From Black News.com
Republican Hypocrisy On Byrd's **** Night Ride
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist
The instant Democratic West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd made yet another anguished self-confession that he once belonged to the ****, the Republicans pounced on it. They giddily announced that they'd make his one-time **** membership a big issue in a drive to oust him if he runs again in 2006. Though Byrd makes mention of his **** past in a passing note in his near 800 page autobiography that was released this week, it quickly became the lead news story, and the source of even more Byrd political angst. He called his **** night ride a "foolish" move that haunted him for decades.
Byrd's **** revelation is hardly new. He's admitted it often, and every time he or someone else brings it up, the Republicans mercilessly pillory him for it. Whenever a Republican makes a racial foot-in-the mouth gaffe, and Democrats publicly lambaste him for it, **** leaders quickly and reflexively scream, "But what about Byrd," and pound the Democrats for having a former Klansman as a top Democrat.
But Byrd has come clean and apologized for that sordid episode in his past. Even more galling to Republicans, he's been a thorn in their side on Bush's war policies. But even if Byrd hadn't uttered a mumbling word critical of Bush's policies, the **** still should be the last to dump on him.
A week before his **** confessional, 14 Republican Senators refused to sign a harmless, non-binding Senate resolution apologizing for lynching. The **** senators gave no coherent reason why they refused to sign. The resolution did not mandate **** restitution, call for tougher hate crime legislation, or criticize the **** for its part in helping to beat back a lynching law. A unanimous Republican vote on the lynching resolution would have sent a strong signal that the **** will do whatever it takes to wipe the dirty stain of racial **** from America's past and present, and not just talk about it. It didn't, and the hit on Byrd makes Republicans seem disingenuous at best and racial hypocrites at worst. But there's no real surprise in that. Byrd flirted with the **** six decades ago. Republicans flirted with them, in the past, and still do today.
It's not just small fry Republicans who have shown a penchant for making foot-in-the mouth racist cracks, and racially loaded attacks. Prominent Republican Presidents set the tone with their own verbal race bashing.
President Eisenhower never got out of the Old South habit of calling blacks "nigras." In an infamous and well-documented outburst at a White House dinner party in 1954, Ike winked, nodded, and whispered to Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren that he understood why white Southerners wouldn't want to "see their sweet little girls required to sit in school alongside some big black buck."
President Nixon routinely peppered his talks with his confidants with derogatory quips about blacks. He enshrined in popular language racially-tinged code words such as, "law and order," permissive society" "welfare cheats," "crime in the streets," "subculture of ****," "subculture of poverty," "culturally deprived" and "lack of family values." And President Reagan once told a black reporter how he would treat black leaders said, "I said to hell with em."
In 1988, President Bush, Sr. made escaped black convict Willie Horton the poster boy for black crime and **** and turned the presidential campaign against his Democrat opponent, Michael Dukakis into a rout. He branded a bill by Senator Ted Kennedy to make it easier to bring employment discrimination suits a "quotas bill" and vetoed it. In his autobiography, My American Journey, Colin Powell called Reagan "insensitive" on racial issues, and tagged Bush's Horton stunt, "a cheap shot."
In 1998, the Republicans had a golden opportunity to loudly denounce race baiting, and racist extremist groups when it was revealed that then Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, and Georgia representative Robert Barr had snuggled up to the pro-segregation, states rights, Council for Conservative Citizens. Not one top Republican publicly denounced Barr or Lott, or demanded that they get out of the Council. In 2001, Senate Majority leader designate Trent Lott dredged up and praised the pro segregation rants of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, it ignited a firestorm of rage. It took nearly a week for Bush to make a stumbling, kind-of, sort of disavowal of Lott.
The Democrats need do no such thing with Byrd. Whatever fumbles and missteps they've made on race in recent years have paled in comparison to that of the Republicans. Beating up on Byrd for something he did as a young hungry, on the make politician decades ago, and for which he has done his mea culpa for, is the worst kind of partisan political one-upmanship. If, or maybe when, the next Republican public official or personality is called on the carpet for a racist outburst, let's see if Republicans publicly jump all over them they way they have on Byrd.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com, an author and political analyst.
PRESS CONTACT: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, 323-296-6331
wow...and the democrats haven't don a single eveil thing to the boogies...not a dayum thing...haven't said a thing that they wish they hadn't have publicly said about blacks....there are no former **** members in the democrat party...nothing of the sort...
just us big black fat rich white **** republican hating on you greasy black blobs...
smh this is one of the reasons WHY i do not subscrice to balck media sources...so f#cking biased it ain't even funny...actually, it is. i read some editorials in essence magazine leading up to the election that made me laugh and nearly spit up myself...will kerry be good for black merica? yes! he'll be another clinton...where's bush at? bush hasn't met with the NAACP so that makes him a racist...smh...why should he meet with a bunch of boogies who lied to black epople saying that this cat stole the 2000 election by not allowing black votes to be counted ect ect....and they've done nothing but call him a racist since 1-20-2001 when....deledt all i was gonna say here, but this is what essence was taling about,...
notice the way your little columnist didn't expose you to racist socialist and how many times they've used our mokey ****? he didn' bring up a single incident of these cats making racist **** comments...THREE ARE MANY IF YOU LOOK FOR THEM...you have to really search because for some reason, whenever a democrat says something stupid about blacks, the media really doesn't want to cover it...it's the opposite with reps...i guess they wasnt to keep the sterotyep going...
...you need to log onto rushlimbaugh.com and he has like a buttload list of democrats saying stuff and putting thier foot in thier mouths about you colored folk....not to mention all the racist political cartoons of condee rice done by liberbal editorialist...
smh this is what i hate about black news sources...i don't even read them...it's like reading what some 6 year old wrote in a big purple crayon...there are some conservite and moderate decent black eds out there who at least try to keep it fair, but 99% of the time, it's nothing but "the republicans are racist, and clinton was like jesus or soemthing...blah blah blah"
i giggle whenever i see a black editorialist commenting on politics... :???:
