This just in: Racist cretins are not polite
Bill Shipp apparently got email-bombed by a bunch of little green snot-ballers who took exception to his non-bashing of Jimmy Carter's remarks at Coretta Scott King's funeral.Apparently that was an act of race-traitorin' or something.
As far as I know, Rush Limbaugh was not privy to the arrangements, though he had plenty to say. My e-mail critics let me know that once again the Pied Piper of the right was dead on. Carter, Lowery and other hated Democrats (read black leaders) were way out of line.Indeed. Someone needed to wake him up and make him recognize that the thin veneer of racial civility some profess here in the "new South" is just that, and not much more. Here's hoping he manages a few more feisty columns before, presumably, the Hillbilly Rag either drops him or tells him to shape up and put that pink tutu back on.
Despite e-mail assertions to the contrary, my relationship with both Carter and Lowery has ranged from poor to worse over the years. I am not a buddy of either, and I have written critically of both.
Nevertheless, the harsh e-mail was instructive. I occasionally forget who’s out there. Reaction to the King essay was a wakeup call. The electronic age has invigorated incivility. Cordial discourse is on the wane. Mean-spirited epithets are in vogue.
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A hair off the topic but worth sharing--as I pondered the hysterical over-reaction to Lowery and Carter's remarks that seem to show little sign of abating (although JC's backing of GWB's UAE port thing might mitigate this a tad) a little lightbulb went off. One reason the right wing loathes the left so very much is that they've no unique American heros of their own.
Sure, they can point to some people -- your Reagans, your um, um... ok, there must be someone else -- seen as somewhat larger-than-life in retrospect. But for a Reagan, there's an FDR.
Who does the Right have that's a right-wing image of Martin Luther King or any of the other civil rights heros? Nobody, that's who. And so they squirm and complain when MLK or his wife are praised; it's gotta hurt. The best they can do (and I mean that genuinely, because MLK was fighting for everyone) is co-opt and claim partial ownership of the ideals, and that's fine as far as it goes.
But the final solution, the end game that southern right-wingers have to play, is to elevate their anti-abortion movement into the realm of civil rights. I think many on the right consider it their own personal abolitionist movement, one that will be recognized in time as necessary as that of John Brown.
Until that (very unlikely) day arrives, though, they have to sit and squirm as Bush did during Coretta's funeral. Which is why any unflattering remarks about the current US government (via Lowery), or even that of LBJ (via Carter) that might remind the right of what a wretched history it has, and how unheroic it's been, were so very hard to swallow.
posted by hillbilly ragger @ 8:26 AM
