The intense battle regarding the Greenlight Pinellas transportation tax initiative that Pinellas County voters will decide on in November took a decidedly fouler turn on Friday, when Dr. David McKalip penned a post on his blog titled, "The Friday Funnies: Hitler LOSES it Over Greenlight Train Fiasco." The video featured edited footage of a character meant to be Adolf Hitler giving order to four "soldiers" — all associated with Greenilght Pinellas — Pinellas County Commissioner and PSTA chair Ken Welch, Yes on Greenlight spokesman Jeff Danner, Pinellas County Commissioner Susan Latvala and St. Pete Chamber president Chris Steinocher.
It was taken down shortly afterwards.
Greenlight Pinellas is the transit tax swap that would raise sales taxes by a penny in order to dramatically enhance bus service and create a 24-mile light-rail network running from St. Petersburg to Clearwater.
When contacted on Friday afternoon by CL, McKalip, a fierce critic of Greenlight, said that the video was created by fellow Tea Party activist Tom Rask and "is completely benign. But he won’t publish it. Tom Rask is the man to talk to."
However McKalip did direct us to his blog, where he posted a statement after being queried by reporters about the video. In the post he says he can't understand what the fuss is all about, and adding that Greenlight supporters were getting "desperate," since there was "nothing offensive in the script at all."
Sorry folks, the original creator of this video (Tom Rask) has decided to make it “private” on You Tube. It was the typical Hilter Valkyrie scene parody that has been done hundreds of time all over YouTube. There was nothing offensive in the script at all. However, the creator was worried that the Greenlight Pinellas people are getting desperate, since they are losing so badly to pass the highest sales tax in the state. The Desparation of Greenlight supporters would lead them to inappropriately attack its creator for making it public to deflect people from the facts on this $3 billion rail boondoggle. It is a shame when politicians create a chill on free speech with their inappropriate attacks on such reasonable parodies simply to draw attention away from the fact that they want to create the highest sales tax in the state to make a bunch of cronies wealthy.
"Apparently, McKalip thought it was funny to compare the Greenlight Pinellas campaign to the Nazis and the men who perpetrated mass genocide," Yes on Greenlight campaign manager Joe Farrell told CL in an email on Friday.
Farrell said he was not shocked, but was angry that "good people like Chris Steinocher, Ken Welch, Susan Latvala and Jeff Danner are continuously forced to share the same stage as this man. All they want to do is make Pinellas a better place to live. David McKalip wants to drag it through the mud."
And he referred to the moment when most people first heard about Dr. McKalip — in July of 2009 when he sent out a racist email depicting President Obama as an African witch doctor. In the days that followed the revelation of that email, he resigned from the Pinellas Medical Association. (At the time he was also a delegate to the American Medical Association, who condemned the email.)
McKalip apologized after the incident and has attempted to bring his brand of Tea Party conservativism into the mainstream of Republican politics in Pinellas County in recent years, but has been unsuccessful in doing so. He lost in his bid for a seat on the St. Pete City Council last fall to Darden Rice.
Fellow traveler Tom Rask has also been unsuccessful at the ballot box. He lost last month to John Morroni in the GOP Primary for Pinellas County Commission's District 6 seat.
But the two have been leading critics of the Greenlight Pinellas measure for the past few years, and argue that in polls that their side is winning (Greenlight supporters say internal polls show the measure is winning). One victory that McKalip has claimed during this campaign was his initial finding that the PSTA board had inappropriately used Department of Homeland Security funds for Greenlight advertising earlier this year.
But undoubtedly this Hitler video controversy is a gift to their critics, who consider them to be too far-right for the moderate brand of politics that plays well in Pinellas.
Tom Rask emailed CL late Friday evening, where he denied having anything to do with a Hitler video with PSTA members involved. He said he had made such a Hitler parody video, but said it involved Alex Salmond, and not PSTA members. Salmond was the leader of the pro-independence movement in Scotland who resigned yesterday as head of the secessionist Scottish National Party after that bid fell short.
"There is no 'situation,' which is how you describe it," Rask writes to CL, saying that he has written the same response to reporters for the Tribune and Times, in which he wrote:
You asked via text message about "the video everyone is talking about".
Do you mean this send-up of the Scottish independence referendum?
\\<\/iframe\>
I put it up this morning, it is still a rough draft.You can make your own at http://downfall.jfedor.org - it's all the rage.
My wife is from Scotland and her brothers are a bit bummed after they voted "NO". So I did it to give them a laugh.
In no way am I comparing Alex Salmond to Hitler.
When asked by the Times' Tony Marrero whether the video contained a "Hitler scene in Inglorious Bastards," Rask responds, "Well, there is no such video, nor would I ever make one. I don't like Questin Tarantino."(sic).
But Yes on Greenlight's Joe Farrell says, "I don’t know who made the video, but I saw it with my own eyes, sent to me by David McKalip via email. It was offensive."
Also weighing in critically was Kevin Thurman with the pro-Greenlight group, Connect Tampa Bay, who said in a statement, "As supporters of Greenlight Pinellas, our organization is deeply offended but it ...shows why they are not serious people that need to be covered by your papers. We need to have a conversation with voters about choices for the future: cut & privatize from NTFT/Ax the Tax or a vision for the future built by thousands of citizens."
