Pop Culture, the Devil, and the Lords of Bakersfield war of words - By N.L. Belardes
There’s a war of words going on between the Bakersfield Californian and the local District Attorney that’s been waged for some time. Turn your granny clock back to 2003: Robert Price, columnist for the Bakersfield Californian, also recently known as ‘Stubble’ the blogger on Bakersfield.com, with the permission of the Bakersfield Californian took a major pot shot at Ed Jagels, the assistant DA, an old commish, the publisher of the Californian at the time, and local justice corruption in a series of news articles titled “The Lords of Bakersfield” The subheading goes as follows: Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teen-age boys. Murder. For years, some prominent local men who led secret lives were rumored to be protected. Whispers surrounding another important man's death prompt the question: Is there really a conspiracy?
A conspiracy, yes. A lot of knowledge about it floating around the undercurrent of Bakersfield society, yes. Someone willing to write a book about a portion of it? That would be me, that would be Ed Humes, and the gal who wrote Valley Fire; so yes again; how about a society of terrified folk, unwilling to go public with their stories? Oh yeah, you know folks are afraid. They still are even after I’ve been throwing ghost stories left and right based on some creepy tales that are still passed around at barbecues in Buck City. But that’s something to explore a little later. Let’s take a brief look at the potential impact on the popular culture because of the 2003 Californian articles…
Quite daunting, the heading font for these 2003 stories that overturned the rock labeled "Lords of Bakersfield" had the look and feel of popular culture film series, The Lord of the Rings. Such ‘font’ usage hinted that Jagels was a local Sauron of sorts, perhaps Bakersfield his land of Mordor, a host of cronies as his orc and goblin henchmen to do his alleged perhaps mythical deeds: filing and losing papers, thuggish phone calling, lawmaking, arresting, slamming together a cop mafia to terrorize and protect, and so forth; goodness knows the land of The Californian was perhaps like the Shire, only this more compact, a grand hobbity brick-made hill where Mr. Price and a host of journalists could lay hidden behind computer terminals, nearly buried underground in a hobbiton villa of journalists, but he the lone Frodo to carry the weight of such dastardly stories on his shoulders, to finger the ring of the ‘Lords of Bakersfield Myth News Articles’ that he must forever wear; and then continue to lay aim at the local witch hunter gone awry, Ed Jagels.
Oh and yes, Price with journalist pen in hand, and from that very Hobbiton, could head straight into his landscape of dark justice and missing files, and has, where hills of bad deals and incarcerated victims, goodness knows, who may be innocent lay interred in lonely countryside prisons for supposed murders, satanic crimes and who knows what; all jailed by that Sauron who plucks folks from the citizenry and simply terrorizes the masses because of his ability to incarcerate. Oh, I’m sure he does throw bad guys in jail. But it makes us all wonder, and angers our dear Frodo-like news man and Gandalf publisher just the same. I dare say it must make him a bit weary at times as the Californian’s dear publisher, Virginia Moorhouse, who like a wizardy white-haired Gandalf must wield Frodo like a staff at times, her grand weapon from her brick-layed Hobbiton tower.
The most recent war in Friday’s August 12 edition of the Bakersfield Californian, and on Bakersfield.com has Robert Price taking aim into the heart of Mordor, where behind the scenes he may be looking for the next big Jagel’s story: a document with Jagel’s name on it that might further implicate the Lord DA evildoer as the grand wizard of wrongdoing. In the meantime, such documents lurk in boxes not yet discovered—that hidden gem, that golden treasure, and Sauron knowing all the while that Frodo-boy Robert Price is searching for that hidden document that could forever nail Jagels and get these Lords stories cast into some equivalent of Mt. Doom: some cyberland pit of Bakersfield lore; so that afterwards, Price can finally move onto the next story in his fascination with the corrosive powers of Bakersfield political and judiciary machinery. Chug-chug-ka-chug sputter they go… he will find more I’m sure.
Just what really happened? Did the dark Lord of justice try grappling with Price first? Yes, this latest media-DA fracas is all about the Richard Maxwell and Sons’ case and who shot who, and who is intimidating who, and Jagels buddies are thinking the Californian was up to polluting the jury pool… And Jagels most hilarious statement? As he, so Sauron-like plays to what he may hope are the mind-manipulated of our mostly Conservative landscape and preaches, “It is sad to contemplate on one hand the lies and distortions with which Maxwell has been painted (by the media), and on the other the free ride given to the man who killed him.”
The hilarity? This is coming from a man who even the rock and rollers of the Rolling Stone took a misguided jab at, who newspapers all over the world have taken jabs at. Here’s a law man stirring the bucket with lawyer-speak. Doesn’t he know folks watch law shows on TV like sitcoms these days? People know lawyers are all actors. People know Sauron deceives just as people know the media always has an agenda. Political? Ask Virginia. Full of integrity? Ask Virginia. Worthy of our time? Certainly. Thank you, Robert Price. He’s as witty as they come. I don't care who put him up to it or the political reasons why.
Why? Because the Californian through Price’s eyes, may just be saying, “Get your facts straight little Jagels of the corrupt Bakersfield system…” Even so, the local newspaper can’t help if people can read, and that a certain fraction of honest citizens actually allow the media to make their decisions for them. The Californian can’t help that. They tell one perspective of the media; they know who their leader is; they know about how much mass consciousness they affect. But it’s not their fault. It’s the individual who chooses to believe. And if some reader of the Californian is interviewed by a DA cronie to be a potential juror, then, so what? Hell, why doesn’t the DA just believe in his prosecution's ability, that maybe he had a slam dunk case? Or is that the problem? Not having a slam dunk case? Hit the rim again Jagels? …he must hate that as he watches the case go flying out of bounds as if on slow-mo, all the while being called in a matter-of-fact play-by-play by the witty and feisty Mr. Price: “There goes Jagels shooting from dowwwnnntowwwnn! Uh-oh. Brick.”
Just read the recent article Price wrote compared to Jagel’s. Price argues, “Where are the missing documents!” While Jagels softly indicates to me, “Bakersfield is a peaceful police force. People complain simply because they do their job.” Is he saying that because a man or woman wears a uniform that suddenly integrity and honesty befall every single officer on the force? Who was that years ago in uniform caught raping and murdering prostitutes at a local cemetery? David Rogers? I think that was his name. I could be wrong. Doesn't matter that he was a sherriff. He was a man in uniform. Who had a local hockey team of cops called, “Excessive Force”? And those battered stuffed seal jokes? Wow… No, there are good cops and bad cops. That’s reality.
Now sift through the comments on ‘Stubble the Lords Hunter’s’ blog—a hint that Bakersfield folks have been afraid, but are now fed up with Jagel’s poor taste in justice.
Most of the comments seem to be media-sided and a few speak out against that. One blog comment states:
Not mutually exclusive... however, the media seems to be one sided on the issue. Blog posters are grouping Maxwell with Jagels and placing the two in the same category. I am not a Jagels fan but I am a supporter of Peace Officers. I beleive that when an Officer of the Law gives an order or a request, that request should be followed. Maxwell's authority as an Officer of the Law is being thrown in the gutter and paralled to Jagels inappropriate actions. The two are seperate people and issues and should be treated as such. Whether Jagels or Tauzers bahaviors were appropriate or not Maxwell was and is not available to defend himself. Give Maxwell's family some peace... after all the man was protecting Bakersfield to the best of his ability. How many bloggers are willing to holster up and serve not knowing what kind of deminished mental capacity or drug enduced person they encounter? People are unpredictable!!
I of course have something to say about such a misinterpretation and try to get at what's really at the heart of the problem:
As a blogger I agree with the last post to a point--if Maxwell was in the right, then lock the bastard Sons up. But if court documents were tampered with and gone missing because the potential to lose a case... well there is the problem... the police officer becomes the victim of both the bastard who shot him, and the court system. That's the problem, and Jagels is apprently at the center of it painting a rosy picture of himself, law, police officers that just isn't always true... I can side against bloggers; I do all the time. But can an officer side against corrupt justice? I doubt it. A blogger isn't a group of people who all have coffee and sit and agree. People who blog are people like yourself. You blogged by commenting, so you're a blogger too. Bloggers are a segment of diversity, not all liberal or Conservative or all a bunch of kids...
Now just why is Bakersfield society so slow to act is Jagels is so corrupt?
Because no one will run against Jagels? Because people are just flat afraid of Jagels sending his legions of orcs to carry away our children, and then our friends, and then lastly, and most tortuously, us, right out from under our beds; those creepy hands of the law telling us we’re satanic when they’re the ones with horns, sharp teeth, and forked tongues… The power of Jagel’s law is the power to intimidate in a court of law, or the threat thereof, and the follow-thru with incarcerating for the sake of creating mass paranoia. Because don’t we all fear the satanic, the child molesters, the orcs, the Sarumans, the cops, the Nazgul, the seal of Jagels being tattooed on our hineys in a dark prison.
Where local promoter Nate Berg was the baseball bat of poor consciousness for alleged intimidation, what is Jagel’s nickname going to be in the end? Maybe it’s time you made up one, not me. I hear local gay entertainer Enrique Fuentes calls Jagels and his ex, ‘J. Edgar Bagels and his cream cheese ex-wife’. But is this really comedy? Is this funny at all? It’s not fun to be scared and I have even had professors scared for my life for writing a book, which story takes place in part one in 1977-1978. Is the Lords of Bakersfield boogeyman really going to get me? No, I’m sure the best collector’s items copies of my book will have three signatures on it: Belardes, Price, and Jagels.
But then, there is humor in some of this if we realize we’re in a society where David Lettermans often calm the nation. In the end if we can’t laugh at our cultural, judicial, political pitfalls—and mock them to some degree—then we will have a really hard time with ever analyzing this mess of local Lords of Bakersfield myth-making in action. Because that is what’s happening. It’s media versus DA, the novelist versus corruption, fears versus boogeymen, and it’s the stuff history books are made of that simply end up concluding something like, “In the Tammany Hall scandal, the beastly boss took bribes for votes…” or in this case, “In the Bakersfield scandals of the early new Millennium, a local district attorney monster incarcerated supposed ghouls for political aim and mass media manipulation of the conservative consciousness…” Why, because the fear of the DA and his alleged corrupt circle is still lasting from intimidation wreaked decades ago.
We can all be afraid, or we can all not be afraid and poke fun, and write books and expose stories and accept that culturally we do need to move on, close certain doors, laugh a little, cry a little, and not let the ghosts of the DA’s current and past consciousness get to us.
A conspiracy, yes. A lot of knowledge about it floating around the undercurrent of Bakersfield society, yes. Someone willing to write a book about a portion of it? That would be me, that would be Ed Humes, and the gal who wrote Valley Fire; so yes again; how about a society of terrified folk, unwilling to go public with their stories? Oh yeah, you know folks are afraid. They still are even after I’ve been throwing ghost stories left and right based on some creepy tales that are still passed around at barbecues in Buck City. But that’s something to explore a little later. Let’s take a brief look at the potential impact on the popular culture because of the 2003 Californian articles…
Quite daunting, the heading font for these 2003 stories that overturned the rock labeled "Lords of Bakersfield" had the look and feel of popular culture film series, The Lord of the Rings. Such ‘font’ usage hinted that Jagels was a local Sauron of sorts, perhaps Bakersfield his land of Mordor, a host of cronies as his orc and goblin henchmen to do his alleged perhaps mythical deeds: filing and losing papers, thuggish phone calling, lawmaking, arresting, slamming together a cop mafia to terrorize and protect, and so forth; goodness knows the land of The Californian was perhaps like the Shire, only this more compact, a grand hobbity brick-made hill where Mr. Price and a host of journalists could lay hidden behind computer terminals, nearly buried underground in a hobbiton villa of journalists, but he the lone Frodo to carry the weight of such dastardly stories on his shoulders, to finger the ring of the ‘Lords of Bakersfield Myth News Articles’ that he must forever wear; and then continue to lay aim at the local witch hunter gone awry, Ed Jagels.
Oh and yes, Price with journalist pen in hand, and from that very Hobbiton, could head straight into his landscape of dark justice and missing files, and has, where hills of bad deals and incarcerated victims, goodness knows, who may be innocent lay interred in lonely countryside prisons for supposed murders, satanic crimes and who knows what; all jailed by that Sauron who plucks folks from the citizenry and simply terrorizes the masses because of his ability to incarcerate. Oh, I’m sure he does throw bad guys in jail. But it makes us all wonder, and angers our dear Frodo-like news man and Gandalf publisher just the same. I dare say it must make him a bit weary at times as the Californian’s dear publisher, Virginia Moorhouse, who like a wizardy white-haired Gandalf must wield Frodo like a staff at times, her grand weapon from her brick-layed Hobbiton tower.
The most recent war in Friday’s August 12 edition of the Bakersfield Californian, and on Bakersfield.com has Robert Price taking aim into the heart of Mordor, where behind the scenes he may be looking for the next big Jagel’s story: a document with Jagel’s name on it that might further implicate the Lord DA evildoer as the grand wizard of wrongdoing. In the meantime, such documents lurk in boxes not yet discovered—that hidden gem, that golden treasure, and Sauron knowing all the while that Frodo-boy Robert Price is searching for that hidden document that could forever nail Jagels and get these Lords stories cast into some equivalent of Mt. Doom: some cyberland pit of Bakersfield lore; so that afterwards, Price can finally move onto the next story in his fascination with the corrosive powers of Bakersfield political and judiciary machinery. Chug-chug-ka-chug sputter they go… he will find more I’m sure.
Just what really happened? Did the dark Lord of justice try grappling with Price first? Yes, this latest media-DA fracas is all about the Richard Maxwell and Sons’ case and who shot who, and who is intimidating who, and Jagels buddies are thinking the Californian was up to polluting the jury pool… And Jagels most hilarious statement? As he, so Sauron-like plays to what he may hope are the mind-manipulated of our mostly Conservative landscape and preaches, “It is sad to contemplate on one hand the lies and distortions with which Maxwell has been painted (by the media), and on the other the free ride given to the man who killed him.”
The hilarity? This is coming from a man who even the rock and rollers of the Rolling Stone took a misguided jab at, who newspapers all over the world have taken jabs at. Here’s a law man stirring the bucket with lawyer-speak. Doesn’t he know folks watch law shows on TV like sitcoms these days? People know lawyers are all actors. People know Sauron deceives just as people know the media always has an agenda. Political? Ask Virginia. Full of integrity? Ask Virginia. Worthy of our time? Certainly. Thank you, Robert Price. He’s as witty as they come. I don't care who put him up to it or the political reasons why.
Why? Because the Californian through Price’s eyes, may just be saying, “Get your facts straight little Jagels of the corrupt Bakersfield system…” Even so, the local newspaper can’t help if people can read, and that a certain fraction of honest citizens actually allow the media to make their decisions for them. The Californian can’t help that. They tell one perspective of the media; they know who their leader is; they know about how much mass consciousness they affect. But it’s not their fault. It’s the individual who chooses to believe. And if some reader of the Californian is interviewed by a DA cronie to be a potential juror, then, so what? Hell, why doesn’t the DA just believe in his prosecution's ability, that maybe he had a slam dunk case? Or is that the problem? Not having a slam dunk case? Hit the rim again Jagels? …he must hate that as he watches the case go flying out of bounds as if on slow-mo, all the while being called in a matter-of-fact play-by-play by the witty and feisty Mr. Price: “There goes Jagels shooting from dowwwnnntowwwnn! Uh-oh. Brick.”
Just read the recent article Price wrote compared to Jagel’s. Price argues, “Where are the missing documents!” While Jagels softly indicates to me, “Bakersfield is a peaceful police force. People complain simply because they do their job.” Is he saying that because a man or woman wears a uniform that suddenly integrity and honesty befall every single officer on the force? Who was that years ago in uniform caught raping and murdering prostitutes at a local cemetery? David Rogers? I think that was his name. I could be wrong. Doesn't matter that he was a sherriff. He was a man in uniform. Who had a local hockey team of cops called, “Excessive Force”? And those battered stuffed seal jokes? Wow… No, there are good cops and bad cops. That’s reality.
Now sift through the comments on ‘Stubble the Lords Hunter’s’ blog—a hint that Bakersfield folks have been afraid, but are now fed up with Jagel’s poor taste in justice.
Most of the comments seem to be media-sided and a few speak out against that. One blog comment states:
Not mutually exclusive... however, the media seems to be one sided on the issue. Blog posters are grouping Maxwell with Jagels and placing the two in the same category. I am not a Jagels fan but I am a supporter of Peace Officers. I beleive that when an Officer of the Law gives an order or a request, that request should be followed. Maxwell's authority as an Officer of the Law is being thrown in the gutter and paralled to Jagels inappropriate actions. The two are seperate people and issues and should be treated as such. Whether Jagels or Tauzers bahaviors were appropriate or not Maxwell was and is not available to defend himself. Give Maxwell's family some peace... after all the man was protecting Bakersfield to the best of his ability. How many bloggers are willing to holster up and serve not knowing what kind of deminished mental capacity or drug enduced person they encounter? People are unpredictable!!
I of course have something to say about such a misinterpretation and try to get at what's really at the heart of the problem:
As a blogger I agree with the last post to a point--if Maxwell was in the right, then lock the bastard Sons up. But if court documents were tampered with and gone missing because the potential to lose a case... well there is the problem... the police officer becomes the victim of both the bastard who shot him, and the court system. That's the problem, and Jagels is apprently at the center of it painting a rosy picture of himself, law, police officers that just isn't always true... I can side against bloggers; I do all the time. But can an officer side against corrupt justice? I doubt it. A blogger isn't a group of people who all have coffee and sit and agree. People who blog are people like yourself. You blogged by commenting, so you're a blogger too. Bloggers are a segment of diversity, not all liberal or Conservative or all a bunch of kids...
Now just why is Bakersfield society so slow to act is Jagels is so corrupt?
Because no one will run against Jagels? Because people are just flat afraid of Jagels sending his legions of orcs to carry away our children, and then our friends, and then lastly, and most tortuously, us, right out from under our beds; those creepy hands of the law telling us we’re satanic when they’re the ones with horns, sharp teeth, and forked tongues… The power of Jagel’s law is the power to intimidate in a court of law, or the threat thereof, and the follow-thru with incarcerating for the sake of creating mass paranoia. Because don’t we all fear the satanic, the child molesters, the orcs, the Sarumans, the cops, the Nazgul, the seal of Jagels being tattooed on our hineys in a dark prison.
Where local promoter Nate Berg was the baseball bat of poor consciousness for alleged intimidation, what is Jagel’s nickname going to be in the end? Maybe it’s time you made up one, not me. I hear local gay entertainer Enrique Fuentes calls Jagels and his ex, ‘J. Edgar Bagels and his cream cheese ex-wife’. But is this really comedy? Is this funny at all? It’s not fun to be scared and I have even had professors scared for my life for writing a book, which story takes place in part one in 1977-1978. Is the Lords of Bakersfield boogeyman really going to get me? No, I’m sure the best collector’s items copies of my book will have three signatures on it: Belardes, Price, and Jagels.
But then, there is humor in some of this if we realize we’re in a society where David Lettermans often calm the nation. In the end if we can’t laugh at our cultural, judicial, political pitfalls—and mock them to some degree—then we will have a really hard time with ever analyzing this mess of local Lords of Bakersfield myth-making in action. Because that is what’s happening. It’s media versus DA, the novelist versus corruption, fears versus boogeymen, and it’s the stuff history books are made of that simply end up concluding something like, “In the Tammany Hall scandal, the beastly boss took bribes for votes…” or in this case, “In the Bakersfield scandals of the early new Millennium, a local district attorney monster incarcerated supposed ghouls for political aim and mass media manipulation of the conservative consciousness…” Why, because the fear of the DA and his alleged corrupt circle is still lasting from intimidation wreaked decades ago.
We can all be afraid, or we can all not be afraid and poke fun, and write books and expose stories and accept that culturally we do need to move on, close certain doors, laugh a little, cry a little, and not let the ghosts of the DA’s current and past consciousness get to us.
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Saturday, August 13, 2005.
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