Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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A book came out in Germany a few years ago about the gallows humor some Germans employed toward the end of World War II. According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, one joke went something like this:

Hitler and Hermann Goring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower shortly before the Allies' victory. Surveying the ruins below, Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. "Why don't you just jump?" suggests Goring.

That is pretty funny stuff until you read "Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead!" and learn it resulted in the execution of the unfortunate woman overheard telling it.

Which bring us to Roanoke landlord, Hitler idolizer and self-styled Nazi joker Bill White. He also told "jokes" the authorities did not find one bit funny.

In one, White published (online) a magazine cover with a picture of the first black general-election presidential candidate in this nation's history, mere weeks before the election. He drew a sharpshooter's gun sights around Barack Obama's head, above the headline "Kill This Nigger?"

Get it?

In another, White published the name, address, sexual orientation and telephone number of a juror who found a white supremacist guilty, along with some other details of the man. It sounded like encouragement for other Nazi yahoos to visit the man.

Yuk, yuk.

He pulled much the same gag with nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, who is black. And with a Canadian lawyer and a New Jersey mayor. And some others.

Ho, ho, ho.

So the authorities charged him with all kinds of federal crimes and locked him up.

In many of the cases above, White encouraged his mentally deficient followers to teach his victims about the consequences of exercising their First Amendment rights -- like harassing phone calls and unannounced visits from clownish Nazis.

Tuesday, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that White's "jokes" were protected by that same First Amendment.

As painful as it is to admit it, the judge's ruling seems correct. And it's likely the same thing will befall other federal charges still pending against White, after he gets back to Roanoke.

You might say White is lucky he doesn't live under the Reich he so fervently admires.

But let's not make the mistake of portraying him as some sort of First Amendment martyr. He's more of a First Amendment pervert.

His "jokes," or protected speech or whatever you want to call them, were designed to inspire fear and dread in his targets and little more.

What else could White have intended, five years ago, when he wrote on his Web site that he wished Brenda Hale, president of the Roanoke branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, would be lynched?

Or when, last year, he published former NAACP housing committee chairwoman Brenda Walker's address, phone number and church?

"I don't think he has the potential to change his demeanor, his behavior, his Web site," Hale told me Wednesday. "He's just got this compulsion to do these things. . ... This is something that we're always worried and concerned about."

Walker told me she is terrified at the prospect of White's homecoming.

A few things have changed, however. As White returns to Roanoke, his low-rent housing empire is in a bankruptcy-weakened shambles.

More likely than not he is saddled with a mountain of legal bills.

His bully-pulpit Web site has been down for almost a year and its readers have moved on.

White's small band of followers have mostly abandoned him; some have spilled their guts to the FBI, according to what they've posted on the Internet.

Others in the so-called "white power" movement regard him as a costume-Nazi buffoon or a Jewish spy sent to infiltrate them.

We don't know at this point if Hale and Walker are correct in their fears. Will Bill White be the same lonely, psychologically bent hater who fantasizes about power and violence?

Or will he have developed a shred of shame and decency in jail, and just shut the heck up?

It's hard to tell. But there's one thing we do know.

Karma sure can bite, eh?

Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.