Illinois Governor Pat Quinn Department of Human Rights Tea Party email, Alvin Forbes Sr. forwarded email, Blames Tea Party Glenn Beck Palin

“As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the people, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandyhaired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities , had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters; perhaps even–so it was occasionally rumored–in some hiding place in Oceania itself.”
 

“Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party–an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought”…George Orwell, “1984″

From the Chicago Tribune August 29, 2011.

“Anti-tea party e-mail leads to slap on wrist for human rights investigator”

“An investigator for Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s human rights agency got a slap on the wrist for forwarding an e-mail before last November’s election that contended the Republican Party had been hijacked by “dangerous, radical hate mongers called the ‘Tea Party.’ ”

The e-mail, sent on a state computer, claimed talk show host Glenn Beck and former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin led the tea party effort to “take down President Obama and the government.”

Following an investigation, officials at the Illinois Department of Human Rights delivered a verbal reprimand to Alvin Forbes Sr. in the spring. The case came to light Monday when the state’s Executive Ethics Commission published the details on its web site.

The pro-Democratic e-mail urged readers to fight at the ballot box against a tea party political coup because “these people hate blacks. They hate Latinos. They hate Muslims and have at times made many anti-Semitic statements. They hate gays. They hate any moderate Republican who might be likely to cooperate with Obama.”

Forbes, 56, of Chicago, said in an interview that the case against him was “petty as hell.” He called the reprimand “bogus,” saying he sent the e-mail accidentally to some of his co-workers. He said his sister had sent it to him.”

Chad Fornoff, executive director of the Executive Ethics Commission, said the violation “was egregious enough to warrant publication” on its web site. The commission can opt not to publish a case unless discipline includes several days’ suspension.

Forbes said he was grilled about the incident by two officials and the executive inspector general’s office reviewed his e-mails back to January 2003. When he learned of the recommendation for discipline, Forbes said, “I’m looking at this thing and thinking, ‘Wow, we’ve got much bigger fish to fry.’ ”

In its explanation, the Human Rights Department noted Forbes was given an oral reprimand for political activity on his state computer and it took into account Forbes had “no prior discipline and his work performance has been good.”

“Even though I may think (the punishment) was not appropriate, it’s the lowest level of discipline that they could initiate,” Forbes said. “And they had to do something to justify what they are doing.””

Read more:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-antitea-party-email-leads-to-slap-on-wrist-for-human-rights-investigator-20110829,0,2037071.story