Brett Reese, Greeley school board member, is too shmucky for class

School days, school dazed, Dear old Greeley fool days, Reading and writing and prejudice, Taught to the tune of my firing stick. Ah, the halls of education. Bastions of knowledge and progressive thought. And the occasional crazy school board member...

By Jonathan Shikes

January 14, 2011

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School days, school dazed, Dear old Greeley fool days, Reading and writing and prejudice, Taught to the tune of my firing stick.

Ah, the halls of education. Bastions of knowledge and progressive thought. And the occasional crazy school board member.

Or, as Greeley-Evans school board member Brett Reese likes to think of them: good places to spew racist form letters that someone found on the Internet and even better places to carry concealed weapons.

Last weekend, Reese was taken to task for reading an Internet missive on his radio station, KELS 104.7, denouncing Martin Luther King, Jr. and purporting to tell the real facts about his life.

Reese apparently reads the letter, calling King a sexual degenerate, a Communist and other names, twice a day as a run-up to MLK Day. And while the letter -- which he claims a reader sent to him several years ago --- mixes fact with fiction in an effort to spin King's legacy of tolerance and peace into one of hatred and fear, Reese has stood behind it.

So much so that he now plans to carry his gun to school board meetings, saying he fears for his life, based on threats he says he's received about the radio broadcast. And today, a rival radio broadcaster accused Reese of threatening to shoot him up over ad sales dispute. As a result of that claim, Weld County sheriff's officers suspended Reese's conceal-carry permit.

These are all good lessons for children. Shmucks just get shmuckier, so stay away from them at recess.

For more shmucks, visit our Shmuck of the Week archive.

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