Noonan's New Fan Club

by Daryl Gale

This week Philadelphia is playing host to the National Baptist Convention USA’s annual session, with about 30,000 zealous faithful expected to attend. The meeting’s purpose, according to NBC USA, is to “engage in endeavors to advance the work of Christ.” But next week, we’ll get an earful from a completely different group of Baptists, with a completely different agenda.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., alternately known as the Aryan Rights Brigade, will descend on Fourth and Market streets for a rally in front of Fox Television studios next Friday in support of fired news anchor Rich Noonan. Klanwatch, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the U.S. Justice Department list the Aryan Rights Brigade as an established hate group.

Noonan, who was pink-slipped by Fox in February, recently filed a lawsuit against the station, citing race as a major factor in his ouster. To prove he means business, he hired legendary legal hit man Richard Sprague to take his case. (Noonan is white, and contends that the station wanted more "color" in its evening newscasts, evidenced by the fact that his replacement, Dave Huddleston, is black.) He's also filed a complaint to that effect with the Human Relations Commission, accusing Fox news director Roger LaMay of making anti-Semitic and racial slurs.

This image adornes the church website.

The Westboro Baptist Church is led by the outspoken Pastor Fred Phelps, who's earned a national reputation for his virulent attacks against gays, (we kid you not, the church's web address is www.godhatesfags.com, and features a photo of murder victim Matthew Shepard burning in hell and crying out in agony that he should have listened to Pastor Phelps) and isn't too enamored with the idea of diversity, period. Phelps says that racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities have taken over America's newsrooms, and claims the TV news deck is stacked against America's real minority, straight white men.

"Fox is the biggest among the hypocrites in the media," Phelps says, contacted by phone this week at the church in Topeka. "They don't want diversity, and they don't want free speech. They have a homosexually themed agenda, and a false diversity. Anyone who stands up to speak for the average white American is not listened to over there, so how is that diverse? The homosexuals and multicultural diversity people have the media scared to death to say anything in support of white Americans."

The primary purpose of the trip from Topeka to Philadelphia, Phelps says, is to protest the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention next weekend at Loews Hotel. The firing of Noonan under these racially charged circumstances is a secondary protest, considering Phelps just heard the Noonan story last week. Phelps also can't say yet how many of his followers will show up here, but promises that it will be enough to make their voices heard.

Fox news director Roger LaMay shrugs off the planned protest as no big deal.

"They called and said they'd be here the 13th," LaMay says, "As long as they behave peacefully, they're within their rights to protest and we defend that right. But for the record, we're comfortable with our track record on diversity issues, and we'll let that record speak for itself. I just hope they would deal with the reality, not just the headlines."

For Rich Noonan, that reality these days is the knowledge that by bringing suit against his former employer, his chances of being hired as a news professional anywhere in the Philadelphia market are slim to none.

"I'm free to work anywhere, but I probably won't be offered a job because of the negative publicity," Noonan says. "But I knew that when I filed the lawsuit."

Noonan also says he just heard about his new supporters from Topeka, and isn't too happy about it.

"I did not solicit nor do I welcome the support of any group which preaches hate and racial intolerance," he says. "I wish they would stay in Kansas. I regret having my name attached in any way to these people or their cause."

And you thought politics makes strange bedfellows.