“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him,” – the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
I had decided against penning a sendoff to Bob Bolus, who died last week at 83. Public reaction to his passing changed my mind.
Rather than give Bob’s death the attention he so insatiably craved in life, I felt it sufficient to share Times-Tribune Staff Writer Jim Lockwood’s excellent news obituary on antisocial media with a short personal blurb:
“I butted heads with Bob for the better part of 30 years. I hated the hateful things he said — some of which he believed and some he said for attention — but I never hated him. May he be at peace.”
It was a strained but genuine gesture of grace extended to a longtime ideological adversary and the loved ones he left behind. As widely despised as Bob was, many close to him loved him just as much.
Most read my gesture for what it was, but some judged it as unwarranted and/or insincere because I didn’t hate or love on Bob enough to suit their personal tastes. I expected that. It comes with the territory, but some of the feedback was so resentful and/or disingenuous I felt compelled to clap back.
Some scolded me for “humanizing” Bob, as if that’s necessary when referring to a human being. Others took issue with me saying I “hated” the hateful things Bob said, insinuating that I hated Bob, not the ugly invective that was his trademark.
For the record, Bob was, in fact, a human being. I did hate the hateful things he said, which I expressed to his snarling face countless times. He loved that I hated the hateful things he said, and understood that I didn’t hate him.
Bob didn’t hate me, either. He hated most of what I had to say, but reveled in anything I wrote about him, the meaner and funnier the better. We had many civil, even jovial private conversations over the years. I don’t regret that, and won’t apologize for it.
What Bob hated most about me is that I pitied him in the same way I did Archie Bunker, the grouchy, dimwitted loudmouth who became America’s best-known bigot on the 1970s TV sitcom “All in the Family.” Like Bunker, Bob was the product of an antiquated upbringing and a relic of an age when people were placed in boxes based on race, sex, religion, politics, economic status, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Any time minorities dared step outside their assigned boxes or expressed their humanity in nonconformist ways, bigots like Bob and Bunker read it as a threat and responded with the infantile intolerance they were taught as children.
Bunker mellowed with age and experience. Bob did not. I called Bob “Cro-MAGA Man,” because he was MAGA decades before Trump descended his gold-plated escalator and got busy burning down the world. Like millions of other old, angry white men who pined for a time when America was “Great” because they came first, Bob idolized Trump. To the Bobs of the world, Trump is the political Messiah who freed them to be who they are – perpetually aggrieved, obnoxious and afraid of any challenge to their personal preferences and prejudices.
I hate every hateful thing Trump does and says, but I don’t hate him. I refuse to give him that, because it would only hurt me. Hate is Trump’s political lifeblood. To paraphrase Twain, if you took the malice out of him, he’d disappear.
Like Trump, Bob was an ignorant, arrogant bigot, a bully who punched down every chance he got and picked on the most vulnerable people in our community for daring to be who they are. He was also a successful businessman who employed thousands and a philanthropist who fed vulnerable people at his annual Christmas dinner.
Neither side of Bob’s conflicted character justifies or disqualifies the other. Bob was who he was, and never pretended to be anyone else. In the wake of his death, many commenters insisted on all or nothing — just like Bob did.
In a column published last June, I condemned Bob — then a “candidate” for Scranton mayor — for a particularly hateful, homophobic rant he spewed at a Scranton City Council meeting at the start of Pride Month. Bob was triggered by a transgender woman who dared to correctly point out that as a convicted felon, he was ineligible to serve as mayor in the impossible event that he was elected.
Bob repeatedly misgendered the young woman, called her “sweetheart” and slandered the Pride flag as an “affront” to military veterans as if scores of LGBTQ+ patriots hadn’t laid down their lives for this nation and the ideals it’s constitutionally and morally bound to uphold and guarantee for all Americans.
“Respect is earned, not demanded,” Bob barked, with no apparent sense of irony. “They (LGBTQ+) didn’t earn the respect they demand.”
At the time, Jessica Rothchild, the first openly gay member of council, was in her second term. She won the seat due in no small part to Bob’s hateful public crusade to “keep da gays offa consil.”
In the column, I explained my long, fraught relationship with Bob in simple terms:
“I accept Bob for who he is — a bitter, petty old crank who’s mad at a world he won’t even try to understand and who will say anything to get attention.”
Sound like anyone else in the news?
Bob said plenty of hateful things about me, but I never took it personally or him seriously. More than once, he used the public podium to “shame” me over my near-fatal struggle with alcoholism. Years later, he privately apologized and congratulated me on getting sober and staying that way, one day at a time. I forgave him, but obviously, I didn’t forget.
I even earned space on one of Bob’s obnoxious “Trump Trailers,” a dubious distinction I wore as a badge of honor. Bob and I posed for a picture in front of a photoshopped image of Joe Biden sniffing my hair. MAGA trolls still post the image on my antisocial media pages. Gives me a grin every time.
I don’t blame those who greeted the news of Bob’s death with glee. He earned their disdain and reveled in it. Bob loved to be hated. I hate to admit it, but so do I. To the darker side of my character, it feels good to play the bad guy. I don’t expect most people to understand that, but Bob did, and, in our unhealthy way, we bonded over it.
Plenty of people hated Bob, but he left behind many who loved him. I wish them peace and comfort as they lay him to rest and learn to live without him. Hope that’s OK with the haters.
As always, I speak as a sinner. It’s neither my place nor my desire to preach to anyone about how to live or remember the dead. The best I can do is try to live by Dr. King’s teaching and remember that no one is more in need of grace than the graceless.
Whether you judge Bob Bolus as an irredeemable bigot or an admirable “man of da peeple,” consider that he’s been dead almost a week and throngs of people are still dancing on his grave.
Bob would’ve loved that.
CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, is done writing about Bob Bolus. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky