most
cell phones have the ability to speak on speaker phone built right in if holding it to his ear is an issue, and a
simple headphone and microphone set costs only a few bucks at Target. And voice dialing is available if he has
trouble dialing it by hand. Or he could
just ask Lee to call him, and then pick up the phone. No, try as I might, I can’t see how it could possibly
be the case that a radio talk show host should be unable to do a phone call. Especially given that he often has guests on the show, by phone.
No, folks, Schmalfeldt was lying
to Lee, and I suspect his real purpose was to allow someone else to feed the
questions directly to him in their emailed “interview.”
As a person who suffers from my own
disabilities, there is nothing lower, in my opinion, than a disabled person who
improperly invokes his or her disability to gain favors they are not entitled
to. Indeed, when I was first dealing
with my attorney, Reginald Bours, when Brett Kimberlin attempted to frame mefor a crime and before I knew there was video exonerating me, I said to him
that I did not want him to make any argument of diminished capacity based on my
disabilities. “I don’t want you to argue
that somehow my disabilities make me less culpable or less mentally capable or
anything like that. They don’t have that
effect and I will not slander the millions of people with my disabilities by
having you suggest they do. I would
rather be falsely convicted than acquitted based on my disabilities.” Bours hadn’t even suggested that
argument, but I wanted to be clear in case it occurred to him.
Mind you, every time Mr. Schmalfeldt
comes to court, I would hope that authorities will ensure that he is
accommodated as he will need to be.
If he goes to prison, I hope they would accommodate him there, too. But to pretend to Lee that he can’t talk on
the phone, when plainly he can is simply dishonest. And to come to court and pretend he shouldn’t
be held accountable for his harassment of others just because he is
disabled, is nothing less than despicable.
And the reason why it is
despicable is that it harms every other person with the same disabilities. Over the last few years, for instance, the
race card has been falsely used so many times that it has become a punch line
among conservatives to say something is racist.
Or “raaaaacist” as the joke goes.
And while that is understandable, and indeed I have made that joke
myself, what we risk forgetting is that racism really does exist. My wife has at times been the victim of
racism. Heck, I have been the victim of
anti-Semitism despite not being Jewish, which is not the same as racism, but it is nearly as dumb.
Likewise, disability prejudice
really does exist, and institutions really do fail to accommodate. I have written about that here myself. I would go as far as to say that Mr. Schmalfeldt
has probably faced the sting of discrimination based on his disability, if not
in terms of ordinary discrimination, then in a form of a failure to accommodate
his disabilities. It seems like a good
bet judging by what I know. And every
time he falsely invokes his disabilities, he sets back the cause of the entire
disability movement.
And that is despicable.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
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