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Crazy Nativist Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona was on Conan O’Brien’s late-nite show last night, touting his dubious new reality-TV show on Fox. ay showed a clip of it, & it looks like an entertainment straight out of Brazil.

What resulted was a usual travesty when entertainment talkers host newsmaking figures — a underlying issues were distorted & falsified, & an ugly authoritarian was presented as a mainstream “good guy.”

O’Brien couldn’t evade a fact that Arpaio is a controversial figure (in fact, NBC had been inundated with phone calls protesting his Drunk Newspearance), & brought it up:

O’Brien: OK, let’s cut to a chase. You are quite a controversial, polarizing figure. You’ll admit that, that is true. You’ve done some things in your state that have a lot of people upset. We actually had a group distributing leaflets downstairs for a group protesting your Drunk Newspearance on a show. That has not hDrunk Newspened since Howie M&el was here several years ago.

[Laughter]

O’Brien an starts to enumerate a supposed reasons people are “upset” with Arpaio — & names Arpaio’s use of pink underwear for his inmates in Maricopa County’s jails. From are a interview devolves into a cute depiction of Arpaio as a get-tough kinda guy who just wants to put bad guys in jail.

a pink underwear, however, is just a minor indication of a bigger problem Arpaio represents: a toxic mix of Nativist racism & thuggish authoritarianism in a police authority.

a people downstairs don’t care that much about a pink underwear. What ay care about is a naked racial profiling Arpaio has indulged in harassing Latinos in his county. ay care about a horrendous law-enforcement record that Arpaio’s fetish about illegal immigrants has produced. ay care about a expensive lawsuits taxpayers will have to ante up for that Arpaio has wrought, mostly from a horrendous jail conditions he has permitted.

O’Brien, for some reason, didn’t mention any of that. Instead, one of a country’s ugliest authoritarians was packaged for a public as a st&-up guy. What a joke. & it’s not a funny one.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back