The Racial Profiling of Adam Nick Has Begun

And so the character assassination of Adam Nick begins its second stage. Patch blogger “James Ross,” likely the pseudonym of Mayor Andrew Hamilton, has picked up the torch that had been lit earlier this year by Dwight Robinson, Scott Voigts and Hamilton under the cover of a Political Action Committee that called Lake Forest recall supporters pedophiles and thugs.

Ross’ installment Thursday is wrong on so many counts, including lack of maturity and insight into human nature. Seriously, he’s killing me.

In Ross’ world, and that of “Nick is Nuts, A Committee Opposing the Recall of Mayor Hamilton, Councilmembers Voigts and Robinson 2016,” the phrase “he’s killing me” should be taken literally.

Trying to paint Nick, a Lake Forest city councilman, as a racist is preposterous. Nick is an immigrant to this country. He grew up in a culture of violence in the streets. He was a political prisoner for nearly a year while still a teenager. And yet he managed to come to America, and 32 years to the day of his daring escape from his native country, he received more votes than any other candidate seeking the same office on the City Council.

Based on the 2012 election results in which Nick was the top vote-getter, one might think that Nick’s ideas to clean up City Hall resonated with voters; too bad the rest of the City Council didn’t take notice. Nick, not a politician at all, entered the position in good faith and brought a solution before the Council for every promise he made to voters. Robinson, who is far more polished speaking in front of people and also seeks reelection in November, didn’t bring before the Council any of his campaign promises. Some guys look like diamonds on the exterior, and some guys look like coal but are diamonds underneath. Nick is the latter. Robinson is cubic zirconia.

With less than a month remaining until the general election but mail-ins accepted beginning this week, James Ross has gone for the same approach as that PAC took from January to April: Throw everything it can at Nick and see what sticks. It shouldn’t be surprising that James Ross would do such a thing because, again, in all likelihood “James Ross” is actually the pen name of Hamilton, the mayor of Lake Forest who received fewer votes than any elected official dating back to at least 1998.

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Hamilton was involved in day-to-day grunt work behind the “Nick is Nuts” lies and half-truths, and the bigoted and racist literature produced under the “direction” of Newport Coast political consultant David Ellis, a man who had ties to the Orange County bankruptcy, the OC Fair Board scandal, and who worked to put an international airport at El Toro. So, to be clear, these Lake Forest councilmen became bedfellows with the guy who tried to get commercial jets to fly over the city.

Ellis may be the public point person on the necessary documents, but he was paid handsomely by, among others, Robinson and Voigts; Hamilton’s contribution, no doubt, were the fabricated quotes from all those “unnamed sources” that were used in the fake newspaper “Lake Forest News” to make Nick into a villain and implied those who supported him and the recall were “Megan’s Law offenders.”

So, let me try to provide some context here.

“James Ross” says he found 15 videos on YouTube. Of course he found them; they were posted by Hamilton and used to populate the copycat Facebook sites Hamilton created. Those copycat sites used the same names as existing sites that provided information about Lake Forest and the recall. No deception there, right?

Those weren’t the only videos created by Hamilton; he also videotaped various citizens, mostly women, spliced the comments together for his personal use, and posted them on those copycat Facebook sites. How he managed to show up at a council meeting without a black eye from an angry husband has me baffled.

If you take a look at the video that accompanies the "James Ross" article, you might find it to be a bit offensive too: The photo of the lily-white woman expressing her surprise, the picture of an African-American woman (former mayor Kathryn McCullough) when it could have just as easily been anyone else -- anyone! The video, which has all the markings of an Andrew Hamilton production, lacks context and is designed to stir up racially motivated hate where none was intended by Nick.

So, that’s the team in this campaign that “James Ross” is supporting as he begins this lynching of Nick's character, and he’s going to spin things on these web pages over the next several days to paint Nick as the worst guy he can without ever calling on his preferred councilmen to answer for the messages they condoned that were, racially speaking, far more egregious than anything "James Ross" is discussing currently.

These are the points that "James Ross" hit on -- and missed.

“The N-Word” -- Sept. 6, 2016

Nick, in a council meeting, clarified specifically what word Robinson was referring to when Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton voted to censure Nick in 2015. The only person who heard him allegedly use the word was Robinson, who was walking past a conversation in the parking lot; the two witnesses Robinson referenced publicly declared during a Council meeting that Nick did not use the word or had no recollection of him using the word. The only evidence is the word of Robinson, who wants Nick gone.

On September 6, Nick recounted a conversation he had with Robinson in an attempt to find out what racial slur Robinson had accused him of making. In the course of this explanation to the Council, Nick said that he asked Robinson what the slur was and Robinson eventually said it was the N-word. Nick explained that he asked if it was "negro" that Robinson claimed to have heard, and that Robinson said no, that it was the “other N-word”; Nick asked Robinson if it was the word that had gotten Michael Richards into trouble several years earlier and Robinson said yes. Nick told Robinson “that word is not in my vocabulary.” Then, to make sure everyone knew what he was talking about, Nick said the word from the dais, “nigger is not in my vocabulary.” It is that explanation, in that context, that made the head of “James Ross” explode. Nick did not call anyone the N-word. Reasonable people understand the distinction.

Consider this: Andrew Hamilton once said "degenerate pricks" as a means of making his point while quoting Nick; it's the same thing. Hamilton didn't say it was the P-word that rhymes with the D-word, he referenced it exactly for clarity's sake within the discussion. Although City Council meetings should not be locker rooms, they are not third grade classrooms, either, and grownups shouldn't have to be guessing what adult councilmen are trying to say.

Robinson referred to the "N-word" in his description to Nick, so clearly Robinson knows the meaning of the word and, by James Ross' definition, it's in his vocabulary, too.

“James Ross” makes the point that Nick knows of the Michael Richards incident and therefore knows the N-word is and therefore it is in his vocabulary, a ridiculous concept.

Having been around sports all my life, I know a lot of dirty words but don’t say them because they are not in my vocabulary. It doesn’t mean I haven’t heard them, doesn’t mean I don’t know them, doesn’t mean I can’t spell them or use them in a sentence if I wanted. But I don’t use them because they aren’t in my vocabulary. Two of my best friends are pastors. They know the words. The words are not in their vocabularies, either. Dwight Robinson knows the word because he allegedly recognized it; is it secretly in his vocabulary?

I’m not an advocate for the word’s use, and based on his comments, neither is Nick. However, charging racism, especially when it wasn't directed at anyone?

The Huffington Post published the top 10 “socially redeeming” uses of the word in modern history (Richard Pryor’s Grammy-winning album, That Nigger's Crazy, did not make the list), although there’s no mention of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. Even former Beatle John Lennon, who married Japanese artist Yoko Ono, wrote a song called “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.”

Not to offend your senses, but have you heard today’s music or checked out social media for the N-word or its derivatives? It’s alive and well in our culture, and it’s very much in the vocabulary.

Are all these people racists, too? This argument is simply stupid.

The photo above shows Nick at his wedding walking with his mother on the left and the woman who would have been his mother-in-law had his first fiancee not been killed by a drunk driver 24 years earlier. That's not exactly the picture of a racist, is it?

“Hanging” -- March 4, 2014

"James Ross" basically supplied the context with the provided quote, so it’s difficult to understand why he would claim this is racially motivated other than for political purposes. Insensitive maybe, but not racist.

Nick said: “I am looking for a second council member to join me in a consensus … to initiate a discussion about modeling a code of ethics that has teeth, a code of ethics that I can take to the District attorney and prosecute my colleagues. Basically, I want to be able to hang people here if they break it. I want it to have teeth.”

Regardless of the fact Kathryn McCullough, the City’s African-American mayor at the time, was sitting on the dais as “James Ross” so nobly points out, does anyone with an ounce of common sense think that comment was racially motivated? That Nick was talking literally, that he wanted to hang someone to the point of death inside the council chamber? That he specifically wanted to hang McCullough? It was said in the context of developing a strong code of ethics.

McCullough said she invited Nick to lunch (not exactly fearing for her life, I suspect) and told him she was offended by the comment because she was three generations free from slavery. And while McCullough may have experienced very real racism in her life, Nick is zero generations free from human atrocities; Nick was ordered to leave his country of birth by his parents after three blood relatives were executed by firing squad for political reasons, though it could have just as easily been a rope.

If Nick wanted to hang anyone at that time, it was Herzog, who he wanted to hang politically. It’s clear Nick wanted a strong ethics code that was bulletproof. Uh-oh, am I a racist, or am I condoning violence, for using the word "bulletproof"?

"I don't believe in the death penalty because it's irreversible," Nick said. "We don't give life, I don't think we should take life. Given the broader context, given my culture, given what I saw as a kid -- those are not excuses -- I'm just trying to explain where I came from. Given the venue, given the atmosphere, it was a poor choice of words."

But it wasn't racist.

“Muzzle” -- June 3, 2014

Nick explains this entire situation on his website, so I’m just going to copy and paste:

Once during a meeting, about three or so years ago, I asked then-Mayor Robinson to “put a muzzle” on former Councilwoman Kathryn McCullough, a comment which arose from Robinson’s convenient failure to stop McCullough from repeatedly interrupting me while I had the floor and was outlining policy aimed at preventing Council members’ personal expenses from being reimbursed by taxpayers – requiring actual receipts be required for otherwise eligible reimbursable expenses, following Federal guidelines for expense reimbursements, etc. Although all the other four Council members were going to be affected (FYI, I have never expensed anything — not even a dime), McCullough was the one who was going to be most impacted by my proposed policy because she abused the then existing 20+ year-old, lax policy the most. She continued interrupting me to a point that I uttered, “Dwight, put a muzzle on her.” I’m sure there are times when my colleagues, or those in attendance, would like to muzzle me. You should know that from that point on she did not interrupt me, and I got my policy underway to adoption that very evening.

McCullough responded, according to the "James Ross" account: “Mayor, he just violated our code [of ethics].”

Perhaps if the City Council had adopted Nick’s ethics code “with teeth” they could have hanged Nick -- or bitten him with their teeth -- right there on the spot.

There are times I’ve sat in the audience and wanted to put a muzzle on Adam Nick. And McCullough. And Voigts. And so on right down the dais. The night Voigts lied twice in a span of 14 seconds about Nick, it was clear Hamilton stopped the rant by putting a muzzle on Voigts. Or maybe you could say Hamilton put a lasso on him. If so, was that so Hamilton could hang him?

At the Council meeting of October 4, Hamilton put a muzzle on the audience with his five-minute timeout. Hamilton put a muzzle on Nick when he tried to address Robinson’s rebuttal during the Tuesday censure attempt on Robinson. Had Hamilton actually told Nick, “Put a muzzle on it, you’ll get your chance to talk when I decide it’s your turn,” it would not have been racially motivated and no one would have thought it was racially based, or that it was a racial slur. Except for "James Ross."

Of course, in the world of “James Ross,” Hamilton could never say “put a muzzle on it.” After all, it’s not in his vocabulary.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.