Oh, what fragile and delicate paper-thin epidermis the Bully Right has:
IS THERE NO LEARNING CURVE IN POLITICS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
I’m catching a little more of the Rosa Parks funeral on CSPAN right now while I am supposed to be meeting deadlines. I’m trying to get beyond Louis Farakhan prominently in the audience, sitting next to Al Sharpton (his name always should be followed by “Remember Freddie’s Fashion Mart?”). I’m trying to get beyond Nancy Pelosi. Hillary Clinton. John Kerry. But then I hear John Kerry do a commercial for affirmative action, tying a current unjust public policy to her quite just bus action. A veiled reference to women having underclass issues here. A veiled reference to blacks who were shut out from voting (OR I MIGHT BE PRESIDENT!–I’m adding this) there. Bill Clinton had to cut out early to make sure New Yorkers get health care….maybe I need to watch the whole thing, but what I have seen has felt a little….Wellstone funeral-like.
Posted at 07:08 PM
First, don’t get me started on the way the wingers made political hay out of Wellstone’s memorial service with complaints that memorial services shouldn’t be used to make … political hay.
Second, lets try to block from our minds the frightenly Fascisti-like spectacle that was the week-long Reagan memorial service/funeral/Republican Fundraising drive. A tasteless orgy of government spending and corpomedia fawning over a monster who brought the John Birch Society wacko arm of politics into the mainstream, the Reagan funeral was the epitome of grief as political theater.
Oh, no, the memorial for Rosa Parks was beyond the pale. The breast beating and teeth gnashing continues:
ANOTHER PAUL WELLSTONE FUNERAL MOMENT? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Last night I whined about the Democratic-convention feel the Rosa Parks funeral seemed to have, just from my passing glance at it. Hillary, Bill, Kerry, Nancy P…Last night I still wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I just caught the wrong parts. The exceptions.
But today I learn from Deroy Murdock that in the eulogy Jesse Jackson declared that President Bush “put forth an anti-Rosa Parks judge.”
Must funerals always become political rallies on the Left?
And why does the Left get to claim Rosa Parks? Brave American. Inspiring American. Does she need to become a liberal icon? Condi Rice is the walking legacy of Rosa Parks–a woman who as a girl had to walk on the other side of the street as white. Today she is Secretary of State and being buzzed about as a presidential contender. For goodness sake. Sometimes life is about more than partisan politics. That’s an obvious point for most Americans–you know, normal people. Foreign to anyone who considers drinks at the Capital Grille a night at home.
Posted at 08:25 AM
Of course, Dear Leader George can dance on the ground bones and pulverized skin at Ground Zero, mixing it into an edifice of lies leading to a ruinous war and dirtied Constitution, but that’s just fine with the fine wingers at The Corner. No, it is only the LEFT that somehow sullies sacred events.
The fact is that the right, which was in control of the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party, was responsible for the draconian system of cultural and legal segregation back in Ms. Park’s day. She IS a liberal icon. Rosa Parks was a warrior for the finest traditions of liberalism, of the idea that we are all equal under the law, that government should protect us from oppressive majorities, that opportunity and freedom are universals. If there is ANY bedrock principle of liberalism, that is it.
Farakhan and Sharpton bothers them? We have to watch Cliff May, Trent Lott, Ayatolah Dobson and Cotton Robertson spout off about every little thing, and I’ve had to for years. We on the left are awash in pandering to the most extreme elements of the poltical and religious right spouting their bile, greed and hatred nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our flag has been appropriated. Soldier’s deaths highjacked as political talking points in the name of killing more of soldiers, more women and children. The right spouts racist code and intolerance at every turn, yet somehow Jesse Jackson’s eulogy is some kind of affront to decency?
Congressman Jackson has a bill to be put in the great halls of Congress a life-size statue of Rosa Parks. If John Calhoun can be there, and General Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, men who engaged in sedition, secession, slavery, segregation and treason, just maybe we need a guardian angel to watch over them in the halls of Congress. Perhaps George Bush who also gave her ceremony can sign the Voting Rights Act and extend them with enforcement powers?
President Bush on yesterday gave homage to Rosa Parks and then put forth to the nation an extreme rightwing judge, antithetical to everything Rosa Parks ever stood for. He put forth an anti-Rosa Parks judge, not unlike last year he put a wreath on Dr. King’s graveyard, and the next day, allowed the Supreme Court to kill affirmative action. Whenever he sticks out his hands, there’s always something up his sleeves.
Perhaps a White House conference on civil rights, why not 50 years later? Watching bodies float down the rivers of New Orleans, no plan for rescue, no plan for relocation, no plan for reconstruction that’s fair. 50 million Americans with no health insurance. The surplus culture for the few and a deficit culture for the masses. Just maybe we need a White House conference on civil rights. Mr. Mayor, why not right now on the river in Detroit, the Rosa Parks Park where we can entomb her body and have the generations unborn know this woman whose sacrifice made America better? Why not now some action to turn our mourning into some living memorial?
Is this too much? How else to memorialize a warrior, to honor and witness a brave champion, than to promise to carry on her fight? She risked life and limb when she sat down, fighting a system that beat, bloodied, incarcerated, exploited and lynched black people for speaking up, for not submitting or even for looking at a white woman. How DARE these people tell others how to grieve, how to honor, how to remember and celebrate a life lived well and true?
This hijacking of political discourse, of what is “proper” has gone on far too long. Enough already, and delicate Ms. Lopez, FUCK YOU!. You and all the rest of the harpies, bullies and martinets of the right. You sullied Wellstone’s memory, you’ve elevated Ronald “what AIDS epidemic” Reagan to quasi-sainthood. You’ve papered over racist and classist oppression with the slick shiny half-truths of PR spin. Enough. We’ve had enough. She was ONE OF US, and we would be remiss if we didn’t celebrate what she stood for by pretending those battles had been won. The haven’t, not by a long shot, and as the disgrace of New Orleans demonstrated so horrifyingly, the ascendent political classes in America are turning the clock backwards.
Oh, and Condi Rice is a “walking legacy”?!?! A war criminal, failed National Security Advisor, fawning advisor to a failed President, toothless Secretary of State … she is Rosa Park’s legacy? A woman who BENEFITED from an activist federal government and federal court opening up access to education (thanks in part to a Republican President who would doubtless be ASHAMED at the crimes now committed by his party), who is now part of a regime dismantling those very gains, she’s a “walking legacy”.
Oh, I am so sick and tired of these dishonest scolds, of a political movement built on lies and character attacks and the hijacking of language, a relentless din of right-wing noise masquerading in costumes purchased with Richard Scaiffe’s money.
Fuck off, all of you.