Several posts below (here) I discussed a Washington Post article about a march in Atlanta supporting the renewal of controversial portions of the Voting Rights Act that are scheduled to expire in 2007.
Now, thanks to an article about the march reader Fred Ray sent, I find it remarkable that Hamil Harris, the WaPo reporter, chose not to report the following comments made by speakers there, ostensibly in support of voting rights.
Judge Greg Mathis star of the TV program “The Judge Mathis show:
They all need to be locked up because they are all criminals and they are all thieves….
Mathis, whose speech drew the largest and most raucous reception from the crowd, also chastised the Supreme Court for its role in the 2000 presidential recount.
“[The] Supreme Court was an accomplice to the biggest election crime in history in 2000. And I call it a crime because indeed that is exactly what it was,” he said to applause.
The Bush administration was equated with past policies of slavery and segregation and labeled “the enemy of our (black America’s) progress” by Mathis.
Alas, Mathis’s heated rhetoric was not unique.
Entertainer/activist Harry Belafonte also used charged rhetoric during the march when he referred to black members of the Bush administration as “black tyrants.”
….
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) echoed the accusation of many at the march that Bush was an illegitimate president.
“The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy and this is what today is all about,” Lee told the crowd gathered.
Lee also called the war in Iraq “unnecessary, immoral and illegal” and added “our nation was lied to in order to justify this invasion and occupation.”
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) made it clear who the marchers were directing their anger at on Saturday.
“We are here to take on President Bush, [Vice President] Dick Cheney. We are here to take on [House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay. We are here to take on the new appointee to the Supreme Court, John Roberts,” Waters said from the podium to cheers from the crowd.
….
The Bush administration was also targeted by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who declared that the president’s “record against human rights, civil rights, economic rights, is absolutely terrible.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said America was being ruled by the “Bush mentality,” where “crony capitalism” was supreme.
Stevie Wonder put the Bush-bashing into song, reading the lyrics of an upcoming song:
“At this time we have a choice to make. Father God is watching while we cause Mother Earth so much pain. It’s such a shame. Not enough money for the young, the old, the poor, but for war there is always more,” Wonder said.
The WaPo article is datelined Atlanta, indicating that reporter Harris was at the march. Could he really have thought this extreme Bush-bashing was not worth reporting? Could he possibly have thought that accurately reporting the tone and substance of these comments might discredit the supporters of extending the challenged provisions of the Voting Rights Act?
Whatever the explanation, the WaPo’s whitewashed coverage of this march is a disservice to its readers.
UPDATE [9 August PM]
Here are other comments made from the podium at the Atlanta march that the Washington Post chose not to report:
Belafonte used a Hitler analogy when asked about what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration’s relations with minorities.
“Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value,” Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service.
“[If] a black is a tyrant, he is first and foremost a tyrant, then he incidentally is black. Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants….
Belafonte’s Nazi analogies were mild, however, compared to comedian/”civil rights activist” Dick Gregory.
“They (black conservatives) have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it (the swastika symbol) up?” Gregory said in an interview with Cybercast News Service. (The swastika was an ancient symbol generally regarded an emblem of strength and luck before the Nazi Party adopted it in 1920.)
“So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racists thugs have used that word to hide behind? They call themselves new Republicans,” Gregory said.
Gregory trashed the United States, calling it “the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet….
Gregory also accused President Bush of stealing the 2004 presidential election.
So, Gregory, who claims to be for voting rights, thinks the United States is more “dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual” than such garden spots as North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Nazi Germany, etc.
Nancy Pelosi was on the podium while all this bile was being vented, but has not been heard to distance herself from any of it. Maybe she was taking notes on the finer points of “civil rights” from Belafonte, Gregory, et. al.
LaShawn Barber has more.
UPDATE II [10 August]
Linda Chavez asks:
So why is it that some black leaders have taken the occasion of the 40th anniversary of this seminal event [the Voting Rights Act] to engage in hate speech?
Good question. And another one: why is the mainstream press so reluctant to report it?
They most likely would not want to call attention to the madness of this festivity of unreason. The VRA has long enshrined conspiracy theory, the two are inseparable by now, and it is specifically racial. If not, then how is it that blacks who don’t have a district which can and does represent them with a black, are assumed to be racially conspired against, and no evidence required? This is how we promote fellow feeling and the solidarity of citizens in America, rile a minority with nonsense about how the majority conspires to disempower and disfranchise them all the time. Deligitimize the majority, say the election was stolen; I read it on the white internet, to paraphrase some of the vaunted speakers.
John S. Bolton writes:
>>>This is how we promote fellow feeling and the solidarity of citizens in America, rile a minority with nonsense about how the majority conspires to disempower and disfranchise them all the time. Deligitimize the majority, say the election was stolen; I read it on the white internet, to paraphrase some of the vaunted speakers.”
It doesn’t require any “white internet” to learn about the systematic, virulent and undeniable disempowerment and disenfranchisement campaign against African Americans over the course of this nation’s history.
However, what I’ve learned from this thread, is that there are some people to whom NO amount of documented, verified reports of racial discrimination against African Americans is sufficient to explain the mistrust of many blacks for a system that only allowed them EQUAL Civil Rights on paper within the past forty or so years.
–Cobra
“However, what I’ve learned from this thread, is that there are some people…”
What I’ve learned from threads here and elsewhere is that a shrinking number of black Americans are shameless in condemning discrimination against them while demanding that others be discriminated against for their benefit. I wonder how sympathetic the thousands of burned out or murdered Korean businessmen of L.A. are to Cobra’s sense of outrage. I wonder how the ‘privileged’ immigrants who read of majority black Detroit’s efforts to exclude them from economic opportunity feel about the Cobra’s of the community who preach against injustice while practicing it themselves.
It is easy to see who has the moral high ground today. The racialists are steadily declining in influence as their pretensions of siding with justice are seen for what they are: sad efforts by a slice of black Americans to secure the benefits of a free society by snatching them away from those who have earned them with their own efforts. As black Americans increasingly demand to be treated as equals rather than unequals they will also demand that their leadership be purged of those elements which have repeatedly shamed them by regurgitating white racist tactics as tools of black justice.
Not enough money for the young, the old, the poor, but for war there is always more,” Wonder said, before he got into his stretch limo to be chauffered to his private jet to be flown back to his luxurious mansion.
This is interesting. Mikem makes these comments:
>>>”The racialists are steadily declining in influence as their pretensions of siding with justice are seen for what they are: sad efforts by a slice of black Americans to secure the benefits of a free society by snatching them away from those who have earned them with their own efforts.”
What “benefits of a free society” are being snatched by African Americans? Who are “those” in the statement, “those who have earned them with their own efforts?” Is Mikem assuming that Korean Americans would’ve been accepted as equal citizens by the white male club of exclusivity; the Founding Fathers?
Juxtapose Mikem’s commentary with that of ELC:
>>>”Not enough money for the young, the old, the poor, but for war there is always more,” Wonder said, before he got into his stretch limo to be chauffered to his private jet to be flown back to his luxurious mansion.”
So the “have nots” are wrong for speaking out, as well as the “haves.” Exactly who among African Americans, besides the RNC scripted Condi Rice, and denizens of white conservative think tanks are allowed to voice their opinion?
–Cobra
Wow. Are Belafonte and Gregory retarded?
Maybe Gregory should move (or at least travel) if he’s that ignorant about world governments.
Oh, and Cobra: Can we focus on the present, as opposed to 50 years ago, or 200 years ago? That would be a good start.
(There’s no question that Korean americans have earned their success with their own efforts, despite not being part of the “minority”. The same, of course, goes for the chinese, Indians, middle easterns, and many, many africans (millions of whom earn more than the average american).)
P.S.: I don’t personally think people who seem to hate this country should necessarily be kicked out.
However, people like Belafonte and Gregory should probably be forced to live elsewhere for a couple years, just so they get a more informed perspective. I get the feeling that, no matter where they go, they’ll probably be a lot more quiet when they return.