August 16, 2015

Anthony Man

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Why stop with Jefferson and Jackson? – Some comments on your story in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel about the Democratic Party attempting to become, retroactively, purer than Caesar’s wife because of recently discovered sins of past heroes.

Mr. Man,

 

Jefferson had slaves and Jackson wasn’t very nice to Native Americans. The horror, the horror….Maybe Debbie Wasserman-Schultz will agree to be flogged a la Henry the Second to atone for past sins. Let’s not forget some other one-time heroes.

Senator Richard Russell and Senator John Stennis spent their entire adult lives trying to keep Black boys from going to school with White girls.

Senator Russell’s name is on the Senate Office Building while Senator Stennis’s name is on an aircraft carrier.

Should their names go?

President T. Woodrow Wilson was, if we are to believe Justice Thurgood Marshall, the vilest, most bigoted, most racist national public official in the 20^th century.

Should Princeton University be made to take his name off their buildings?

John Nance Garner and Albin Barkley were Vice Presidents in Democratic administrations. They were stone cold racists who rivaled Senator Bilbo in their hatred of Black folk. Does this diminish the legacies of the Presidents they served under? I quickly add that Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, who was Adlai Stevenson’s running mate in 1952, was outraged by the Brown decision in 1954. In 1962 George Wallace gave voice to this hate. Should Stevenson’s name be struck from the hallowed halls of the pantheon of modern American Liberalism?

President Roosevelt – Franklin, not Teddy - refused to allow the steam ship Saint Louis to land in America. 900 Germans Jews were returned to Nazi Germany where they promptly went into the ovens. Should we stop using dimes to show our outrage?

Bill Clinton, the undisputed king of the one-eyed trouser snakes, aided and abetted by his wife, allowed Ricky Ray Rector, a Black man with an IQ of 58, to be executed to show he was a Democrat who was tough on crime. How can we protest that?

President Obama is vacationing on Nantucket Island. It was the whaling capitol of the world. [It is ironic that Colonel Drake’s first oil well ended the whale killing business in 3 years after it was drilled. But that’s a story for a different time]

“Save the Whales” was a popular modern American Liberal mantra, its only rival being “Free Tibet”. Because a fictional drowning polar bear has replaced Moby Dick it doesn’t mean that we can forget how poorly we treated the whales. Obama’s vacation makes it harder.

There is no end to post mortem guilt.

That’s why the word “bullshit” will always be in vogue.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET