Local Springfield activist and PURPLE Coalition media director Ken Pacha has delivered a masterclass in progressive hypocrisy. A phone call recording posted online by Joey Chernis captured Pacha unleashing a stream of graphic homophobic slurs and violent threats.
On the call, Pacha told Chernis that “your little redneck buddy’s been fucking you in the ass, you little bitch,” declared “your dad is a dead faggot, bitch,” and issued direct death threats: “You’ll get fucking killed, Jo… I’ll fucking kill you” and “Bitch, I’ll cut your fucking throat.”
This wasn’t some ancient clip or ambiguous quote. It was a sustained, deliberate verbal assault from a man who has built his public brand on fighting “hate,” “bigotry,” and demanding accountability from others.
Pacha’s First Response: 30 Days of Clown Memes Justified Death Threats
Instead of owning the language and threats, Pacha posted a long Facebook essay framing himself as the real victim. He complained of “over 27 posts,” manipulated photos, and alleged harassment of his mother and wife. He admitted using harsh language but spent most of the post justifying his rage and arguing that some people “deserve every ounce of hate.”
What Pacha portrayed as a month-long campaign of terror that drove him to threaten murder was, in reality, little more than satirical AI-generated images depicting him as a circus clown. That was the core of the “harassment” he cited.
Ironically, Pacha routinely does this exact same thing to other people.
He has repeatedly posted clown-themed mockery of Springfield Mayor Misty Buscher, including images portraying her as a circus clown. What Pacha treats as an existential attack requiring death threats when it happens to him is apparently just standard operating procedure when he is the one posting the memes.
The man who claims weeks of clown pictures and poop jokes justified calling someone’s father a “dead faggot” and threatening to slit their throat has zero problem dishing out identical juvenile trolling to the sitting mayor and other political opponents on a near-daily basis. The fragility is obvious: he can dish it out, but he completely loses control when the same low-effort satire is aimed back at him.
Tiara Standage Forces a Second Apology
Tiara Standage, president of the PURPLE Coalition, was not satisfied with Pacha’s initial victim narrative. She posted that it is “very hurtful” when someone causes harm and then “doubles down and seeks social media validation” instead of taking responsibility.
Only after that public pushback did Pacha issue a second statement, this one more carefully aimed at “my friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ space.” He expressed regret for using “that word,” claimed deep sorrow, and quickly noted that he was “already signed up for volunteering at Pridefest” while offering PR services to the Phoenix Center.
The second post was classic damage control — heavy on ally signaling, light on any real reckoning with the death threats or the specific slurs.
Standage remained unconvinced. She posted a simple, pointed question:
“How genuine is an apology if it has to be prompted several times?”
The Cancellation Test Pacha Would Never Apply to Himself
The hypocrisy becomes even clearer when you apply Pacha’s own standards. If Mayor Misty Buscher — or any conservative city council member — had been recorded saying the exact same things Pacha said on that call, he would have led the charge to cancel her completely. He would have been at city hall with a megaphone, flooding social media, organizing protests, and demanding her immediate resignation and permanent removal from public life. He would have called it proof of deep-seated bigotry that disqualifies anyone from civic participation.
The Rules Are for Other People
Pacha has positioned himself as a leading voice against “hate” in Springfield. Yet when personally provoked by the same style of clown memes he regularly posts about others, the mask slipped and out came raw homophobic filth and murder threats.
This is the recurring pattern: the rules against slurs, threats, and dehumanizing language are not real principles held by leftists. They are weapons to be used against political enemies. When one of their own violates them over something as trivial as being turned into a meme, the response is lengthy self-justification followed by prompted, optics-focused apologies.
Homophobia = BAD … Violent Threats = Completely Fine?
What stands out most clearly from both of Pacha’s apology posts and the overwhelming majority of comments is how intensely everyone fixated on the homophobic slur while treating the violent death threats as barely worth mentioning.
Pacha spent considerable time in his second post expressing deep sorrow for using “that word” and betraying the LGBTQIA+ community, yet he offered zero apology for telling Chernis he would “get you fucking killed,” “cut your fucking throat,” or “I’ll fucking kill you.”
The commenters followed the exact same script. They praised his “sincerity,” accepted his explanation, and celebrated his ally signaling over the slur, but almost none expressed any real concern about the explicit murder threats.
To the activist crowd, a homophobic word demanded public contrition and prompted follow-up statements, while openly threatening to slit someone’s throat was apparently just an understandable reaction in the “heat of the moment.”
The priorities could not be clearer: performative horror at language that offends their coalition, and total indifference to actual violent threats when the person making them is one of their own.