Brindisi honors racist, bigot

Anthony Brindisi has some serious explaining to do after blasting out an email, bragging about honoring L. Frank Baum, creator of the Wizard of Oz and noted bigot.

Here’s a recap of Baum’s most vile comments:

• White Supremacist – Ten years before a tornado whirled Dorothy to a land of multicultural harmony, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” creator L. Frank Baum penned an editorial for the South Dakota newspaper he owned. “The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent,” he wrote, “and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.”
   
• Anti-Native American – Baum called for the extermination of American Indians writing, “Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.” The editorial appeared shortly after the massacre at Wounded Knee.
   
• Anti-Semite – Baum and his wife practiced Theosophy and closely followed the teachings of Helena Blavatsky. Blavatsky preached about a world filled with interracial struggle, where a superior Aryan race toiled against “semi-human” Jews. “Judaism is a religion of hate and malice toward everyone and everything outside itself,” wrote Blavatsky in her “Secret Doctrine.” Decades later, this and other Blavatsky teachings resurfaced in Nazi racial doctrine.