Sonics Owner Aubrey McClendon Is Pure Evil

Stealing Seattle's basketball team apparently isn't keeping Sonics owner Aubrey McClendon busy, so he's found another community to screw over: tiny Saugatuck, Michigan.

That's the Denison Dunes--413 acres of pristine shoreline where the Kalamazoo River meets Lake Michigan. Saugatuck's citizens have long wanted to add the land to an adjacent state park, but McClendon has other plans--building a gated community for millionaires.

The Concerned Citizens for Saugatuck State Park lament:

Mr. McClendon, with the resources of 1.6 billion dollars behind him, blithely outbid numerous organizations which had for years, in some cases decades, clearly stated their intent to purchase the Denison property with the desire to conserve it for future generations.

When McClendon isn't robbing communities of their natural or cultural heritage, he's funding anti-gay groups, trying to elect conservative Republicans, and, most chilling of all, giving $6 million to Duke University.

In an open letter to McClendon, the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance begs him to reconsider, citing "legacies of families like the Rockefellers whose donations of land helped create Acadia National Park in Maine and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming."

"On summer Sundays, families gather amidst the splendor of sand dunes created over six thousand years ago. Children play in the waves and build sand castles on the beach. Couples meander arm in arm to watch another sunset."

An appeal to McClendon's heart? Hrm...good luck with that.

Oklahoma City taxpayers will vote March 4th on whether to spend $97 million dollars to lure McClendon and the Sonics to their town.

If the Sonics do leave, at least it may mean we've seen the last of this rapacious, terrible man. At least until Howard Schultz sells him our drinking water.

We're reminded of a very inappropriate comment made by Missouri senator Stuart Symington after Charlie Finley moved baseball's Athletics from Kansas City to the Bay Area.

Said Symington on the floor of the Senate: "Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima."