For the Reverend Jesse Jackson, it’s a role straight from central casting:
A violent mob attacks two defenseless men as they bicycle down a dark road on the wrong side of town. The two are brutally beaten, one of them—thirty-five-year-old Troy Knapp—with a lead pipe, leaving him in a coma. When the suspects are arrested, they claim their motive was robbery. The mob took two bicycles and insists that the color of their victims played no role in their decision to attack. But the racial makeup of the mob indicates the victims were guilty of that classic southern offense, “wrong place, wrong color.”
A local church leader, Elder Johnson, has contacted the ACLU and other civil rights organizations with complaints of police improprieties in the case. He has also called on the Reverend Jackson to come back home to South Carolina and intervene.
But so far, no Jesse Jackson. Sixteen assailants charged with lynching, two men clubbed for the color of their skin, all back in Jackson’s home state. Reverend Jesse Jackson, where are you?
Oh—did I mention the victims were white? And their attackers were black?
And in one sentence, the mystery is solved. The media mob camped out in Jasper, Texas, and who followed the Reverend Jackson to Decatur, Illinois, won’t be headed to South Carolina.
The central problem with the Troy Knapp story is that the casting is all wrong. Ask The New York Times or CBS or any of the media outlets covering the Reverend Jackson’s struggle for the Decatur Six, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Sorry, Troy—wrong color.
Imagine for a moment that the mob attacking Troy had been lily white—say, a roving band of Southern Baptists or Citadel cadets or delegates to the GOP national convention. And imagine that Troy had been anything other than a white heterosexual male. Care to guess how many hotel rooms it would take to accommodate the TV crews swarming into Charleston for that story?
Now, Decatur—that’s real news. White school board (well, 5–2, anyway) expels black students. Here’s a story CNN can really work. Okay, so three of the black “students” are third-year freshmen who had missed 350 days of school between them, and yes, they did beat the bejesus out of a bunch of bystanders at a football game, but still . . . they’re black. Get it? Fight the power, take on the Man, and roll tape, baby! I smell Pulitzer!
So does the Reverend Jackson, who got himself arrested to demonstrate his belief that these violent teenagers should once again roam the halls of the same school they were flunking out of a few weeks earlier. As a cause célèbre, these thugs may not seem like much, but the Reverend Jackson’s keen sense of news judgment told him that if he milked it, they (the networks) would come.
Not so for poor Troy Knapp. Black mob, white victim, blue collar—somehow it’s too, oh, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh for the American media.
The fact that this particular assault has not been declared a hate crime also blows the script. How is the Reverend Jackson supposed to explain that the three white cretins in Jasper, Texas, were racially motivated, but the violent mob of black bicycle thieves wasn’t?
No, there is no leading-man role in this story for the talented Jackson. However, Elder Johnson continues to hope that the good reverend might make a cameo appearance on the side of justice.
Oh, no, not on behalf of Troy Knapp. For the mob that bludgeoned him. The local minister is protesting the treatment of the assailants!
And, unsurprisingly, Elder Johnson assumes that Jesse Jackson will be on their side. After all, if the Reverend Jackson will take to the streets for the Decatur Six, whose criminal behavior was broadcast on national television, why wouldn’t he champion the North Charleston Sixteen, who had the foresight not to jump Troy Knapp in full view of a minicam? Aren’t our local criminal losers just as good as that gang up in Illinois?
Sorry, Elder Johnson, but Jesse Jackson won’t answer this casting call. This is a case of been there, done that—and not very well.
The reviews of the Reverend Jackson’s performance in Decatur have not been strong (“Has Jackson simply lost his mind?”—Boston Herald), and the box office was hardly boffo. Jackson had to bus in protesters from St. Louis and Chicago to get a crowd.
Worse, the still-untold tale of Troy Knapp and the North Charleston Sixteen highlights the blatant racism that motivates the Reverend Jackson’s character. In Decatur, he tried (unconvincingly) to play a complex figure who was looking beyond race and at the larger issue of zero-tolerance policies as a whole.
But what larger issue could the Reverend Jackson address by coming to South Carolina in defense of a racially motivated mob, even a black one? What story could he sell here—that as long as the Confederate flag flies on the state house, blacks are entitled to lynch a few crackers?
No, no, no. I suspect that when the Reverend Jackson is presented with this story of racial injustice, he will take his own advice and “run, Jesse, run!”
Unfortunately for Troy Knapp—and the cause of justice—the media will be right behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
One of Our Greatest Presidents
Bush League
* * *
August 1999
Is George W.’s handling of the cocaine question Clintonesque?
While no Democrats are (quite) dumb enough to use this adjective, it is clearly what the White House lackeys have in mind as they push the cocaine controversy in the media. The Democrats are reading the same polls that I am, which show the Republicans with a whopping 40 percent lead over the Democrats on the question “Which party can best protect the dignity of the presidency?”
President Clinton, whose white-trash mores and low-rent lasciviousness could undermine the dignity of an illegal cockfight, has demolished any hope that his party’s nominee can be the standard-bearer for individual responsibility. As a result, the Democrats can only hope to even the score, to scorch the Republicans’ earth along with their own, to turn the 2000 presidential election into a choice between two evils.
Watching the same TV talking heads who defended President Clinton down to his last cigar suddenly say, “Hey, wait a minute! Character does count!” is hilarious but not particularly helpful. Their arguments indirectly comparing Bush to Clinton, which no journalist ever challenges, are pure nonsense.
And what has happened to the work ethic of the American media? Remember the good old days, when reporters actually used to report? The deal was that the reporters would track down the hotel receipts and the envelope full of incriminating photos, print them on the front page of the tabloid, and then the candidate would break down at the press conference and announce that he was, in fact, in love with the llama and hoped his family would forgive him.
That’s how it used to work: Reporters found out what really happened, and politicians tried to prove that it really didn’t.
This has all disappeared in the press coverage of the Bush/cocaine question. Using the new Bush standard, there’s no reason to do investigating. You simply ask a series of hypothetical questions, completely unsubstantiated by any facts or reportage, until you find one the candidate won’t answer. Then you yell and scream until he does.
Edward R. Murrow would be proud.
So is George W. the ethical equivalent of Bill C.? Let’s start with the most obvious difference between the two men, their accusers. In GWB’s case, there are none.
Making unfounded allegations against your opponent to tie him up while you pick his electoral pocket is a well-worn and time-tested strategy in politics. The Clinton White House has played this game exceptionally well, but even for them the attack on George W. is a stretch, because there is no actual accusation.
No one (as of this writing) has ever said, “I did drugs with George,” or “George used to toke up in his dorm room,” or “My God, he used to come to class with enough powder under his nose to start a ski lodge!” Not a single, solitary allegation of cocaine use by GWB has been made. Forget guilty until proven innocent; W. hasn’t even been charged.
Instea
d, the media are determined that he is going to convict himself by answering the question “Have you now, or have you ever been, a regular listener to the Grateful Dead?”
Now compare W.’s list of accusers (nonexistent) to President Clinton’s: Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, Judge Susan Webber Wright, James McDougal, a dozen Arkansas state troopers, the entire Razorbacks cheerleading squad of 1990, et cetera, et cetera.
Get the point?
Thus far the Democrats have attempted to skip the there-is-substantial-evidence-of-wrongdoing part (with the media’s help, of course) and jump straight into the well-why-not-just-answer-the-question stage. They are aided in this cause by W.’s opponents in the GOP primary, who are desperate to slow down the Bush bandwagon.
Gary Bauer, an awful little rat-faced git who has delusions of becoming the Republican nominee for president (or reliving the Spanish Inquisition—no one’s really quite sure) has insisted that every candidate should answer any question regarding a felony.
Once again, journalism and due process are thrown out the window. Just sit down your candidate, get out your book of federal statutes and start on page one: “Have you ever . . . ?”
“We ought to be able to say, with no hesitation, that no, we have not broken the drug laws of the United States,” says Bauer. Then again, Bill Clinton used exactly that same phrase in 1992, and we later found out he was sucking a British bong in college—thus the word Clintonesque.
If in 1992 Bill Clinton had said, “None of your damn business,” or “I made mistakes in my youth that I don’t care to repeat,” that would have been (for lack of a better term) Bushesque. George W.’s answer to the drug question, which is designed to deflect, is very different from the president’s, which, until he was caught, was designed to deceive.
In fact, George W.’s entire campaign thus far has been wildly different from the presidency of William Jefferson “O.J.” Clinton, and the “cocaine problem” is likely to highlight the gulf between the character of the two.
Will George W. be able to avoid the label Clintonesque?
By a nose.
Winning the Battle, Losing the War
* * *
February 2000
Bush is betting his ranch on a strategy of jihad [holy war]. Some of the telephone attacks are savage, portraying McCain as a hypocritical, temperamental insider who is soft on abortion, partial to Las Vegas gambling interests, in thrall to Big Labor and who has a budget plan that would cut donations to the nation’s churches. “It’s not pretty, but it’s going to work,” vowed one of Bush’s top advisers.
—Newsweek, February 2000
If you’re a Republican who would like to be president of the United States, I have this piece of advice about the South Carolina Republican primary: Lose it.
Mock me if you will, but the elder George Bush ignored me in 1992, as did Bob Dole four years ago, and you see where it got them: doing charity work and hawking Viagra. And this week, George W. Bush will make the same politically fatal mistake. He will win the battle for South Carolina and lose the war for the White House.
Yes, I am predicting a win for Governor Bush this Saturday in South Carolina, and since I’m already taking a ridiculously foolish risk (as I write, the election is five days away and the polls are too close to call), I’ll go ahead and pick the spread, too: Bush by six. Or more. George W. is going to win because of his relentless, well-funded and effective attacks against the character and candidacy of John McCain. The Bushies have bought up every available minute of TV time in the state, they are bombarding local radio listeners with anti-McCain messages, and their paid phone banks are jamming the lines of wavering Republicans with comments about the Arizona senator that sound as though they came from dialing 976-DIRT.
By driving down voter turnout and raising suspicions about a candidate who is already a bad fit for South Carolina Republicans, George W.’s go-negative strategy will give the governor an ugly win. What remains to be seen is whether or not this win will be so ugly that it keeps Bush from ever getting another date.
This has always been the problem with allowing South Carolina to play such a prominent role in the presidential nominating process. The things you have to do to win in this state doom you to defeat in the other forty-nine.
Right now, for example, Governor Bush is running a barrage of ads and phone calls branding John McCain “soft on abortion.” McCain’s pro-life voting record is the same as that of the infamous liberal Strom Thurmond. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, he wants abortion to be illegal in every state, but he wants to add an exception for cases of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is at stake. And George W. thinks that’s soft?
In the small, bizarre world of South Carolina politics, John McCain’s a liberal. In the rest of America, he’s a pro-life extremist.
George W. is also attacking John McCain for being anti-tobacco, for backing campaign finance reform, even for encouraging independents and conservative Democrats to vote. In other words, the Bush argument is: “John McCain is an anti-tobacco political reformer whose position on abortion is the same as 80 percent of all Americans and who is popular with swing voters. We can’t nominate him!”
Meanwhile, here is George W.’s list entitled “Things to Do to Win S.C. Primary”:
Kick off campaign at Bob Jones University, where interracial dating is prohibited and students are taught that Catholicism is a cult.
Dodge all questions regarding the Confederate flag.
Pick up endorsement by state senator Arthur Ravenel, who called the NAACP the “National Association of Retarded People,” then apologized by saying he had unintentionally insulted all retarded people.
Spend millions taking the most extreme possible position on abortion.
Get televangelist Pat Robertson to act as your campaign spokesman on national TV shows the Sunday before the election.
Now, if you’re running for president of the Independent Republic of South Carolina, that is, no doubt, a winning strategy. But outside the Confederate State of America . . .
In two short weeks, George W. Bush has managed to transform himself from a moderate-conservative GOP leader who would expand the reach of his party into the candidate of Bob Jones, Arthur Ravenel and Pat Robertson.
The thinking at Bush HQ is that beating John McCain this Saturday will knock the senator out of the race and allow Governor Bush to move back to the center. But this is shortsighted, because everything Bush has done has been captured on tape. It is a short-term strategy filled with long-term headaches.
Ask yourself: How many Catholics are there in swing states such as Michigan and Illinois? How many moderate women in states such as California and New York? How many rational human beings are there across the country, all of whom see Pat Robertson as the fringe loon played so well by Al Franken on Saturday Night Live?
Sure, in South Carolina, Bob Jones University is so mainstream that even the state’s leading political reporter (Lee Bandy of The State) is a graduate. But in a one-hour interview, Tim Russert asked George W. at least five different questions about BJU and the bizarre theology it represents to people in mainstream America.
Which brings us to November and Al Gore. Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, he may not be the star of Love Story, he may even have a bladder control problem that keeps him out of important White House meetings.
But he ain’t stupid.
All the videotape taken from South Carolina, all the strident right-wing mail, the negative phone scripts, the resumes of the campaign supporters from our state—everything George Bush has used to win this race—will be used against him in the fall. It’s all sitting at Gore headquarters right now, waiting for Jim Carville to pick through it.
So to the Bushies, on the eve of a South Carolina victory, I say: I hope you’ve got a lot of fond memories from here in Bush country, because you’ll be reliving them again this November—in Michigan, in California, in Ohio
and in living rooms all across the U.S. of A.
Barney Fife’s Revenge
* * *
February 2000
Y’all go ahead and have your heart attack or stroke now. Have a good day.
—Louisiana sheriff’s deputy Bryan McClendon
If there is one element of modern American conservatism that completely befuddles me, it is my fellow right-wingers’ affection for the police. As a true small-government conservative, I consider it my philosophical duty to dislike cops.
Not individually, mind you. Both of my mom’s brothers are former law enforcement officers, and not only that, but (to paraphrase the Confederate flag crowd) some of my best friends are police officers.
Every day, there are many fine law enforcement professionals executing their duties with good judgment and common sense. Then there’s the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
I’m kidding, of course. Picking on the South Carolina Highway Patrol is unfair, because doing so implies that other states’ patrolmen—and they are almost all men—are not flattopped Neanderthals with red-hot radar guns and unofficial quotas to meet.
Two recent stories sum up my personal experience with the highway patrol. The first is from South Carolina, where state trooper Michael O’Donnell pulled over Senator John McCain’s campaign bus as it raced to some important GOP event. Did Trooper O’Donnell pull over the Straight Talk Express to (as the Bush campaign whispered) prevent Senator McCain from personally performing an abortion on his own illegitimate daughter, whom he fathered with one of his Viet Cong collaborators?
No, Trooper O’Donnell just wanted an autograph, and he didn’t want to stand in line to get it. It was simply a starstruck state patrolman’s version of a Blue Light Special.
Clinton & Me Page 16