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Guilt by Association?
by Dan Lee
wolfe-pack@hotmail.com
Presidential
hopeful John McCain seems to be a little confused. Perhaps it is a
little senility kicking in, but his news-breaking interview with George
Stephanopoulos in which he announced his rival, Barak Obama's alleged
ties to convicted domestic terrorist and Chicago public figure William
Ayers, seems just a little two-faced. After all, didn't McCain's senior
adviser Charlie Black state in an interview with MSNBC on March 14,
2008:
"What Senator McCain has said repeatedly is that these
candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who
endorse them or people who befriend them...When somebody endorses you
or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views,
not the other way around."
(http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/guilt_by_association.html)
Hmm...that's
odd. It seems that just a month later, in a conference call with
bloggers, McCain said that "Hamas, apparently their North American
spokesperson, is endorsing Senator Obama."
However, let's get
past the whole who's endorsing who thing...One reliable bellwether of a
person's character has always been to see who they admire and choose to
hang out with, right?
In Obama's camp, we have University of
Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee; Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a law
professor at Stanford University; Pentagon veterans include Richard
Danzig, who was Clinton's Navy secretary; Maj. Gen. Jonathan Scott
Gration, a 32-year veteran of the Air Force; and Lawrence Korb, who
served as an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration;
among many others -
(http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080331nj1.htm).
Well,
just for sh*ts and giggles, let's see who McCain surrounds himself
with...Let's start with McCain's senior adviser Charlie Black. Black
was a prominent adviser to the late Sen. Jesse Helms. Wait - isn't this
the same Jesse Helms who said "The Negro cannot count forever on the
kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets,
disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."?
Wow.
Didn't Helms run an ad in his 1990 re-election campaign that featured
"a white man's hands ripping up a rejection notice from a company that
gave the job to a 'less qualified minority'"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms).
And here's where Charlie Black comes along:
"When
the 'White Hands' ad stirred a national controversy, Black appeared on
the PBS's Newshour to defend it. Democratic National Committee chairman
Ron Brown, who was also on the show, said to Black: 'You are a
principal adviser of Jesse Helms. Would you advise him to run that kind
of ad, Charlie? Do you approve of that ad, Charlie?'
Black replied, 'I advised Jesse Helms to do what he's always done.'"
(http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/334586)
Black's
not the only white supremacist McCain has on his staff. An article in
the Washington Post lists some of McCain's advisers, which "included
longtime adviser Richard Quinn, that directed the senator to a crucial
victory in the Palmetto State."
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040502222.html?nav=rss_politics)
Quinn
happens to be the editor-in-chief of the Southern Partisan Quarterly
Review, a neo-confederate rag infamous for its outrageously racist and
inflammatory articles:
"A review of a book on the slave trade in a
1998 issue, for example, includes this passage: ''Mainstream black
leaders perpetuate the myth that vicious white slave traders dragged
Africans from their idyllic homeland to serve as chattel for arrogant
white Americans. Readers of this magazine know otherwise.'' The review
goes on to say that white slave traders were often less brutal than the
African warlords who traded their subjects for livestock and herbs."
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE6DD143EF93BA35751C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print)
In
2000, People For American Way called on McCain to fire Quinn, listing
his disparaging of Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist," his promotion of
David Duke ("What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect
a maverick like David Duke?") and his selling of t-shirts praising
Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
(http://www.liberaloasis.com/2008/04/mccain_guiltbyassociation_for.php)
McCain's response?
"McCain,
meanwhile, refused to fire campaign adviser Richard Quinn as requested
by the private group People for the American Way. Quinn edits the
magazine Southern Partisan, which has published racially charged
articles.
'This is a fine man who worked for Ronald Reagan and Strom
Thurmond and other fine people. This is an outfit I almost never agreed
with and so this is another case where we have disagreement,' McCain
said.
McCain said he did not consider Quinn a racist and had never
read anything written by him." (AP "Bush, MaCain Dogged on Racial
Issues," 2/18/00, available on Nexis)
Wait...Strom Thurmond.
That would be the same Strom Thurmond famous for the quote in 1948:
€œAnd I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there€™s not enough
troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down
segregation and admit the n****r race into our theaters, into our
swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.€
I thought so.
While
speaking at the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University
Wednesday, McCain said this of the late U.S. senator, governor and
one-time champion of segregation: "I have not known an individual who
was a more astute politician and more dedicated public servant..."
So, McCain admires racists and is advised by racists.
Hmm...It
doesn't seem that far off the mark, then, when Rep. Lewis famously
compared McCain to Gov. George Wallace. Of course, McCain appeared
outraged by the assertion.
That's funny. Especially considering
the fact that he campaigned for George Wallace Jr.'s bid for Lieutenant
Governor of Alabama in 2006.
(http://www.truthout.org/article/mccain-campaigns-george-wallace-jr)
'Fess up McCain. You're in bed with Racists and you like it. |
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