Bastrop activist apologizes for using alt-right meme in anti-Adler ad
I mean, what the fuck
A Bastrop-based petition mercenary on Monday lost the financial backing of an international race track mogul after she used a well-known alt-right symbol in a video attacking Austin’s Jewish mayor just days after an antisemitic lunatic murdered eleven people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Which is really something!
The surprise cameo by Pepe the Frog in IndyAustin’s video railing against Adler over Council-approved negotiations with Precourt Sports Ventures to build a major league flopball stadium in North Austin was an innocent mistake, according to the political action committee run by activist Linda Curtis. The mistake, it seems, inadvertently came from the group’s incredibly low-budget attempt to equate the stadium deal to some sort of shell game.
“We honestly thought it was a cartoon of a pea smoking a cigar — taken from an video online — not ours,” the group claimed in a blog post that is now, oh my god, an immortal addition to the annals of Austin’s political history.
Unsurprisingly, the group’s half-hearted apology was not enough to dissuade Circuit of the Americas chairman Bobby Epstein from yanking his deep-pocketed support for IndyAustin’s efforts to put the potential stadium deal before voters next May.
“I and everyone associated with COTA vehemently and unequivocally oppose the use of any and all hate speech against any person, group, or belief and will not tolerate this attack, whether it was intentional or unintentional,” Epstein said on Monday.
If the reader feels the distinct pain of whiplash, that’s because Epstein as late as Friday was hailing IndyAustin’s petition campaign as a step towards democracy and transparency.
“Austin cannot keep giving special deals to out-of-town businesses with no connection to the community, while local businesses and homeowners struggle to afford to be here,” declared the man who lives in unincorporated Travis County and also runs a race track that benefits from public subsidies, attracts ludicrously wealthy spectators from across the globe, has skirted millions in property taxes, and will soon play host to a bush league soccer team that will be justifiably overshadowed by any squad ultimately fielded by Precourt Sports Ventures.
Whether one believes the inclusion of the racist frog was a matter of deliberate antisemitism or, as Curtis claims, gross incompetence, the obvious risks of hitching any political wagons to her star should have been obvious from the get-go. Throughout her decades of activism, Curtis has been linked to an alleged cult leader, a New York activist marred by antisemitic statements, and a bizarre affinity for Ross Perot’s Reform Party (the same outfit that nominated for president noted racist shitbag Pat Buchanan). Her YouTube profile also features a video blasting former Travis County judge candidate Andy Brown for “taking campaign contributions from Formula 1 racetrack boosters.”
Despite all of that, COTA — the Formula 1 racetrack! — has already donated $24,000 to IndyAustin, money that Curtis had previously pledged to dedicate exclusively to her work on the stadium referendum. Meanwhile, she has turned her PAC’s immediate efforts to cranking out little-watched YouTube videos attacking Adler and supporting Proposition J, a convoluted referendum that would effectively hobble any progressive reforms to Austin’s three-decade-old, car-oriented, climate-killing, low-density land development code.
The primary proponent of Prop J, Attorney Fred Lewis, also sought to distance himself from Curtis’ Pepe-posting indiscretion on Monday. In an emailed statement, he pointed out that he himself is Jewish and had relatives who died in the Holocaust. And despite his alliance with IndyAustin earlier this year to get Prop J on the ballot, Lewis claimed that his PAC, Let Us Vote Austin, is not involved with Curtis’ current petitioning efforts.
“Those who are attempting to draw a connection between IndyAustin and Let Us Vote Austin’s Prop J campaign are exploiting the very real problem of anti-semitism for their own political purposes, and they’re doing so at a time of national mourning,” Lewis insisted. “They should be ashamed.”
Meanwhile, Curtis’ targeting of Adler, along with her unapologetic pocketing of money from multimillion-dollar concerns such as COTA and billboard maven Billy Reagan, seemed to have finally triggered our famously unruffled mayor. In a full-page ad in last week’s Austin Chronicle, Adler’s campaign flashed its fangs and warned voters to “beware of ‘Indy Austin.’”
Citing two large donations to IndyAustin made by out-of-state COTA associates, the mayor’s ad employs a damning graphic of an under-the-table exchange of a stack of maybe $1 bills and labels the PAC as a “front for special interests.”
Aside from a few cases of late-night meeting grumps, this ad could very well be the first time anything remotely associated with Adler could be classified as pointed. After politely allowing the shrill homeowning conservatives of Central Austin to hijack city staff and scuttle CodeNEXT, it’s hopefully not too little, too late, and should the mayor, as expected, walk to victory next Tuesday in his quest for a second term, we here at The Austin Metropolitan would positively die if he somehow manages to maintain this newfound aggressive swagger (we trust this proposed deal would provide him with extra incentive).
In the meantime, we would like to issue a preemptive apology of our own if our output is noticeably irregular in the coming days. Our editorial board met over the weekend and finally agreed on Monday to endorse going into an alcoholic coma through next Wednesday.
