Sheriff Dupnik is right about Arizona

[Joanne98]

San Diego, California (CNN) -- Arizona is broken.

In the wake of the shooting of a congresswoman and 19 other people, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told the news media Saturday that he blamed "the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business."

"The bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous," he said. "And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Bingo. Take it from me. I lived in Phoenix in the late 1990s while writing for The Arizona Republic. Dupnik got it exactly right.

Raise your hand if you have had it with the drama capital of America, which seems to spend more time on the front page than the other 49 states combined. Or if you think the Grand Canyon State has become, in recent years, more trouble than it's worth. Or if you feel like saying, to paraphrase what folk singer Phil Ochs said about Mississippi in the 1960s: "Here's to the people you've torn out the heart of. Arizona, find yourself another country to be part of."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/09/navarrette.arizona/?hpt=C2

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Sheriff Dupnik seems to know what's going on and isn't afraid to say so.

I hope he keeps talking.

[lapfog_1]

2. I lived in Arizona for the last 3 years previous to 2010.

I have moved back to California in March of last year.

As I drove my car across the border at Blythe... I screamed at the top of my lungs for joy.

Previous to my moving to Arizona 3 years before, I have been a frequent visitor since my sister moved there with her then husband (the ER doc) in 1973. I loved Arizona, thought seriously about attending the UofA in Tucson, spent my summers hiking the Catalinas north of Tucson. My family has deep ties to the state. My great great great grandfather is known as the "father of Arizona". There is a town there that has my family name.

But I was never so happy to get the hell away from there last March. The hatred from the gun toting tea bag idiots was palpable. My car (when I first moved there after living almost 20 years in California) was routinely honked at and I was spit at simply because I had California plates.

I was at the "Congress on your corner" event with Gabrielle Giffords (my congresswoman) in Douglas the summer before I moved away, the one where the tea baggers were bussed in and many of them came armed to the teeth (to a Safeway store). The one that made the news because of a gun that hit the floor when it fell out of a tea baggers pants pocket.

I'll never move back. If it wasn't for my niece there, I'd never go back. I've never hated a place in the United States like I hated my last 3 years in Arizona.

I love the desert, but the people there have become so hateful that I don't recognize humanity there anymore.

[snort]

3. You've nailed it.

I'm getting out of here in a couple of months. That family name thing, mine would be Greer. I know exactly how you feel.

[classysassy]

4. The Sheriff and the facts

I have lived in Arizona for over 43 years,the sheriff nailed it,told it like it is in this state controlled by insane republicans.