My husband Bill loves to point out that with many national news stories, there always seems to be a Sandpoint connection. With the O.J. case, we didn't know the connection until after the fact when Mark Fuhrman, the LA Detective of "N" word and glove fame, moved to Sandpoint.
Personality Ben Stein has appeared under many hats, as a Republican talking head, a monotone teacher with the famous line from Ferris Beuller's Day Off "Anyone? Anyone?" He shows up frequently on the television commercials, talking about "Clear Eyes."
I'm not sure if he's still giving away Ben Stein's Money on Comedy Central these days, but he rewards contestants handsomely who might be as smart as he is. Through all these roles, he's penned many an article for Reader's Digest and The American Spectator, extolling the virtues of his favorite vacation place, Sandpoint, Idaho.
I'll digress at this point and announce my direct connection to Ben Stein. His son Tommy has the squirt gun commode that Nicole Huguenin brought back to me from one of her family vacations. When you raise the seat, water squirts in your face. It was a great desk ornament during my teaching days.
I gave him that squirt gun one day a few years back when Ben brought Tommy (who was then a precocious little boy fascinated by such things) to my classroom. I doubt that Tommy remembers me, and if he ever decides he doesn't want that toilet, he can give it back to me because it wasn't nice of me to re-gift it in the first place.
Back to the subject at hand. The Randy Weaver Stand-off of 1993 brought the national limelight on Sandpoint, just as did the bank robberies and bombings in Spokane a few years later when three men who had attended the church next door to the Love house decided to show the Spokesman-Review newspaper how tough they were.
They got caught and went to jail, but not before a big picture of the America's Promise Church showed up one night on Peter Jennings' "World News Tonight." I was afraid my horse Rambo, in the nearby pasture, might be spotted and pegged a Nazi horse, but the cameramen were nice enough to edit him out of the picture.
These are just a few cases, besides the upcoming "Extreme Make-over Home Edition" and Donna Deshon's current reign as America's Most Desperate Fan, where Bill's argument about the "Sandpoint connection" is totally justified.
Well, last night beat all, and I'm not so sure I'm happy this morning. Two hours of national television programming had the Sandpoint connection and neither turned out very well. The first came at 7 p.m. on CNBC when I tuned into Donny Deutsch.
Donny is touted as a maverick ad executive-turned talk-show host. I watch his show almost every night because the guests get to talk for more than just a few well-placed sound bytes, and the discussions often go deeper than a superficial glossing of the nightly topic.
Last night's program began with several images of a set of 13-year-old cute Brittany Spears-type twins who have embarked on a singing career. I immediately assumed that this would be another of those "Mommy-pushes-kid-to-stardom" hours, but no. Mommy has pushed these kids to stardom but not quite in the same vein as Brittany.
These little gals, Lynx and Lamb Gaede are also known as "Prussian Blue," and they travel the country entertaining crowds of red-blooded American White Supremacists who lap up the song lyrics which promote Whites and degrade Blacks and Jews. And, oh, is their mommy proud?
They're from Florida, and they were the subject for last night's discussion, which would be especially interesting because Donny's Jewish. There were more guests, though. When Donny said, "And from Spokane, Wash.," we have the attorney representing Prussian Blue, Edgar Steele, I sat up and took notice. As his picture flashed onto the screen, I yelled to Bill, "The Sandpoint connection!" Bill corrected me later when I was telling my mother on the phone, "No, that's Sagle," he yelled down the hall.
Well, at just two miles down Highway 95 from Sandpoint, Sagle's too close for comfort. Edgar does live out there. He's a lawyer, and he's defended a few White Supremacists around the nation who've gotten in trouble, including Richard Butler, now deceased founder of the Ayran Nations. Edgar never did come to one of my parent conferences, but I must say he has a lovely daughter, who, he said could marry an Asian but never a Black. I don't know if she shares his philosophy but if she does, it never showed in English class.
During the hour, Edgar beamed about his youthful hate singers and his own assertion that Hitler's Jewish annihilation was much overrated. Another wacko from Mississippi, who represents Skinhead Records, kept yelling that these girls needed to sing more songs about the Constitution and Davy Crockett, to which Donny kept scratching his head, wondering why Davy got pulled into the discussion. I noticed that Edgar spent a lot of time in his fancy suit with an amused mocking expression as Mr. Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center along with a reformed Ku Klux Klan member-turned civil-rights activist tried to make their points.
Also, during the hour-long discussion, another Sandpoint prize named Masker earned mention when one of the guests talked briefly about the guy who used to run our city water system. His White Supremacist leanings were well known. I think they finally got rid of him when he refused to make about $6,000 worth of payments for a car, or something like that. He might have gone to jail.
Anyway, that was our 7 o'clock hour hometown connection on CNBC.
But the National Finals rodeo was scheduled for 9 p.m., and along with the rodeo would come someone who makes us proclaim, "We're from Sandpoint and couldn't be any prouder." Unfortunately, our anticipated joy was not to be. There was no stupid ice skating or stupid football game There was, however, a good football game playing on the back room TV where Bill was watching the Seattle Seahawks smother the Philadelphia Eagles 42-0.
The rodeo actually started on time last night, but I didn't care. I already knew the results. Right about the time that Edgar was smirking on Donny Deutsh, the phone rang. I answered. At the other end, I heard a lot of cacophonous squawk, squawk, squawk.
"Who is this?" I asked. I could have used Ben Stein's Clear Ears at the time but finally pieced out a voice, yelling among the squawking and didn't like what I heard.
"I'm at the rodeo and I just watched Rowdy Buechner get bucked off," the voice belonging to my niece Laura screamed.
Did I really want to know that piece of information at this moment when I was feeling so confident the night would get better because Rowdy was gonna once more make Sandpoint proud immediately after Edgar had proved to the nation that we've got some real wackos here?
Not exactly.
My niece was at the NFR rodeo. She's in Las Vegas for a convention and apparently got tickets. She also probably had no idea that the show was taped and wouldn't play to a national audience until 9 p.m. We could have gone a couple more hours with hope in our hearts, but that was not to be. I'll forgive her, though, because I know she was thrilled to be there.
So, the Sandpoint connection continues. My night of couch potatoing went pretty flat just like Rowdy's fall from the bronc. But I know Rowdy's made of the right stuff. He'll pick himself up and move on, continuing to make us bust our buttons as he thrills audiences, yearning to see the good guys come out on top.
Now as far as Edgar and his brain-washed, hate-crooning blonde babies are concerned, I just don't know. It's hard to see the good guys or girls in that story.
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