Vicki's Marbles & Ames Mayfield's 1st Amendment Stand

11-year-old Cub Scout Ames Mayfield

As one of the many people who actively participated in the Boy Scouts of America during portions of their childhood and early teens, I was fortunate to have multiple opportunities to interact and work with dozens of different scouts (and some really cool adults who volunteered as Den Leaders, Scout Masters, Assistant Scout Masters and instructors) while I was a Cub Scout, and eventually, a Boy Scout.

But I must admit I never met a Scout quite like 11-year-old Ames Mayfield of Broomfield, Colorado.

As you may have read, Mayfield has been making headlines around the globe after his Cub Scout Den Leader booted him out of his local pack for firing off some pretty tough questions at Republican Colorado State Senator Vicki Marble during an October 9th Q&A with his fellow Cub Scouts.

By all accounts, the budding journalist caught Senator Marble off guard when he asked her, "I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun. Why on earth would you want someone who beats their wife to own a gun?"

In light of the horrific mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas on the night of October 1st, it struck me as entirely appropriate for a young person to ask a Republican politician, especially one who backed legislation that would make it easier for convicted domestic abusers to own firearms, to explain why they would support such a measure.

But rather than offer some kind of reasonable justification for her position on gun control, Marble launched into a diatribe of disjointed pro-gun nonsense that sounds like she picked it off a flyer she found in a trashcan at a gun show in Pomona - [side note: I actually went to a gun show in Pomona a few years ago when I was out in California shooting a film, where I saw, among other things for sale, a framed six-foot color portrait of Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler. True.]

Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble

Want to get a better sense of who Vicki Marble is, and what kind of political ideology she represents as the duly elected Republican state senator representing the 23rd District of Colorado?

The good folks over at the Colorado Pols Website took the time to provide actual transcripts of the comments she made to Ames Mayfield and the members of his Cub Scout pack.

Click the link to see for yourself, but Marble never actually answered Mayfield's question about why she would support a domestic abuser having the right to own firearms.

Instead she veered off into bizarre comments about how she has a concealed carry permit, how Las Vegas and Chicago are both "gun-free zones" and the need for "crime control." 

But it was her strange analogy about lions and gazelles that makes me honestly wonder about Vicki's marbles, she said (and remember, she's speaking to Cub Scouts):

"When you look at a lion in Africa going after a gazelle, you do not think that the lion should disarm the gazelle, from having his horns and his hooves to protect himself. Do you? Do you think the gazelle should give up his horns and hooves to protect himself from the lion? A gazelle should have the opportunity to protect itself at any time."

I'm not going to get into the question of whether Senator Marble believes that firearms are actual human appendages and not man-made mechanical devices that are manufactured, but that's just one of a number of borderline loony statements she gave to Ames Mayfield and his fellow Cub Scout pack.

She also told them "I've had friends who have been violently attacked and raped, and I also know they were in a gun-free zone...Had my friend had her gun, maybe the rape wouldn't have happened, and maybe the other woman would still be alive."

(Again, this is from the co-sponsor of a bill in Colorado that would make it easier for convicted domestic abusers to own firearms...)

Seriously, click over to the Colorado Pols Website and read her comments for yourself - if Marble had suddenly pulled out her concealed carry handgun in the middle of that Q&A with the Cub Scouts, dove head-first into a corner while yelling "Fire in the hole!!" it wouldn't surprise me.

Marble answers Ames Mayfield's
questions on October 9th 

Last night I was reading through some of the reader comments posted to the New York Times article about this story, and it was striking to hear how some conservative-leaning Times readers actually attacked 11-year-old Ames Mayfield simply for asking Marble a couple questions - about things that she's said.

One reader accused the kid of being rude and disrespectful.

But as multiple news outlets have reported, the Cub Scouts were instructed to prepare carefully written questions for the Q&A, and as Marble herself told a reporter, "It wasn't much different than the questions I normally field in other meetings."  

But if the answers she gave to that Cub Scout pack are the kind she "normally" gives, it's a rather troubling glimpse into right-wing conservative ideology.

Mayfield wasn't the only kid who asked her tough questions, another Cub Scout asked Marble about fossil fuels - her answer would bring tears of pride to the eyes of EPA head Scott Pruitt.


"Fossil fuels are the only thing we have to give us this building." she told the astonished Cub Scouts,  as she waxed philosophic about the wonders of fossil fuel production, "To give us this great landscape out there and all of the tractors and mowers that keep it well and good. And move those rocks - everything is run by fossil fuels." 

(Never mind that ancient Egyptians used a canal system to transport huge blocks of quarried stone over great distances to the Pyramid construction site in Giza over 4,000 years ago...)

It is of interest to point out that according to Ballotpedia.org, Marble serves on the Colorado legislature's Agricultural, Natural Resources and Energy Committee - where she no doubt brings her unique zeal to advocating for all things fossil fuel.

In all seriousness, it strikes me as troubling that a politician and overt NRA flunky like Marble serves as the State Senate Majority Caucus Leader in Colorado.

And frankly the kind of opinionated nonsense she was dishing out to those Cub Scouts is disturbing.

Colorado Rep Rhonda Fields addressing Marble's
"Chickengate" comments

As Colorado Pols reported, back in 2013 "Marble was the voice behind the infamous "Chickengate" affair, in which she explained in a legislative hearing on poverty that African-Americans have a shorter life-span because they eat too much chicken and barbecue."

After her jaw-dropping comments, Marble (who also made comments about Mexican people eating vegetables until they reach the U.S.) went on to say:

"Although I've got to say I've never had better barbecue and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you, I mean, I love it. Everybody loves it." 

Again, as a former Cub Scout and Boy Scout, I really can't recall a year in which the BSA has been so publicly entwined with political controversy surrounding idiotic and inappropriate statements made by right-wing Republican politicians.

As I blogged about back on July 28th, the BSA was recently under fire for having allowed Fake President to stand in front of thousands of Scouts at the National Jamboree and ramble on incoherently about himself and his political enemies like some kind of delusional drunken tyrant.

The marketing director of the Denver Area Council of the BSA, Nicole Cosme told the Denver Post  that the BSA is "a wholly non-partisan organization and does not promote any one political position, candidate or philosophy." 

And yet the Den Leader of the Broomfield, Colorado Cub Scout pack kicked 11-year-old Ames Mayfield out for asking Vicki Marble questions about positions she holds and things she's said publicly.

By the way Mayfield also asked Marble about her comments in the "Chickengate" controversy - she lied to his face and told him the story was made up by the media and that she'd never said it.

Now who does that sound like?

Kicking a kid out of an organization for asking questions strikes me as distinctly Trump-ian, and an insult to the 1st Amendment Right to Free Speech - the right to hold our politicians accountable for the things they do and say lies at the heart of this thing we call Democracy.

At least that's what it says in the Constitution.