December 26, 2018 Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor The Sun Sentinel RE: Sheriff Scott Israel – Some comments on your editorial recommending that he get the chop for cause.

December 26, 2018

Rosemary O’Hara – Editorial Page Editor

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Sheriff Scott Israel – Some comments on your editorial recommending that he get the chop for cause.

Crackling Rosie,

“Fish stink from the head”

As certain as Lee and Jackson and Hill beating the Army of the Potomac like you would beat a rented mule or a red-headed step child was the sight of Lincoln firing his Generals. He stopped, after 3 years, when he found Grant who was unanimously opposed by the DC insiders. Lincoln overrode them when he said, “I need him. He fights.”

Hank Stram. Don McCafferty. Tom Landry. Tom Flores. Mike Ditka. Jimmy Johnson. George Seifert. Brian Billick. And what 2 things do these fine gentlemen have in common? #1 – They won Super Bowls and #2 – They were all fired. As my sainted Mother was wont to say, “Eaten bread is soon forgotten.” Which leads us to Sheriff Scott Israel.

2 things about the not so high Sheriff:

#1 – When he was “running” for Sheriff – and that sounds almost as bad as “running” for Judge – it was revealed that he once was registered as a Republican in the Bronx [Why can you still say the Bronx but it is verboten to say the Ukraine? I don’t know either.] Not quite malum per se since I was twice registered as a Democrat but Broward County is ground zero for modern American Liberalism as witnessed for the write-in vote for Josef Mengele because of his progressive views on 4^th & 5^th trimester abortions and because of the continuing fight for manatee suffrage. Being a Republican is looked on as the same as either a ham sandwich at a B’nai B’rith bowling night or an up close and personal showing of terminal herpes at a Planned Parenthood recruiting event. His answer was disingenuous at best or blivit-laden. “Blivit”? Blivit is when you put 3 pounds of bull shit into a 2-pound bag. He said that there were no Democrats in the Bronx when he was there. There are 3 things worse than saying that.

A – “You couldn’t find sand at the beach.”

B – “You couldn’t fine your ass using both your hands.”

C – “You couldn’t find a Jew in the Bronx.”

I have heard A, B, and C being used in hard-edged but playful badinage in conversations between and among NYCPD officers. “C”, in particular, is not anti-Semitic in the sense that Alice Walker and Linda Sansour are vitriolically, venomously, viciously, and virulently anti-Semitic. And if you don’t believe me, look it up.

#2 is his uniform. One more epaulet or half-assed sash and it will be a photo finish as to whether he is the Colonel of the Praetorian Guard of the Lost Duchess of Ruritania or he is auditioning for the road tour of “The Student Prince” with him being the first alternate to the national company of the Village People.

#2A is that like almost spoilt milk, he is ethically challenged. Not yet like Sheriff Kenneth the Short but he is toes on the line to failing the reliable bag test on whether something is ethical.

And now the rule of de gustibus applies. I don’t like Sheriff Israel for the same reason I don’t like peach ice cream. He is the Doctor Fell of Sheriffs and ice cream. “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell. Why, I cannot tell. But this I know very well; I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.”

But my reasons run deeper than supra.

Dick Oliver was a radio commentator in NYC on 9/11. It was he who said “You can always tell who the heroes are. They are the ones who are running into the burning building.”

My grandfather, Richard Lonergan, Badge #291, was “on the job” with the Jersey City Police Department for 35 years. I like to think that as a living member of something larger than himself, as part of something that took precedent over his family, that he would have run to the sound of gunfire, “that he would have run into the burning building”, when the shooting started on Valentine’s Day last. As such, it was BSO Deputy Peterson’s dereliction of duty, his failure to run into the “burning building”, that led to the continuing slaughter of the innocents on February 14, 2018.

You can’t fire the players. Besides, he quit.

You can fire the coach.

As Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament, “In the name of God, go.”

Leave now and he will retain a smidgen of honor. Stay and he loses it all.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – With my Texas Ladies where it is cold, wet, miserable with thunder and lightning. Thank God for the confirmation of 46,000,000,000 – that’s 46 billion – new barrels of oil, the majority of which is in Texas. That means as hot as you want in the winter and as cold as you want in the summer and polar bears and the Paris Climate Accord be damned. Maybe we’ll send some to Venezuela. If ever a country is “unlucky in life’s lottery” this decade, this century, they are it.