Months ago, just after he finished mopping the floor with pro se defendant Eddie Cabe, Haywood County attorney Rusty McLean said, “You should always have a lawyer.”

Apparently, someone heard him. 

Although none of them were personally in room 3A of the Haywood County Courthouse, pornographer Larry Flynt, Rev. Jerry Falwell, former President Bill Clinton, President Donald Trump, pop sensation Sonny Bono and acclaimed singer Cher have all emerged in a lawsuit brought by a local Republican Party official who says she’s been injured by a series of mocking memes. 

Sticks and stones may break some bones, but according to a lawsuit filed by one local politico, the memes can sometimes hurt, too. 

In what appears to be the culmination of a strange saga that has played out from Haywood County to Raleigh since last spring, members of the North Carolina Republican Party voted to ban four Haywood County activists from party activity.

Charges of “political party disloyalty” first leveled by the Haywood County Republican Party this past May against a group of local Republican dissidents known as the “Haywood Five” will move forward to the state level, The Smoky Mountain News has confirmed.

High political drama — the likes of which is not often seen in rural counties — came to a head last week as a Haywood County Republican Party Executive Committee member was removed from his post.

The continuing saga of the Haywood County Republican Party’s attempts to deal with a troublesome member of an antagonistic faction will take a dramatic turn this week, one way or the other.

In a story that sounds like it should have come out of Moscow in 1938 or Havana in 1961 rather than Waynesville in 2017, several Haywood County citizens have allegedly been charged with political “party disloyalty.”