GUS ALZONA responds to the Washington Post's Deputy Editor, Colbert I. King

The bottom line is that, since Gus Alzona distributed that particular ANTI-nazi flier, conceived by the Tyranny Response Team back in the spring of 2002, not one single gun control bill has been passed into law by the Maryland legislature!

"Springtime for Colby"
a political satire,
and why Alzona's critics just don't get it.

Gus Alzona's informal responses to the March 23, 2002 smear piece written by the Washington Post's columnist and Editorial Board Deputy Editor, Colby King, are inserted (in red) within context below:
Trivializing Mass Murder

(Ohhhh, puhleeeeeze, spare us the hyperbole, Colbert)

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A21

Augustus Alzona of Montgomery County, a prominent figure in the news as of late, is a political wannabe who won't take no for an answer. It was, for instance, Gus Alzona's desire to become a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1994. Voters in the county's District 16, however, taking the dimmest view of his candidacy, placed him last in a field of six.

Despite being from the minority party, in the "whitest" legislative district in Montgomery County (LD 16), Gus Alzona's vote results were just over 1%  less than the two white male candidates ahead of him.  Colbert conveniently left out the fact that the top three (who won) in that field of six were all Democrats in a heavily Democrat area. During the 2002 elections in a neighboring (much more Republican) District 15, current Maryland Secretary of State, Mary Kane, also placed last in a field of six, despite her having been endorsed by the Washington Post!

Undeterred, Alzona, a self-described conservative, presented himself four years later as a candidate for the Maryland state Senate. Brian Frosh, his Democratic opponent, easily dispatched him by a 2-1 margin.

A truly loyal person by nature, Gus Alzona again served as a "sacrificial lamb" for the GOP by forcing the Democrat establishment to spend money to defend seats like this one which they normally take for granted. Back then, freshman Senator Frosh outspent Alzona by more than 10 to 1 in order to retain that seat. Nonetheless,Alzona sacrificed his time, money and personal reputation in order to stand up for his Party, as well as his core beliefs and values.

Thinking that voters might have gotten it wrong, Alzona gave them a chance to redeem themselves in 2000 by running for an at-large seat on the county's board of education. Voters, however, were unrepentant. Although Alzona pursued the school board seat with the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, his fellow residents, unimpressed with the company he was keeping, gave him only 6 percent of the vote.

After having been elected by the voters to a four-year term on the GOP Central Committee (1998-2002), Gus Alzona once again carried the banner for his Party when no other REAL Republican candidates volunteered to run for School Board that year. Gus Alzona, without any support from a declining local party organization, nonetheless finished in the middle of the pack of a field of nine candidates.  Colbert failed to reveal that "his fellow residents" also rejected those candidates endorsed by all the local papers, too!

Failure at electoral politics has not, however, prevented Alzona from rising within his party and elsewhere. Witness his membership on the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee -- where he once served as treasurer. He also holds membership in the Maryland Chapter of the Tyranny Response Team, a pro-gun group whose activism makes the NRA come across like Little Sisters of the Poor. The TRT, in fact, is one of the reasons Alzona is in the news.

During recent gun control hearings in the Maryland General Assembly, Alzona passed out fliers that depicted three Democratic, pro-gun-control state legislators -- Sen. Brian Frosh, Sen. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. and Del. Mark Shriver -- in Nazi uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, or SS: "splendid blond beasts" as the SS was called by its admirers.

Hand-picked members of the so-called "master race," the SS unswervingly carried out orders of Adolf Hitler and their boss SS-Oberfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, who was heard to say in Posen on October 1943: "I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.' "

The administrators of Hitler's concentration camps wore SS uniforms.

Yes, the SS/Nazis were a brutal bunch, especially when it came to enforcing gun control laws, ID checks and other means of controlling the population that totalitarian governments utilize.   Communist governments also utilized brutal methods against minorities and others who posed a "homeland security" threat to their power.

Nonetheless, back to the flier - so when the remake of Mel Brooks' classic Hollywood movie "The Producers" prominently features Nazis in a comedy parody, that's somehow acceptable, while the limited distribution of a funny flier mocking fascism is not?  What about that 70's hit TV series "Hogan's Heroes"?  Was that show "trivializing mass murder", too?

Asked on Thursday why the three Maryland legislators were depicted that way, Alzona told me: "Their [gun control] bill calls for photographing, fingerprinting and licensing of Maryland gun owners." The elite SS, he said, "were the ones who enforced German gun control laws, including the fingerprinting of Germany's gun owners." He added: "That was the point of the flier parody."

Asked about the man cowering in the lower right corner of the picture in striped prisoner garb with a triangle-shaped patch over his left breast pocket, Alzona said he was not meant to look like a Holocaust victim but rather "a communist."

Alzona said legislators at the hearings didn't seem to take offense. "Apparently, one or two Democrats not in the room later saw the flier and decided to make a federal case out of it." Accusing his critics of "taking political correctness too far," Alzona moaned on the phone, "They're trying to crucify me."

Yes, an anti-freedom, anti-gun, anti-free speech mob comprised of certain lobby groups, press, media, Democrats, and even some Republicans were bothopenly andcovertly trying to politically crucify Gus Alzona over this controversy.

Which gets me to the two things that seem most striking about Gus Alzona.

The first is his insensitivity to the real evils of the SS and his single-minded devotion to beating down gun control advocates even if it means trivializing mass murder. The second is the ease with which Alzona, having crossed the line and now finding himself in a tight spot, assumes the mantle of victim. Alzona, of all people, feels picked on. He can't understand why County Executive Doug Duncan has decided to remove him from the county's Committee on Hate Violence. He resents calls by Montgomery County Republican Rep. Connie Morella and Michael Steele, chairman of the state GOP, for his resignation from the Republican Central Committee. Alzona, who says he won't resign, chooses instead to stretch for martyrdom. "I'm just a small fry . . . the kind of person who's totally ignored," he pleaded. Earlier, he told The Post: "I feel like I'm being lynched."

What an abuse of language.

What a twisting of Gus Alzona's words!  Alzona said his critics were "POLITICALLY lynching" him.  Would Colbert have preferred that Alzona feature Duncan, Morella and Steele in a parody flier showing those politicians dancing to Mel Brook's Broadway hit "Springtime for Hitler" instead?  Or better yet, "Springtime for Colby"?  ;-)

Alzona has not been whipped, burned, tortured, dismembered or castrated. No one has pulled his teeth out with pliers, savagely mutilated his body or hanged him from a tree. He's nobody's victim.

Well, well, well, Colbert, now you are insidiously trying to play the "race card" here.  You must have libeled Clarence Thomas just as badly back when, too, right?

A 1970 graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in D.C. and former employee of the city's Martin Luther King Jr. Library and Federal Reserve Board in Washington, Alzona is not now nor has he ever been on the receiving end of a cruel, morbid and barbaric practice such as a lynching.

Of course not, Colbert.  Stating the obvious, out of context, is rather silly of you.

Again, he seeks to trivialize a horror.

So what has Colbert King's obsession about lynching have to do with gun control and Nazis?

Indeed, Alzona and his flier, which accused the three legislators of having "a FINAL Solution" for Maryland's gun owners, are the real sources of pain.

When elected politicians seriously sponsor legislation which calls for the fingerprinting, photographing and numbering of all Maryland gun owners as a "solution" to the "problem of gun violence", they deserved to be parodied like others who have supported gun control over history.

But now that he is in the spotlight, Alzona has elected to throw himself a pity party. Boo-hoo.

Oh, but the man likes to dish it.

Face it Colbert, you can't handle the truth!

A year ago, finding himself contending with Montgomery County women opposed to gun shows, Gus Alzona dismissed them as "misled mom cellulite." Asked why the use of that phrase, he said, "I thought I was being cute."

You've lied again here, Colbert.  As reported by your paper, Gus Alzona actually said "let's cut through the misled (Million) Mom March cellulite" when referring to their fatuous, misleading rhetoric supporting gun control.

An egregious ass is more like it.

So now we resort to name calling, Colbert?  What more could we expect from the "Uncle Tom" Colby of the anti-gun, limousine liberal establishment that you seem to be.

Footnote: Alzona called yesterday afternoon to say: "I am seriously considering offering an apology to those innocent who may have been inadvertently hurt by my alleged lack of sensitivity to Holocaust victims and others who suffered under totalitarian governments. I hope to make my decision early next week."

Ooh, ooh, I can't wait.

Not that your libelous column and smear campaign against him made a difference (it didn't), but, Gus Alzona chose to neither kiss your behind, anyone else's, nor apologize for using a Mel Brooks type anti-Nazi parody as a humorous means to fight against those who would violate our privacy and constitutional rights.

Epilogue:

Neither the (Democrat majority) Montgomery County Council, the Committee on Hate Violence, nor the Republican Central Committee voted to remove Gus Alzona from any of his appointed or elected posts.  After voluntarily not running for reelection to his District 16 Central Committee seat that year, Alzona went on to run for the state's 2nd highest elected office, Comptroller of Maryland.  Though he did not get the state party's nomination to face ex-Governor Schaefer in the general election, Gus Alzona nonetheless received over 42% of the statewide vote in the 2002 Maryland Republican Primary.

Members of the anti-freedom, anti-gun, anti-free speech mob comprised of certain lobby groups, press, media, Democrats, and even some Republicans, who openly or covertly tried to politically crucify Gus Alzona over the years, have experienced public opinion backlash since the spring of 2002.  The Million Mom March organization and other lobby groups that support gun control have failed to get new anti-gun laws enacted in the state of Maryland.  The gun control lobby has been losing its major leaders over the years.  Democrat Delegate Mark Shriver lost his bid for Congress; Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Allen Prettyman, State Senator Jean Roesser and Congresswoman Constance Morella lost their reelection bids.   Democrat Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan recently dropped out of the race for Maryland Governor.

Finally, and most importantly, since this TRT "flier controversy" of the spring of 2002, not one single gun control bill has been passed by the Maryland legislature!