Zoom Chron Blog

In 1948 Leslie Fiedler made a big splash in the academic world by suggesting Huck Finn was gay in an essay originally published by the Partisan Review, a publication discovered to have been partially funded by the CIA–a fact so well known at this point it’s even a part of the Partisan Review’s Wikipedia page:

Although vehemently denied by founding editor William Phillips, following the fall of the Soviet Union it was revealed that Partisan Review was the recipient of money from the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its effort to shape intellectual opinion in the so-called “cultural cold war”. In 1953, the magazine found itself in financial difficulties, when one of its primary backstage financial backers, Allan D. Dowling, became embroiled in a costly divorce proceeding. The financial shortfall was made up by a $2,500 grant from the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF), a CIA front organization on the executive board of which editor Phillips sat throughout the decade of the 1950s.

Additional CIA money came later in the 1950s. When the ACCF terminated its operations, half of the money remaining in the organization’s coffers was transferred to Partisan Review. Additional funds came to the magazine to alleviate its financial problems in the 1950s in the form of a $10,000 donation from Time magazine publisher Henry Luce. Luce seems to have been instrumental in expediting contacts between PR publisher Phillips and Director of Central Intelligence Walter Bedell Smith.

Projecting sexuality onto minors–specifically positing the subtext of homoeroticism regarding Huck Finn’s relationship with Jim–wasn’t a one-off for Fiedler, as we shall see regarding this cultural “leader” who spent decades developing Missoula’s humanities program.

After his military service, he joined the faculty of Montana State University. He was appointed chairman of the English department and also became director of humanities studies during his 23 years on the faculty.

Several of his early essays explored the theme of assimilation in Jewish American literature, a topic close to him and several of his Jewish American friends who were up-and-coming authors at the time, among them Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow.

“More than anything, Fiedler was a ‘50s Jewish intellectual who claimed this country as his own, just as Philip Roth and Norman Mailer did,” said Greil Marcus, a critic based in Northern California.

Thirty years after speculating about Huck’s sexual feelings for negro Jim in the CIA/Partisan Review, Fiedler published Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. Here’s how the New York Times helped frame this book in 1978:

Before anything else, says Fiedler, freaks pose a challenge, a threat to those fragile boundaries upon which our sanity, our sense of identity, our distinctions between reality and fantasy, depend. Midgets, for example, upset our sense of scale:We ‘see-in-them ourselves when we played the dwarf to parental giants. We pretend they are like children, although Ateliotic Midgets age quickly (as though,time shrank to their size), so we see them as old children, childish oldsters, so we see through the man to the unsocialized child who fathered him. Achondroplastic Dwarfs, with their large heads, small limbs and brawny torsos, seem like legendary fantasies of appetite and mischief come out of their grottoes to walk among us in modern dress.

…

Hermaphrodites epitomize the pornographic allure of all side shows, their kinship to peep shows. In that allure are the kinks of deformity and the solicitations of otherness, which draws white to black, Gentile to Jew, rustic to city slicker, old to young and men to women and women to men. But since “the Cultural Revolution of 1968,” which Fiedler thinks led to a radical alteration of consciousness, we have come to see our secret fears and desires embodied in the Hermaphrodite more than in any other freak, except for the Geek, that bogus cannibal, the character in the side show who bites the heads off chickens and rats and eats them, too. Since the 60’s, says Fiedler, “We have all become a little Freakified.”

To better understand where this Jewish freak is coming from, let’s consult some of Fiedler’s actual thoughts about the “erotic nature” of children from his book:

Do I need to remind readers how much Jeffrey Epstein appreciated Nobokov’s book? Or would you like the New York Times to do an outrage LARP?

To bring this history lesson back to our present day, a recent op-ed supporting Humanities Montana in the Missoula Current tried striking a positive note for the organization amidst drastic funding cuts:

June has arrived with plenty of reasons for optimism at Humanities Montana. Before sharing a few updates from around the organization, I want to thank the many people who have supported our work during a year of transition and change. Whether you have attended a program, hosted an event, made a donation, volunteered your time, or simply encouraged our work, thank you. Your support has helped Humanities Montana continue serving communities across the state, and I am deeply grateful to you.

…

This spring also brought encouraging news for Humanities Montana. We received access to a portion of our federal funding through the National Endowment for the Humanities, providing important support as we continue rebuilding our organization and strengthening programs and partnerships across Montana. While Congress approved funding for the nation’s humanities councils earlier this year, the amount currently available to Humanities Montana represents only a portion of our full federal allocation.

As a result, the long-term landscape for federal humanities funding remains uncertain.

What does Humanities Montana do with their funding? They teach teens about Democracy, which I’m sure they do in a very non-partisan way, right?

Is Precious McKenzie running her 2026 campaign as a Republican? Of course not. She’s a member of Slaven Lee’s party, the party that demands millions of dollars in local bond money for their trillion dollar library so they can turn it over to drug addicts and sex offenders.

To wrap up today’s post I’ll link to some of the library articles I’ve written over the last few years as Missoula descends deeper into its subterranean layer of apocalyptic retardation never before seen at these frightening levels! And remember, if you’d like to support my citizen journalism (which is definitely under attack) please click on my GoFundMe link and consider giving a donation today, like the $50 dollar one I just received from a generous donor! Thank you!

Now, here’s the list of library posts:

“On Enduring The Missoula Democrat Mayoral Candidate Forum In The Trillion Dollar Library” (August 1st, 2023)

“My Lego Meth Lab Vs. Their Library DNA Climber” (July 12th, 2024)

“A Dose Of Hope? How About A Dose Of NOPE!” (March 17th, 2025)

“While Missoula Becomes A Hub For VIPs, The Library Continues To Be A Hub Of Embarrassment” (June 5th, 2025)

“Who Supports Urine Testing Library Board Members And MRA Board Members For Being High AF?” (September 17th, 2025)

“More Library! More Virtue-Signaling! More Happy Smiles!” (December 16th, 2025)

Thanks for reading!

Before a progressive blogger calling himself “The Rooster” got arrested earlier this month in Ohio, the statute used against him–the telecommunication harassment statute–was being used against another Ohioan because he wouldn’t stop emailing a woman about her treasurer role. Seriously.

A Cincinnati-area Republican political operative recently convinced a federal court that Ohio’s telecommunications harassment statute is unconstitutional, at least as applied to his case. But the court refused to throw out the statute entirely.

Plaintiff Christopher R. Hicks is a member of the central and executive committee of the Clermont County Republican party. This case concerns email communications sent to Jeannie Zurmehly, who holds public office as the Clermont County treasurer.

Hicks sent emails to Zurmehly’s government email address raising concerns about Zurmehly’s role as treasurer of the Clermont County Republican party.

Zurmehly objected to Hicks using her government email for matters that she deemed unrelated to her public office and asked him to stop. Hicks persisted.

In April 2020, Zurmehly filed an offense report with the Clermont County sheriff’s office, seeking to press criminal charges for telecommunications harassment under Ohio law. Based on a clear conflict of interest, the Clermont County prosecutor’s office referred the matter to a special prosecutor with the Ohio attorney general’s office.

Getting charged with “telecommunications harassment” is a serious misdemeanor in Ohio, and will earn you a felony for a second offense. Here’s more context on the evolution of harassment law in Ohio, and its expanded application in this particular scenario against a constituent by a public official who didn’t like the emails she was getting:

In 1999, the title of the statute was changed to “Telecommunications [H]arassment,” and the word “telecommunication” was substituted for “telephone call.” An initial violation of § 2917.21(A)(5) constitutes a criminal misdemeanor in the first degree, but a subsequent violation is a fifth-degree felony punishable by a fine up to $2,500.00 and imprisonment of between six and twelve months.

Hicks argued that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to his case, because the state sought to apply §2917.21(A)(5) based solely on the content of Hicks’ emails; and the state sought to expand the use of a “harassment” law to shut down email communication from a constituent to his elected official at her government email address that is not threatening, abusive, intimidating or otherwise “harassing” in any traditional sense of the word.

The court agreed. It noted first that the enforcement of the statute in this case was based on the content of the emails. As it noted, “[the state] puts an unmistakable content-based gloss on the application of § 2917.21(A)(5) to the emails at issue, declaring them as violative of § 2917.21(A)(6) by reference to whether they concern ‘nongovernment business,’ as defined by Zurmehly . . .”

The court was also troubled by the fact that the email was a government email address used by a governmental official. As the court noted, “[the] cases do not support applying the statute to a government email that, by all accounts, is regularly used by Zurmehly and constituents alike to communicate about matters of public concern and/or to petition the county treasurer.” In short, it would not serve the interests of the First Amendment to allow an elected official to make the rules about what someone could talk about on an official account, and criminally prosecute people who failed to abide.

But the court declined to find that the statute was “facially” unconstitutional. In the court’s view, the statute did not violate the Constitution in all circumstances. In considering a facial challenge, the court should strike down a statute that proscribes a substantial amount of protected speech.

Ok, now that you know the kind of telecommunication behavior deemed NOT harassment after public dollars were wasted in the failed criminal prosecution of a male constituent because a female treasurer was eager to claim victimhood and use lawfare to destroy him, let’s check out the legal fallout from the criminal Shrek dick pic that initiated the most recent deployment of Telecommunication Harassment in Ohio.

The founder of The Rooster, a prominent progressive newsletter that regularly criticizes Ohio’s political establishment, was arrested at the Statehouse on Monday.

Officials charged Donald “DJ” Byrnes with a misdemeanor charge of telecommunications harassment. Ohio State Highway Patrol Sgt. Tyler Ross, a patrol spokesperson, said Byrnes was arrested at the Statehouse on a warrant entered by the police department in Kirtland, a small city in Lake County, near Cleveland.

Records show Byrnes is being held in jail by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office as of 6 p.m. Monday on a misdemeanor offense. The records indicate he’s being held on behalf of officials in Lake County, near Cleveland.

Specifics about the charges are not available on the Willoughby Municipal Court’s website as of Monday evening.

For more on the alleged text exchange that provided the justification for the arrest warrant, here’s an excerpt from The Columbus Dispatch:

The Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested him June 1 at the statehouse on an outstanding warrant for a misdemeanor. The warrant was signed by Willoughby Municipal Court Judge Marisa L. Cornachio, who is running for an appeals court seat and has been endorsed by State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland.

Littman said he believes the case stems from Byrnes texting Cirino a photo of cartoon character Shrek’s penis. The warrant says Byrnes allegedly texted

Littman shared what he said was a text exchange between Byrnes and Cirino that included a naked Shrek. Cirino’s alleged reply was “I don’t know who this is but I’m certain you’re a moron.”

Cirino declined to comment on the case.

While Cirino declined to comment, the same can’t be said for Ohio’s Governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, who suggested this blogger has mental health issues, as reported by Signal Cleveland:

This case should be interesting to follow as the tactics of lawfare become more and more common across the country. Hopefully, if I don’t get too bogged down with my own First Amendment challenges, I’ll remember to check back in on this case in a few months.

If you would like to help a much less partisan (but no less prosecuted) blogger, like myself, here’s the GoFundMe link I’m using to raise funds now that I’m facing another criminal charge of violating an order of protection:

Thanks for reading!

When Forrest “Clay” Salcido was brutally stomped to death in 2007 by two drunk teenagers on the California street walking bridge, regular Missoulians were horrified and responded as you’d expect any modestly sized community would respond, as evidenced by this post from 4&20 Blackbirds.

While you can click on the link and see for yourself the entire post, un-redacted, what I am able to convey HERE, 19 years later, is impacted by a court decision last month that I’m currently appealing. That said, let me attempt to do what I’ve been doing since 2010 and write about a local issue I have direct and extensive knowledge about:

In response to the stomping to death of homeless man Forrest Clayton Salcido, Missoulians are invited to Take Back the California Street Bridge on Thursday, December 20 at 5:30 p.m. Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger will speak at this candlelight vigil, which will be followed by a rally against violence at the Badlander starting at 6 p.m. The Badlander is located at the corner of Broadway and Ryman in downtown Missoula, and this is a free community event aimed at keeping Missoula’s streets safe for all people.

The Poverello Center is the main sponsor of this event, which is a part of ‘We Are Missoula,’ the group behind the community rally held on Nov. 26 against the two anti-gay beatings that happened near downtown.

(This message was forwarded to us from Caitlin Copple at the YWCA.)

Additional information just in from _____ at the Poverello:

Speakers Include :
Lieutenant Governor John Bohlinger (who also heads the Governor’s Council on Homelessness)
_____, Executive Director, Poverello Center, Inc.
Cindy Weese, Executive Director, YWCA
Amy Carter, University Congregational Church
John Lund, University of Montana’s Lutheran Campus Pastor
Amanda Salcido, Niece of Forest Clayton Salcido

Isn’t this impressive? In less than a month of the brutal murder of a homeless man, churches, non-profits, and a statewide politician all came together to add Clay Salcido’s name to the roster of victims of violence that preceded his senseless death.

For more on how the Missoula community responded to community violence in 2007, here’s another excerpt about Missoula forming WE ARE MISSOULA:

Missoula citizens and collaborating organizations are outraged over this crime and the continuing pervasiveness of violence motivated by hate in this community.

“WE ARE MISSOULA” is the partnership of thirty (30) collaborative private and non profit organizations unified to: Speak up and Stand out against Hate Crimes. The last WE ARE MISSOULA rally in November drew over 300 participants.

Those attending the candlelight vigil are asked to bring candles in glass containers to the bridge and join speakers, singers and others to remember our homeless and the others in this community who have been victims of hate. Immediately following the vigil, participants are encouraged to warm up in The Badlander for a rally against hate in Missoula.

With sponsoring organizations like Forward Montana, Montana Human Rights Network, The Poverello Center, Montana Pride Network, ACLU, University of Montana LAMBDA Alliance, YWCA and Jeannette Rankin Peace Center, this rally will provide a venue for showing broad community support for ending
hate crimes, homophobia and other forms of systemic violence.

The goals of the rally are to educate the community about the vulnerability of homelessness, hate crimes and how to report them to the Missoula police, as well as to encourage strength and solidarity within the community.

Now, if I wasn’t restrained from what I am able to write about, I would go on with this post to describe the effort in 2014 by Caitlin Copple to pass an ordinance AGAINST those pesky homeless people, but getting into the dynamics of THAT community debate puts me at risk of violating the censors, and I’m already dealing with enough sensitive things as it is, like this new ankle accessory:

Perhaps there was a memo I didn’t get about how one should feel about dead homeless people who die in our community by experiencing violence because something obviously changed between December 5th, 2007, when Clay Salcido was murdered, and January 5th, 2020, when Sean Stevenson died after being assaulted (allegedly) by JUST Johnny Lee Perry inside the Poverello Center.

Maybe some day I’ll figure it all out.

If you’d like to help me figure it all out, please consider supporting my new GoFundMe page. Any modest amount is deeply appreciated as I navigate my new geography, which is so absurdly constrained all I can do is marvel at how desperate they’re getting.

Thanks for reading!

I would like to congratulate the CIA on winning the information war. Since it’s clearly all Mockingbird now, we might as well just sit back and enjoy the show.

Right?

Sam Forstag, the Democrat candidate for Congress, got the attention of Esquire last month, and even Esquire signaled being hip to the CIA’s role in recruiting some of Sam’s predecessors for the Cold War:

A direct article from a national magazine isn’t the only way the Mockingbird media pumps up candidates like Sam Forstag. For a more subtle example of influence, a recent local article from the Missoulian about Smokejumpers caught my attention, and not just because one of the guys pictured is my former neighbor, Kurt Rohrbach

A newspaper that was once run by “retired” CIA man, John Talbot, is doing a very beneficial thing here for candidate Sam Forstag by publishing this well-timed article about a Smokejumper honor flight. The residual positive impressions an article like this creates can’t necessarily be quantified, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact on the minds of potential voters.

An informed electorate is pretty important when choosing the people to “lead” us, which is why the flow of information is so critical to control. When the CIA got caught training Tibetan freedom fighters in Colorado, for example, they made sure interest didn’t spread from Colorado Springs to the New York Times, and those punk-ass bitches at the NYT complied. Because “national security”.

Here’s an excerpt from a book about what happened AFTER a few unlucky locals in Colorado witnessed the departure of the CIA’s secret Tibetan insurgents against China:

And here’s an article about this secret training effort that mentions the “Missoula Mafia”:

The base was located north of Leadville, Colorado, in a secluded corner of the Pando Valley, visible today from Highway 24. The CIA training facilities on base featured a mess hall, recreation hall, barracks, classrooms and latrines, all enclosed by an unassuming wooden fence – designed as much to deter the occasional hiker or miner as to maintain an air of insignificance. CIA trainers called it The Ranch, but to the Tibetans, the mountains of Colorado reminded them of home – they called it Dumra (The Garden), and the name stuck.

One of the trainees, Bhusang – a former doctor from Lhasa whose life would later be spared by the butt of a Chinese rifle after a tragic battle in Markham – recalled the landscape vividly:

“The camp was located at the foot of a low mountain. A broad valley with a river flowing through it lay before us. The mountains were beautiful, with forests and open areas in the distance, where people would ski in winter. We could see tiny figures of skiers gliding down the slopes. A railway line ran along the far side of the valley, and every evening, we would hear the lonely whistle of the freight train in the distance.”

Training was intense and tailored to the Tibetans’ needs. CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus lectured on history, political theory and espionage. Practical training covered guerrilla warfare, sabotage, radio communications, cryptography, survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, firearms and improvised explosives.

The CIA recruited professional smoke jumpers from the National Forest Service, known as the “Missoula Mafia,” to serve as parachute dispatch officers. Among them, “Mr. Jack” personally cut and stripped trees to build the platforms used for jump practice. Everyone liked “Tony Poe,” who was always joking and rode around camp on horseback, according to Thinlay Paljor (Rocky).

Since everything is Mockingbird now, let’s conclude today’s brief post with this strategic embarrassment and I’ll explain what you’re looking at:

When you know that Governor Spanberger was a CIA agent before becoming Virginia’s Governor, and when you know that the CIA flooded black neighborhoods with crack in the 80’s, this picture of the white, liberal, female Governor “busting a move” between two black men is really quite something.

For more on Abigail’s “intelligence” pedigree, all you have to do is consult Wikipedia:

Spanberger was born in New Jersey and moved frequently during her childhood before her family settled in Virginia. She earned degrees from the University of Virginia and Purdue University. From 2006 to 2014, she was an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, unseating incumbent Republican Dave Brat. She was reelected in 2020 and 2022 before leaving Congress to run for governor.

If you appreciate this context from a citizen journalist NOT getting a steady paycheck, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe fundraiser as I prepare to weather another round of serious lawfare. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

Missoula’s chief city prosecutor, Keithi Worthington, made her panhandling pitch last week to City Council because there are SO MANY people to prosecute that TWO new prosecutors are needed. To better understand the needs of Missoula’s prosecutorial team, let’s consult some of the slides from last Wednesday’s presentation:

Since the process for issuing Temporary Orders of Protection starts as a civil process–one that requires the petitioner to be a REASONABLE PERSON–prosecutors generally don’t enter the picture until AFTER that “reasonable person” has been awarded legal protection and that protection has been allegedly violated.

For more context, here’s a screenshot from a website that helps people understand how to get this legal protection for themselves (emphasis mine):

That last part about courts being “very reluctant” to limit speech made me LOL. No, that has NOT been my experience.

For a different scenario that has caught national attention, the Lego legal drama playing out in Utah between “corporate” and a YouTuber named “Reckless Ben” is nicely summarized in this Salt Lake Tribune article. For the purpose of this post, here’s where a protection order enters the picture:

Videos posted to Schneider’s YouTube account show multiple confrontations with American Fork police, where Schneider alleges he was attempting to resolve the legal dispute by going to Johnson’s Utah County home. Those visits, Schneider says, were part of a legally required “good faith” effort to fix the problem privately.

In a video, Schneider also pushed a theory that the police officers were protecting Johnson and Best, along with the corporate owners of Bricks & Minifigs, because they all appeared to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Schneider was charged in March with stalking and residential targeted picketing after the interactions at Johnson’s home, court records show. Johnson was also granted a protective order against Schneider on May 20, which requires he not contact Johnson and stay away from his home, according to the filing.

Schneider also faces charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing near a Provo business park, court records show. His next court appearance is scheduled to be held online on June 8 at 11 a.m.

Schneider said in a video that he has fled to Mexico.

While the legal tools to restrain “Reckless Ben” are applicable to what I’m experiencing in Missoula, the situation overall is not comparable because I’m not an outside YouTuber swooping in to stir shit up for clicks with a Mexico escape plan if it gets too hot.

In fact, when it came to a similar attempt by “Anonymous” attempting to hijack the plight of some homeless couple in Missoula for click-farming, I’d like to think my quick response helped run that bullshit off.

You’re welcome, Missoula law enforcement.

To wrap up today’s post I want to include one more slide from Keithi Worthington’s pitch for more municipal enforcers in order to “protect” the reasonable public.

I have a theory about what I think this simple graph shows, and, though it might be totally wrong, I’m going to drop it anyway because it gives me hope.

What I think the catching up of hearings HELD vs. hearings SCHEDULED means is that people are actually FIGHTING BACK and NOT just letting the intimidation tactics go unchallenged by accepting whatever shit plea deal comes down from Worthington’s current stable of prosecutors.

If anyone with a better head for statistics wants to chime in, the comment section is always open (though delayed for new commenters).

Finally, I’m going to keep pitching MY humble panhandling effort for monetary legal support through GoFundMe here, at the end of each post, unless I’m told doing so will send me back to the University of Lawfare. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!