A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.If you look at the pictures accompanying the article you can see how insane the right has become. It makes the right wing nuts of the 1950s and early 1960s look down right genteel and sane.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Political Madness
The crazy right is out in force in the US. The "tea party" protests are ugly and getting uglier. Here is a bit from a report in the Huffington Post:
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2 comments:
Its really something to see in our enlightened age; so much racial hatred and superstition. We have not progressed all that much in this country and it goes to show how much can stay the same. I take heart by hoping that these are indeed a small part of the population, but then I wonder how they get so much media coverage. And, how does this element through history gain control of the whole nation and cause war and destruction of life and sometimes the entire society falls prey to their hatred.
You are right Thomas. This is particularly ugly. The good news is that the heated rhetoric will die away. Saner heads will prevail. All those hysterial stands claiming that "the end of the world at hand" will die out and something like "business as usual" will return.
The racist and sexist rhetoric is regrettable. The good news is that it is a lot less volatile and hatefull than what I saw 50 years ago. The bigots are slowly ceding the turf. (Just like it took over 130 years after the Civil War for the Confederate battle flag to finally be removed from all those state flags of the Old South.)
I still remember the horror of church bombings in the Deep South, the KKK pulling Freedom Riders from buses and beating them (and leaving some with permanent brain damage), the fire hoses turned on black kids, the thuggish police charging political protesters and beating them to the ground. Those are scenes burned into my memory that are hopefully gone forever. But they were a particularly ugly time in US history.
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