And conservatives are labeled intolerant.

[travelinman]

Amherst leans to the left
The Springfield Republican ^ | January 16, 2006 | Stephanie Barry

AMHERST - Just before Christmas, Edward Cutting and friends hauled a 12-foot evergreen down a muddy stretch near the University of Massachusetts pond, armed with a rope, a shovel and a disclaimer.

"This display is sponsored by the UMass Republican Club. The purpose of this display is to promote holiday cheer. This display is not sponsored by the University of Massachusetts."

While the stilted disavowal may seem fitting for separation-of-church-and-state purists, to Cutting, one of few admitted Republicans on the left-leaning campus, it smacks of something else entirely. Liberalism? No, he says.

"They're far too close-minded to be liberal," said Cutting, a doctoral candidate in math and science who is so vocal about his conservatism he has been lampooned in the campus newspaper and maligned by students and faculty. "They," he says, are "the majority thinkers at the university and the town at large."

Amherst, a farming town turned college town, has a population of roughly 35,000, saturated with academics and social service workers, according to U.S. Census information. More than 41 percent have graduate or professional degrees, the data show, and nearly 52 percent work in education, health or social services.

The demographics make for a brainy, mainstream-eschewing population, one longtime resident said, but do not necessarily cultivate "free" thought.

"In Amherst, I can't watch a production of 'West Side Story' but I can see the 'Vagina Monologues' at the high school and watch a junior throw up her arms like (Olympic gymnast) Mary Lou Retton and shout the c-word," said fifth-generation Amherst resident Larry J. Kelley.

Kelley recalled Amherst Regional High School's 1999 ban on the Leonard Bernstein musical and the protracted debate over its racial themes that followed. Five years later, the school put on the feminist "Monologues," a sardonic script filled with profane anatomical references and sexual themes. Kelley said he, parents and local residents were upset by the subject matter and language in "Monologues," but their complaints fell on deaf ears. He tried to introduce a motion to forever ban the production at the annual Town Meeting last year, only to have members refuse to take up the issue.

However, Kelley said, the electorate voted overwhelmingly to declare the town a nuclear-free zone.

"They spent an hour talking about it and passed it overwhelmingly," said Kelley, 50, who owns a health club.

Also banned in Amherst: American flags as a regular presence (the Select Board voted unanimously to give them only limited play); the word "freshman" at the high school (not gender-neutral enough); and a set chairman on the Select Board (too patriarchal).

Instead, the United Nations flag flies over the Town Green, high school newbies are ninth-graders and the chairman's role rotates among members.

Among a community of rebels, dissidence is scarcely tolerated, Kelley and Cutting believe. For Kelley's part, he is pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control - and still considered one of the town's token conservatives.

Cutting, in his 40s, is a bit less compromising.

The Republican Club's office at the university is plastered with photos of Ronald Reagan and other right-wing icons. The club shares space with the university's defunct Right to Life coalition, though their banner still hangs in what Cutting calls the conservative ghetto, tucked in a corner on the fourth floor of the Student Union.

He and a handful of regular members tossed around examples of how seemingly conservative symbols have been snuffed out in Amherst. Club members are routinely denounced as racists and fascists when they hold recruiting drives, they say, and their Christmas tree is defiled each year.

"My favorite was the lady who tore down the Puerto Rican flag," one piped up. In 2004, one town resident, angered over President Bush's second-term win, tore down a Puerto Rican flag she mistook for the state flag of Texas, Bush's home state.

She was thrown by the similar color palette, she told reporters at the time, and thought someone had the audacity to actually celebrate the president's victory.

The community quickly forgave her, sympathizing with her ire.

"There's a lot of conformity in noncomformity," said Western New England College government professor William S. Mandel, recalling the 1960s when war advocates were shouted down at "free-thinking" college campuses across the country.

At the same time, Mandel said he understands town members' lofty sensibilities and global pursuits at Town Meetings.

"It's tough to be voting on whether there should be a stop sign on a particular corner when what you really care about are soldiers dying in Iraq."

[reason]

What we need are more open-minded, fair conservatives like Mike Allen. I like what he does for taxpayers:

Hamilton County taxpayers won't pay Allen's bills

By Kimball Perry
Enquirer staff writer

ADVERTISEMENT

Disgraced former Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen no longer wants county taxpayers to pay for his estimated $100,000 in legal fees stemming from lawsuits regarding his former lover, Rebecca Collins.

Allen, through his attorney, agreed today to drop that request, said Bill Markovits, the private attorney commissioners hired to represent them in the issue.

?The commissioners got what they wanted,? Markovits said.
After the married Allen and Collins ended their years-long affair, Collins sued Allen in federal court, accusing him of using his position as her boss and as an older man to continue to sexually harass and discriminate against her.

Allen?s attorney, Michael Hawkins, didn?t immediately return calls.
Collins, fired as an assistant prosecutor after Allen left office, dropped her suit a year ago when she accepted a $45,000 judgment against Allen, now a private defense attorney.

Allen, though, asked state and federal court judges to force Hamilton County ? and its taxpayers ? to pay for his legal fees from the suits because, he believed, he was sued as an elected official.

?It?s the right result,? Commissioner Todd Portune said of Allen deciding he won?t ask the public to pay for his legal fees.
?It?s a shame that it has had to take this long to accomplish it.?
Commissioners insisted they wouldn?t pay those legal fees, saying Allen?s affair was his problem and he had to pay for it.

?We felt that the people who elected us would be offended if we spent any taxpayer money that way,? Commissioner Phil Heimlich said.

Markovits estimated that Allen?s legal fees would have cost taxpayers ?well in excess of $100,000? had Allen won.

He also estimated the county?s fight against paying those legal fees cost taxpayers less than $20,000.

Collins continues to have a suit against Hamilton County. After she was fired from her job, she amended her suit to allege that current prosecutor, Joe Deters, improperly fired her in retaliation for her suing Allen and Hamilton County. That allegation is pending.

E-mail [email protected]

[travelinman]

Now now BS your comparing apples to oranges. In my post there is a whole town of liberals who think there somehow superior because of their ?progressive? attitudes but by their actions show how close-minded and bigoted they are, and your post is about an individual who has shown himself to be an adulterer and a fraud. Do you really judge a group of people by the actions of one person? I thought only us Neanderthal conservatives did that?

[Dulcinea]

Yes, it appears that in Amhearst you have a town of liberals-gone-wild (video available $19.95)

How many towns are so completely dominated by the conservative faction that those who have alternative views don't just suffer from "not getting to see West Side Story put on by the local High School" but instead fear for their lives?

Yes, Trav, you found us one bastion of liberals gone beyond the median. I am certain that there are many, many, many places in this country where conservative prejudices and the fears of those different from them result in a community where a minority is repressed far beyond the "repression" of the conservatives in Amhearst.

What happened to that repressed and overly-notated Christmas symbol in Amhearst? It was *written* about. What happens to the minority viewpoint that is expressed in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998? The human being is tortured and killed.

[travelinman]

Yes my dear, but you forget that we are expected to be that way, but liberals on the other hand are the tolerant and progressive ones and are suppose to be somehow above this.

Question. If you constantly say someone is intolerant and bigoted, and they turn out to be one do you feel vindicated? How about if you constantly say someone is progressive and enlightened and they turn out not to be, do you feel betrayed?