“It sends a chilling message to all people”, declared Baltimore Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings.
“The fact is that this is a man that is four heartbeats away from the presidency, and we cannot have in 2002 those kinds of views being expressed by someone who is setting policy.”
Thus did Congressman Cummings, the newly-elected chairman of the 39-member Congressional Black Caucus, add to the Big Media demonization of the incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.
It makes no difference to Democrats like the honorable Elijah that Sen. Lott has repeatedly apologized for what was undeniably a bad slip of words, when he was saying goodbye to Sen. Strom Thurmond – the longest serving senator on his 100th birthday.
It makes no difference that the Congressional Black Caucus was practicing racial segregation for years after Sen. Thurmond stopped supporting it (It is good however to report that this racial caucus has given up denying membership to non-blacks like California Democrat Fortney Stark, and are no longer denying non-white members the right to vote, according to the Caucus Policy Director Paul Braithwaite. But the 39 members are all black.)
Congressman Cummings welcomed Bill Clinton to Baltimore this fall, where he told several thousand people that Clinton “… is the only president I recognize.”
That unconstitutional statement coming from any federal officer is scandalous. Equally scandalous was Bill Clinton’s expressed adulation this October of “my mentor” Arkansas’ rigidly segregationist Sen. Fulbright.
Did the Big Media and other Democrats ever denounce Bill Clinton for failing to deplore segregationist Fulbright?
Did the Big Media focus as much coverage on Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan, however brief, or of his recent use of the “N” word in the Senate?
What is being done by Congressman Cummings and others to demonize Sen. Lott, was described by Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts as “… trivializing race for the sake of partisan politicking.”
Congressman Watts is the first black person ever voted to his party’s leadership in either the House or Senate (The Democrats have never so elected any blacks).
It is a shame that Watts has decided to retire from the House, rather than to go on – very possibly, to the speakership.
When as a revered football star and with experience in Oklahoma state government, Watts was elected in an almost all-white district, and arrived in Washington, he was asked about joining the Congressional Black Caucus.
“No I will not,” he replied.
When asked why not, he answered: “My father raised me to be a man – not a black man.”
