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Syndicated columnist Marc Munroe Dion: Still fighting Nazis, pink hair and all

Writing about Nazis, in fact any contact with Nazis, is like stepping in the leavings of a large dog who accidentally got into the Ex-Lax. It's gonna take longer to get it off your shoes than it did to get it on your shoes.

I stepped in it last week, writing about a band of German neo-Nazi, monarchist stumblers whose "coup" was about as successful as Trump's coup.

I wrote jokes about the sauerkraut coup because, as a columnist with more than 30 years' experience, I've discovered that political extremists, like macho high school boys, would rather take a beating than hear the sound of snickering.

And I wrote it, and I drank two bottles of beer after, and I went to bed and slept the sleep of a man who has never "heil'ed" anyone.

But I'd put my foot in it, and my shoes were caked with the hard-to-remove.

Three days after I wrote, the local gay pride organization held a drag queen story hour at the library. The event involved one drag queen, maybe 25 kids and a storybook.

In response to this, a few dozen Nazis showed up and began merrily chanting, "Nazism is the way" while snapping out the one-arm salute.

In between salutes, the Heil Hitler Homies shoved some gay people around and chanted a number of insulting slurs at everyone involved, including the kids, who couldn't help but hear as they sat and listened to a children's story.

I might mention here that the Nazis were masked. The gay people who ran the thing were not masked. The gay people are brave. The Nazis are cowards.

Here in my semi-retirement, I do a daily local news podcast. From time to time, I have a guy on named Sean. He works for the city's recreation department, an agency that throws dances for old people and Halloween parties for kids, events involving, music, face painting and free pizza.

Sean is also a wheel in the city's gay pride organization. He shows up for my podcast in pink pants, wearing earrings. His hair is pink, too, at least in spots.

I jokingly call him a "twofer" because he can give me info about city-sponsored events and about gay pride events. He's a very nice guy, and I can pretend to be a nice guy for as much as an hour if the weather is good, and we talk about events, and as the podcast winds down, we make a lot of bad jokes of the gay stereotype, Liza Minnelli variety, and about his pretended lust for a local talk radio host who sometimes teeters on the edge of homophobia.

Sean was at the drag queen story time, and there's video of masked Nazis telling him he should kill himself because he's gay. I watched the video, and Sean is out on the sidewalk with the Nazis, and the smile hardly ever leaves his face, almost as if he thought they were funny.

I had him on my podcast, and I told him I'd seen the video.

"I'll give you credit," I said. "You were right out there with them. You know they'd kill you if they could."

Sean told me he was bullied for being effeminate as far back as sixth grade. He prayed to God to make him like everyone else. In junior high school, he thought about suicide.

"I'm not going back," he said.

Both of Sean's grandfathers fought in World War II, back when the Nazis killed millions of people for the unforgivable crime of difference.

Sean is still fighting Nazis, his pink hair blowing in the wind like the American flag.

© 2022, Creators

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