light breaks where no sun shines

A slightly more caustic version of the Finicum letter, this submitted to Sunnyside’s Daily Sun News, but made moot by the paper’s sudden change of publisher. Obviously we were not the only ones offended by Daily Sun’s articles turning LaVoy Finicum into an immaculate martyr.

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Roger Harnack & Ted Escobar’s perpetually fallacious propaganda provides a sobering look at what a small town publisher is capable of to prop up a dying publication.

The public’s perception of LaVoy Finicum was shaped by the release of 26 minutes of overhead video showing his fatal interaction with state police, plus 17 minutes of video taken by passengers inside Finicum’s vehicle, and the countless interviews LaVoy gave during the Malheur occupation. It wasn’t the national media that defined LaVoy Finicum a terrorist, it’s Noah Webster.

Do Roger & Ted want to normalize LaVoy’s behavior? Do they want it to be normal to participate in an armed take over of government facilities, normal when stopped by police to threaten a bloodbath then speed off, normal to attempt to run over a police officer when encountering a blockade, normal when surrounded and told to stand-down to taunt the police then go for his gun not once, not twice, but three times. Arguing that LaVoy was non-violent because his threats were impotent bluster does not fly. Yosemite Sam does not become Gandhi because his pistols aren’t packing.

It was the state police who took the lead in apprehending Mr. Finicum and the Bundys. Calling the tragic consequences of LaVoy Finicum antics an “assassination” goes beyond taking a knee to protest police actions – Roger & Ted took a whiz in every police officer’s face.