The (truly) Grand Old Party

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post-37405525665248034742006-11-16T08:25:00.000-08:002006-11-16T08:50:32.054-08:00The (truly) Grand Old Party<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5709/831508705138548/1600/burning%20cross.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5709/831508705138548/400/burning%20cross.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <blockquote>The whites, too, by nature, were the shrewder race. A man with some evil design, would not he be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be hidden?</blockquote> <div style="text-align: right;">-- Melville, Benito Cereno </div> The passage is one of Captain Delano's many erroneous conjectures as to what is going on before his eyes. Unwilling and unable to believe that a group of African slaves could organize a rebellion and control a Spanish vessel, Delano goes one by one through his theories, each one more convoluted and less probable than the last, but each designed to somehow maintain for him his impression of his own superiority, and the superiority of his race. The Republican Party, that shrewd, white race, is once again showing what Spenser might have called its deformed nether regions. It must be pathological. After being wiped out in the polls, the final nail in the coffin delivered by Jim Webb in Virginia, whose principal qualities are his opposition to the war and the fact that he <a href="http://vaprogressive.com/?p=469">is not George Allen</a>, they still can't help simply being a bunch of racist assholes. To wit: they have now <a href="http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/9071.html">re-installed the Grand Master of them all</a>, the segregationist Trent Lott, in a leadership position. This is a man who, after publicly lamenting the 1948 defeat of the virulently racist Strom Thurmond in the race for the presidency, <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/17/lott.bet.transcript/index.html">went on BET</a> and, with a straight face, said he voted against the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday because, wait for it:<blockquote>I'm not sure we in America, certainly not white America and the people in the South, fully understood who this man was; the impact he was having on the fabric of this country.</blockquote>Presumably he also didn't know much about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Civil_Rights_Workers_Murders">the events of June 21, 1964</a>, in the town of Philadelphia, Missippi, when he advised Ronald Reagan to kick off his campaign there with a speech about "States' Rights." In short, the Republican party just voted for, to borrow a phrase from Chinua Achebe, "a thoroughgoing racist." Senator Macaca is out, but we just can't seem to shake Mr. Lott. When will these people ever grow up?JLBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10987058554014193721noreply@blogger.com