I think I dissected the Portland Trailblazers’ current problems, and the manner in which the franchise has gotten to the woeful place that it is today, way back in 1999. It’s inherent in my blue-print on destroying The World of Professional Sports. My little satire was botched by picking the wrong team for victory in the NFL… The Saint Louis Rams went on to win the next Superbowl. But, the NFL is structured under a Commie-Marxist model of revenue-sharing and the like, and the wieners of the league — The Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals — were coming off of decent seasons. The league is thinking of jettisoning some of their Commie-Marxist philosophy — with the player’s union demanding a move toward Laisez Faire Capitalism– a move most people believe would be a mistake, for Communism is what got the National Football League to the place it is today — the Premier Money-making Sports Venture in America. For the purpose of MLB, the wiser wise-guy pick would be any assortment of teams that refuse to try to win — The Detroit Tigers — as our Decades long Jinxes are falling away… the Chicago Cubs nearly got to the World Series, and if it weren’t for Steve Bartman would have had their crack against the New York Yankees. The National Hockey League, I might add, has succeeded in destroying itself without my input.

As for the Portland Trailblazers, and Enemy # One for Portland Trailblazer fans is Owner Paul Allen. He and his Company recently announced that the team is hemmoraging money, and they had the galls to ask the City of Portland and the State of Oregon for a bailout. But, I ask you to look at Paul Allen’s reign of Terror, and how the team itself has done. There are two periods of time under the ownership of Paul Allen where the Portland Trailblazers were “National Champion Contenders”. They lost to the Detroit Pistons, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Chicago Bulls on one end. They lost to the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers — and it is this series that I will zero in on in a minute, as it was the franchise’s best chance, and it tells the story.

So, the Portland Trailblazers have a — what? 15 point lead? over the Los Angeles Lakers in that seventh and deciding game of the Western Conference Finals, mid-way through the fourth quarter. The Eastern Conference is considered an inferior conference, though to be fair it would be a couple of years before you could look at the two conferences and say that the entire Western Conference roster of playoff teams was better than any team in the East, and the peculiarities of the Portland Trailblazers would show that they just might be vulnerable to the Indiana Pacers (who weren’t too bad… they won a couple games in the Finals). Depending on whether you are a Portland Trailblazers fan or a Los Angeles Lakers fan, the Portland Trailblazers then either blow the game, or the Los Angeles Lakers stage a valliant come-back.

The next season, the Portland Trailblazers come in with the slogan: “One Team, One Dream.” It’s a far cry from this year’s “Ready or Not, Here We Come” — a slogan that, for me, is an admission that they’re not very good. In the recesses of my mind, I once imagined a sports’ team with the slogan, “Amassing A Destruction of Biblical Proportions Upon the Opposition.” The question of what you’re going to do if that team does not manage to “amass a destruction of biblical proportions upon the opposition” is simply that the team is going to look kind of stupid. As for the Portland Trailblazers… they spent the majority of the season in first, second, or third place in the standings — credibly able to assert that they were “one team” with “one dream” — the dream being “The Championship.” But they started to lose. To everyone. They were in fourth place in the standings. Fifth place in the standings. Sixth place in the standings. They finished up with a Seventh Seed. Somewhere along the lines — probably somewhere between when they were in sixth place and seventh place– the team’s marketing department and commercials dropped the slogan “One Team. One Dream.”

Paul Allen attempted to buy (as opposed to develop) a Championship — future be damned — following that model of mine from 1999 to do so. He nearly succeeded. But when you try to buy a championship, you find out that you are one The Portland Trailblazers were a collection of extremely talented players, and it was said that if you bench the entire starting line-up, you’d have another starting line-up coming off the bench. It was flexible in that way. The problem being — when the team hits a wall, as it did mid-way through the fourth corner of game seven of the Western Conference Finals — there was no super-super start (Read, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal) to take over the game. Never mind that… it was an extremely expensive collection of players. Imagine that they won the Championship. Good for them. In a couple years, you’re going to still have to slash payroll, get yourself under the Salary Cap, get yourself under whatever the heck the name of that other Cap is, and you’ll end up with a bad team that doesn’t attract very many fans to the stands… and, oh, by the way: Paul Allen sold the stadium, having… you know… bought a very expensive, money-losing, but winning team.

Here’s to you, Paul Allen. Everyone seems to suspect that Allen wants to dump the Trailblazers and purchase the Seattle Supersonics. He has gone from being seen as Mr. Moneybags, throwing “what it takes” into getting a High-Calibre team onto the Sourt, to being seen as a Disinterested Carpet-bagger from up north. I imagine if he does buy the Sonics (who have their issues, and whose owners I hear are doing the same stunts to the city of Seattle and state of Washington as the Blazers are doing here in Portland and Oregon), he can follow my Sports Business model again. So, Seattle Supersonics fans can look forward to a team that teeters on the edge of a Championship, either making it or not making it. And then they can look forward to a horrible team. Enjoy it, Sporting Fans. That is all I have to say.

There’s probably a book worth reading within Zell Miller’s A National Party No More, if someone could just edit out the damned hopefully affected folksy metaphors and aphorisms. If nothing else, Miller stands before us with a particularly insidious conventional wisdom that demands to be cut through. I wonder about that which is Historical Amnesia, and to what extent it inflicts myself.

The biggest problem with the party leadership is that they know nothing about the modern South. They still see it as a land of magnolias and mint juleps, with the pointy-headed KKK lurking in the background, waiting to burn a cross or lynch blacks and Jews.

Let’s leave aside for a moment our occasional “Ain’t this a Riot” news-stories of Segregated High School Proms. Or Bob Jones University’s controversial policies, and what exactly his namesake was all about. (Feel free to consult my entry on the 1928 presidential election.) You don’t have to stray far from Zell Miller’s career to see that his “Profile in Courage” was a stand against the Georgian flag’s Confederate Flag emblem. His book features his “State of the State” address where he spends the 75% of his time pleading Georgians to allow the flag to be changed. He nearly lost his re-election of 1994 because of the issue, and that the great Democratic break through for the state in 2002 came on behest of this same damned racial “Confederate Flag” wedge issue.

And, as always, the question for Trent Lott : Just what problems were you referring to with “We wouldn’t have had all these problems” had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1944? (Feel free to consult my entries on Strom Thurmond’s 1944 campaign.) By the way, renaming an organization from “White Citizens Council” to “Christian Citizens Council” doesn’t do any good, because the acronym “CCC” is this creepy soft-case version of the acronym “KKK”.

None of this is to say that “The North” has its racial problems, but in this equation I have to say I could care less about the “magnolias and mint juleps” factor, and I fixate on the other factor of the equation. And, yes, Zell Miller, I am aware that the economy of Atlanta, Georgia is more advanced than the economy of Portland, Oregon. I also find the following passage kind of interesting.

Gone are the days when Japanese Americans were herded into camps because we were at war with Japan. Gone are the days when African Americans in my state of Georgia were denied access to lunch counters.

Nay. We just herd some Muslims into Guantanamo based on spurious claims by spurious tribesmen in Afghanistan — out to make a fast buck or out to settle a score with an old enemy. And we just figure out ways to throw African Americans off the voter roll. History is not working in a vacuum. When Zell Miller says that “Jefferson and Jackson would sue the modern Democratic Party” for libel if they saw what it had become, I wonder if he doesn’t realize he’s echoing the sentiments of 1948 (and 1964, and as I’ll show you even 1960), when we have the Dixiecrat bolters shout out to audiences of Dixiecrats entreating “all true White Jeffersonian Democrats”, and when mindful that there are border states watching they carefully left out the “white” part of the phrase.

I never managed to get the quote down from Zell Miller (as I started to merely skim through the book), but he suggests that “Franklin Roosevelt knew this was a ‘big tent party’.” who “understood that 70, 80, 90% was better than none.” Perhaps Roosevelt said something to that effect… I imagine after his unsuccessful purge attempt at non-New Deal Democrats in 1938… the Conservative Democrats who were starting to have a problem with the Centralization of Government… read: the Southern Democrats. I ponder something, and it’s something that makes it a laugh-riot when somebody like Zell Miller says that they are Democrats in the Spirit of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy (and I’ll get to Kennedy in a moment). In 1940, Roosevelt selected Henry Wallace as his running mate. And, indications are he would have done the same thing again, if not for the cries from more Conservative forces in the Democratic Party. Harry Truman was deemed acceptable. Wallace than ran to Truman’s left on a Party that was… um… subsidized by the Soviet Union… probably. And the Southern Democrats who brought Truman to power bolted from Truman. Think about that. There’s a weird parable there that I can’t quite put into words.

In 1960, the state of Georgia gave the Democratic nominee, John F Kennedy, a higher percentage of its vote than John F Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts. “You can look it up,” as Casey Stengel used to say. Only the percentage in Rhode Island was greater. And Georgians were not disappointed in Kennedy’s performance as a chief executive. He stared down the Russians over Cuba and he cut taxes in a significant way that stimulated the economy. Had he not been assassinated, he could have carried Georgia a second time.

The conventional wisdom is that Kennedy was the last Democratic Presidential, and certainly the last Democratic Northern Presidential Candidate, that the South took to naturally… that something in his make-up (he not being oh-s-liberal liberal liberal) drove the South to love and revere him. Let the Record show that he did not pick up the bulk of the Southland easily, and let the record show that for most of the presidential campaign the polls were showing that Nixon was going to pick up the Southern States that went to Eisenhower, and let the record show that the Democratic and Republican platform on the issue of Civil Rights was… kind of close to identical. And let the record show also that the Nixon – Lodge ticket botched their one effort to pick up the anti-segregation vote.

Take a look at the 1960 Presidential Election map. Somebody named “Byrd” won the states of Mississippi and Alabama. The presidential ballot for the state of Mississippi had on it Kennedy, Nixon, and “Unrestricted Democratic Slate”. The last ticket won. Nobody won Mississippi. I’ll have to check Alabama. And there’s a curious footnote here in how Mississippi and Alabama’s electors attempted to, post election, convince the rest of the South to Rise Up and convince the Republican electors to cast their lot with… Senator Byrd of Virginia.

And I will get to that post at a later time.

8-11, Strom Thurmond speaking at a Watermelon festival: “I have advocated the repeal of the poll tax in my state. A Question, since I keep seeing this phrase: Had the state actually managed to enact the repeal by 1948? I know other Southern States, and a few districts in the North, are liking to keep the “people of bad moral character” from the polls. But I cannot agree that the Federal Government has the right to force any state to abolish this tax if the people of the state want it. Lynching is murder. And murder is a violation of state laws. We do not intend to let the Federal Government come in and take over our state courts.”

And the side-winder, a thinly veiled threat akin to “Nice home: it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”, but one picked up on the “Southern Liberals” as a reason to be cautious: “If the segregation program of the President is enforced, the results in civil strife may be horrible beyond imagination. Lawlessness will be rampant. Chaos will prevail. And there will be the greatest breakdown of law enforcement in the history of our nation. Let us tell them that in the South, the intermingling of the races in our homes, in our schools, and in our theaters is impractical and impossible.” just as it is impractical to let the homos into the military, I hear. Ah, never mind.

8-11: Governor Thurmond tonight linked Harry S Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, and Henry Wallace together and charged that they would lead America to “the rocks of totalitarianism.” He charged that the Federal anti-poll tax bill would allow Congress to invade the power of the states, and that the Federal anti-lynching bill was a Federal seizure of police powers”. And, the proposal for a Federal Employment Protection Act, Thurmond said, was patterned after a Russian law written by Joseph Stalin in 1920 and “was made to order for Communist use in their designs upon national security.”

8-21: “President Truman and other Government officials are making a desparate effort to hide the extent to which Communists and Communist sympathizers have honeycombed the Administration and have dictated his policies.” To be fair, Dewey was making the same basic accusations, on the behest of the Committee of UnAmericans Activities, and the partnership of Robert Kennedy and Joseph McCarthy. But, as to what policies in particular are being dictated by the Communists… well: “The so-called civil rights program which this Administration wishes to foist upon the country has its origins in Communism.”

9-25: “Tonight the candidates of the Republicans, the radical Democrats, and the Wallace Reds claim to have discovered the road to great new freedoms and human rights. But the detour they ask us to take is the road to totalitarianism. These candidates pose as bearers of the torch of liberty. But the flame they carry is a firebrand from the steppes of Russia.

The so-called civil rights program is a cheap political trick designed to buy the votes of small but powerful racial minorities in big city states. [The opposition to the civil rights program] quickly developed in the Southern States, the cradle of American civilization. The radicals, the subversives, and the reds are now in complete control of the national Democratic Party.”

10-13: “A move to gain control of election within the states is disguised by a so-called anti-poll tax bill. A precedent for gaining Federal power of state law and state courts is hidden beneath the pretense of the anti-lynching bill. A move to build Federal power over the relationship between one man and another on the social level is disguised under the anti-segregation proposals. A precedent for the eventual control of business by Washington is concealed in the presences of the Federal Employment Protection Committee. A angerous precedent is hidden beneath the promise that a national police system will be established to enforce these proposals, yielding to the demands of the parlor pinks and the subversives.”

10-25: Governor Thurmond charged tonight that an FEPC law “would be carried out by a national police force already being trained” by President Truman. “This means,” he declared, “You would be hounded by Federal Police whom you never saw before and who neither know nor care what your problems are.”

10-26: “States rights are the only guarantee we have that a kind of Kremlin will not be established in Washington.”

Once I heard that Norman Mailer and his son, John, were going to do Hannity and Colmes, I had to see how that interview went. I have the transcript, and some things pop out at me.

#1: HANNITY: As we continue on “Hannity & Colmes,” the always outspoken author, Norman Mailer, has collaborated on a new book with his son, John Buffalo Mailer, titled “The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America.” Norman Mailer and his son John join us now.
Let me just get it out of the way. I know, Bush is awful, he’s terrible, he lied. Let me guess: you probably want to impeach him, right?

NORMAN MAILER, CO-AUTHOR, “THE BIG EMPTY”: I don’t care. He’s not worth impeaching.

HANNITY: Really?

N. MAILER: Yes. He’ll become a martyr if he’s impeached. I’d as soon see him flounder along.

#2: HANNITY: You agree with your dad a lot?

JOHN BUFFALO MAILER, CO-AUTHOR, “THE BIG EMPTY”: On a lot of things, absolutely.

HANNITY: Oh, boy. Well, don’t worry; we’ll fix you. We’ll Hannitize you. Insufferable, he. You said — you called our president, George W. Bush, the enemy. Do you think George Bush is your enemy? A question that he is obsessed with, as though he doesn’t understand the terms of Democratic Debate being multi-sided. Do you consider Clinton the enemy, a#hole?

N. MAILER: Yes. He’s my spiritual enemy. I’ll give you — I can give you 82 examples, and I’m 83. I’ll come up with 83, tonight maybe more.
To begin with, he wrecks the American language. We’re a democracy and democracy depends on language growing. I say this over and over and over.
One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England. They do.

#3: HANNITY: You are a smart man; you’re a brilliant author. Politics, there’s a lot that I don’t agree with, but you go as far to say, your philosophy is we’ve got to live with terror. You went on and you made a statement about our country, the only reason we went to war — if I could find it here — was to boost the ego of white American males?
You know, Norman, those comments while we are at war, while troops are in harm’s way, while he is the commander in chief Groan, do you not see the outrage in that?

N. MAILER: Yes, I do. So what?

HANNITY: So that’s what you want to do?

N. MAILER: You know, you have the right in a democracy to make people angry.

HANNITY: You do.

N. MAILER: You have the right to speak your mind.

HANNITY: You have the right to be wrong.

N. MAILER: You have the right to be wrong. And I can be wrong and I can be right. I was not mocking the soldiers. I was a soldier, after all, along with a good many other people.

HANNITY: You’re undermining them, though. You’re undermining their leader. Groan.

N. MAILER: No, I’m not undermining them. Bush is undermining them.

#4: HANNITY: People said Reagan couldn’t…
N. MAILER: I thought I’d get my 30 seconds.
HANNITY: Reagan said it’s the evil empire.
COLMES: Hold on. It’s my turn to talk. Let me get John in here. Holy Cow! Alan Colmes is in the studio???

#5: N. MAILER: Can I get a sentence finished? One of the reasons they’re stupid is because they’re made stupid. They’re encouraged in their stupidity. When you have a president who speaks only in cliches — only in cliches — to the public — I’m sure he’s a little brighter in private — but when he speaks only in cliches to the public, he’s rendering the people stupid.

COLMES: You also say in the book…

N. MAILER: One last thought.

COLMES: Yes.

N. MAILER: And a democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They’re not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

COLMES: You the say the purpose of the right in America is to keep the majority as stupid as possible, as they run into less opposition by having stupid people. You basically put that squarely in the right’s province, that they’re the ones who are doing this.

N. MAILER: Yes. Yes. Well, they’re determined to keep us stupid. […]

HANNITY: Get away from the government schools and take the vouchers that Republicans are offering so you can have some competition and free market capitalism.

N. MAILER: Come on. I’m not here to debate things…

HANNITY: No, because I’m going to beat you in that debate.

COLMES: … me he would win. He actually admits that he beats me every night. Ba De Dum

#6: HANNITY: I’ve got less than a minute. I’m going to tell you something. You say 52 percent of this country is stupid.
N. MAILER: That’s my number.
HANNITY: All of you — all you liberals thought Reagan was stupid.
Reagan did the impossible; he brought the wall down. He ended the — the Soviet regime. The world is a better, safe place.
N. MAILER: You going to take up all my minutes?
HANNITY: I’m going to tell you something right now. George Bush is doing the same thing. You’re going to be proven wrong from the prism of history.
N. MAILER: I wasn’t proven wrong the last time.
HANNITY: Reagan…
N. MAILER: Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.
HANNITY: Darn right he did.
N. MAILER: We bankrupted the Soviet Union. We didn’t defeat them.
HANNITY: We beat them.
N. MAILER: And look at the mess they’re in now. We didn’t beat them.
We bankrupted them.
HANNITY: They’re better off than what they were under — sure, they are.
Two superpowers. One bankrupted before the other one. And so it goes, and to the Reagan fetishist, the question: how do you propose we bankrupt Iran? Or, more importantly al Qaeda, for that matter?

A connector between the Southern Revolt of 1928 and the Southern Revolt of 1948, and than another connector between the Southern Revolt of 1948 and the Southern Revolt of 1964, all the “Vilest Insult Southern Democrats have ever been given.” During the end of the 1948 election campaign, Truman’s Vice Presidential candidate Senator Barkley campaigned down in the South and gave a spiel worthy of What’s the Matter with Kansas. The message was: Look what happened the last time you ditched the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, in Texas, Truman and his minions threw the national Democratic machine behind a campaign to win a Senate race for a “New Deal” Democrat over a former Governor — Coke Stevens, both of whom — incidentally, vehementally opposed his civil-rights program (though I should probably say Humphrey’s civil-rights program, because he fought a tougher plank into the Democratic platform than what Truman wanted), but here is an example of the strange sway of political expediency and found consciences. Winning by a stunning 87 votes (which, come to think of it, is a little suspicious) was… Lyndon Baines Johnson. Huh.

2-12, and this is a pattern from the Secession in 1860, and go read my last post on the 1928 election for the “de ja vu”: A resolution calling upon “all true white Jeffersonian Democrats” in the country to assemble here at a date yet to be determined to “formulate plans” opposing President Truman’s civil rights program was adopted unanimosly today in a voice vote by 4,000 wildly cheering and stomping Missippians. For three hours the City Auditorium resounded to oratory in which the audience clapped and cheered the linking of the names of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lee, Bilbo, and Rankin, and three times lustily booed the name of Mr. Truman. […]

Thurmond made an unexpected bid for national support on the grounds that Mr. Truman’s proposals would not only “wreck” the South but also the nation, and would next lead to Federal legislation “compelling complete intermingling of the races.” Thurmond likes to intermingle with the races, I hear.

2-18: A group of Southern Democrats tonight cancelled plans to attend the annual party dinners tomorrow night because of a “no segregation” plocy. Mrs. Olin D Johnston, wife of the junio South Carolina Senator, told a reporter she would not show up for the Jefferson – Jackson Day dinner “because she might be seated next to a negro.” Mrs. Johnston, vice chairman of the dinner committee, said she had asked National Chairman J. Howard McGrath to arrange it so her party of about 45 would not be seated next to Negros, and Mr. McGrath “would not give an inch.” Now the party was dwindling fast. Earlier it was revealed that Governor and Mrs. Strom Thurmond also had cancelled their reservations to attend the party’s fund-raising festivities. President Truman will give an address. Governor Thurmond is chirman of a group of five Southern Governors who will meet with national Democratic leaders here Monday to discuss the regional revolt against President Truman’s Civil Rights program.

2-23: Senator J Howard McGrath, Democratic National Chairman, politely but firmly rebuffed today Southern Governors who sought to get the party high command to backtrack on Truman’s Civil Rights program. He would not yield on a single point as they fired question after question at him in a conference of an hour and three quarters. The Governors departed grim-lipped and went across the street to their hotel to meet among themselves for two hours. Then they issued a statement:

“A vast majority of the Democrats of the South are determined to restore the Democratic Party to the principles of Jefferson and Jackson and, I might add, Lee and will resort to whatever means are necessary to accomplish this end. The Democrats of the South are united in their opposition to the so-called civil rights program proposed by the President and effective action in the Southern States will be taken to prevent adoption of this program. We feel we are expressing the firm conviction of our people when we say that the present leadership of the Democratic Party has deserted the principles of government upon which the party was founded. As never before, the time has come for strong and effective action by the Southern states not only to save the Democratic Party but to preserve the rights of the states to govern themselves and preserve American democracy.

5-10-1948: In an action believed to be unprecedented in Southern history, Governor Fielding L Wright “advised” the Negroes of this state today [… that …]

“If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your home in some state other than Mississippi.” He urged the Negroes to “protect the integrity of your race,” and scored the treatment of the Negroes in the north as lacking in neighborliness, friendliness, kindness and consideration.

Veteran observers were unable to recall any other instance in which a chief executive had addressed a state’s negro population as a distinctly separate group of citizens and warned them as to the extent of their rights and privileges.

There was virtually no comment by Negro leaders on Governor Wright’s address during the day and several said they wanted to study its impact on their people.

The Governor’s message was delivered on the eve of the meeting in the capital city of “all true White Jeffersonian Democrats” who are opposed to President Truman’s civil rights program.

I’m guessing the reaction among the “Negros” draws back to the February article:

Yesterday, a statewide meeting of 100 Negro leaders held in a Methodist Church building here endorsed with cheeres a resolution commending President Truman for his 10-point civil rights program.

Wright would go on to be the vice-presidential nominee on Strom Thurmond’s ticket… But, you know, Strom Thurmond wasn’t a racist, and, you know, his campaign had nothing to do with White Supremacy: See:

7-10: Governor Thurmond declared that by his “so-called civil rights program” President Truman had so offended most Southerners that he actually had slowed up social progress in the South, and alienated most of the supporters on whom he could traditionally count. The Southern States have been working to improve the educational and economic opportunities of Negroes, he said, but they believe firmly in segregation of the races and will not tolerate “unconstitutional” Federal attempts to break it down.

“The liberal minded people of America, those who believe in the progressive social and economic development of our country do not want a Republican administration.” (wait until 1964, when you break free of the democrats for having the termerity of offering up… yes… a civil rights program.) “We must defeat a Republican party which numbers … blah blah blah.”

7-19-1948: Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was chosen on Saturday as the Presidential candidate of the rebellious Southern Democrats, cracked down on his “white supremacy” followers today in a surprise action. He told reporters in a telephone conversation from the exceutive mansion in Columbia, SC that he was a “progressive Southerner” interested in bettering conditions for the Negro and that he would campaign on the “States’ Right” ticket soley in support of his beliefs in the “sovereignty of the states as against Federal Government Interference.”

Admittedly perturbed by the attitude of some of his followers on the subject of “white supremacy”, a theme which studded many of the speeches made at the nominating convention three days ago, Governor Thurmond pointed to his record in bringing about the arrest of 23 white men accused of lynching a Negro in Greenville in January of 1947. He also emphasized that in his inaugural address two years ago he had called for repeal of the poll tax and he insisted that “at all times I have advocated better facilities for the negroes.” […]

Thurmond has always identified himself as a “progressive” although he has seemed to shy away from the “liberal” label. Please note that if you cross out “Thurmond” and replace it with, say, “Feingold” the sentence would read fluently. His public statements during the recent controversy over the civil rights proposal of Truman, however, lost him a large part of the liberal following that acclaimed him for his forthright conduct in the Greenville lynching case. […]
We then get a batch of paragraphs that posit Thurmond “as a centrist” of the politics of the South on the “race question”, and I’m almost shielding you from how laughably tepid the “Liberal”-wing on this front is, almost… fretful. … Witness:

2-12: Holding Carter, widely known liberal editorial in Mississippi, in front-page editorial this week said, “The greatest danger from President Truman’s program is that an angry, frustrated, and fearful South may forget that the South’s 10 million negroes had nothing to do with it. Our targets should be the political cynics above the Mason-Dixon line an the unyielding reactionaries below it who jointly brought us to this tragic pass.”

But back-track, and we now go into the panoply of the speakers at the “States Right” Convention, and excuse me if I experience a whip-lash against Thurmond’s urging that “It ain’t about White Supremacy.” — left, center, and… right march!

Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi is generally recongized as the “father” of a proposed Constitutional Amendment in Mississippi which calls for prospective voters to be of good moral character, widely regarded as a barrier aimed at Negro voters in Mississippi.

Frank M Dixon, former Governor of Alabama, spoke at the convention and repeatedly emphasized the “threat to the South” of the Civil Rights proposals, declaring that they would force the intermingling of the races and “make Southerners into a mongrel, inferior race.” Dear Dixon: I know you don’t know this, but you should probably know that Thurmond is banging a black woman … maybe not right as you speak, but at this rough time. That’s as “intermingling” of the races as you can get. Then again, I guess Thurmond is for “choice” and not for “forcing” you to have sex with blacks. Hm. Gawd, what I wouldn’t give for a time machine to go back to 1948 for a printing press to publish a tabloid with the headline “Thurmond Is Having Sex With A Negro!!!”

William H (Alfalfa Bill) Murray, 87 year old governor of Oklahoma, called to the speaker’s platform during the convention session, told the audience that “this country became great through Christian principles and the white man’s brain.”

Okay. That’s enough for now. Wait a while, and I’ll eventually post the story of Thurmond’s full frontal attack on Truman, Dewey, and Wallace — and their Master – Communist Plot. Come on! You knew he’d get arround to calling everyone Communists! I’ll start the next post with Thurmond speaking at… um… a Watermelon Festival. (!!!)

Well, I see Fox News is carrying on with the Bush Administration line.

I can not find the transcript easily with a simple google search, so you are just going to have to trust me that the exchange went a little bit like this:

Barbara Boxer: In the event of a Civil War in Iraq, what is the job of American/Coalition troops going to be?

Bush: See… I just do not accept your premise that Civil War is going to break out in Iraq.

… Because… um… that conflicts with “Democracy is on the March”?

Why the media is creating this fictional world where a civil war in brewing either under the surface or just above the surface… well, they’re objectively pro-terrorist. All except Fox News, which is not afraid to ask the tough questions that nobody else is willing to ask but which are floating on the top of many minds, such as “Is the Iraq Civil War a media creation?” and “Could an all out Civil War in Iraq be a good thing?”

In the warehouse district of Portland… or maybe I’ll say in one of the warehouse districts of Portland…

Okay, really just a few blocks north of the Rose Garden on the wall of a warehouse front…

There is graffiti that reads “Free Spanish Anarchists.”

This begs more questions than it answers. What Spanish Anarchists? Any specific Spanish Anarchists or just Spanish Anarchists in general? Who is imprisoning Spanish Anarchists? Do you want to free Anarchists of any other ethnic variety? Or is this a tag alerting the world to “Free Spanish Anarchits” — as opposed to Inhibited Spanish Anarchits, if you will. The only Anarchist prisoners off the top of my head are Italian and from the early part of the past century: Sacco. Vanzetti. But Surely if can wrack my brain I can come up with a few others.

I also wonder about the “Lies” graffiti found on various newspaper boxes, occasionally joined with the adjective “Corporate”. I like the “Stoopid” that is written across the front of the box for The Sporting News (in front of PGE Stadium), which I guess means “No diversionary activities allowed under the coming proleteriat Revolution.” Stuffed shirts, those quasi-Marxist quasi-Anarchists. One more question: I see the word “Jacobin” entreating the boxes of some Oregonian boxes. Is this describing the perceived editorial bent of the Oregonian, or the desired political climate post-revolution?

Pay attention, because there are some dejavu moments for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 campaign and the revolt over Truman’s Civil Rights plank, Strom Thurmond’s 1964 bolt to the Republican Party and the ensuring revolt over Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights program, The George Wallace campaign of 1968, and the use of various wedge issues in the 1988 and 2004 campaigns — (the threat of your bible being taken away and the call to arms against gay marriage), and for that matter Zell Miller’s early 21st Century disgruntlement over Snuffy Smith cartoons as an affront to the Southland. Plus, the actual Bob Jones (yes… BOB JONES!!!) makes an appearance.

7-17-1928: Opponents to the candidacy of Governor Smith crystallized here today at a conference of anti-Smith Democrats of Texas who pledged a state-wide campaign for the election of Secretary Hoover. About 500 persons attended the rally and among the speakers were half a dozen party leaders, ministers, and prohibition workers. Resolutions were adopted denouncing Governor Smith for his advocacy of a modification of the prohibition law; declaring resentment “of the efforts of Tammany Hall to nullify the 18th Amendment and to scrap the Volstead Act”; condemning the appointment of J.T. Roskab as chairman of the National Democratic Executive Committee, and denoucning “Tammany Democrats for the treatment with contempt the notice given by evangelical bodies of the South that they would not accept a wet nominee.” […]

Governor Smith’s message to the Houston convention in which he reaffirmed his stand for modification of the prohibition statues was characterized as “treason” by several speakers. His nomination was termed “The vilest insult ever hurled at Southern Democrats.”

V.A. Collins: “Any man who strike down the 18th Amendment also would strike down section 3 article 6 of the constitution pertaining to religious freedom. I don’t know if there is still a Ku Klux Klan organization in Texas. But if they are opposed to Al Smith I wish there were 10,000,000 of them in the state.”
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7-11: A few days ago a well known Washington correspondent wrote “political observers are surprised to see all the anti-Smith bitterness disappearing and the entire South getting ready to give a solid vote for the nominee.” Political observers not only in Washington but in the South are entitled to be “surprised” as the foregoing statement appeared in the Birmingham News and Age Herald in the column next to the “lynching” of Governor Smith in effigy at Wahouma, Alabama by the Nathan Bedford Forrest Klan of that Klux-ridden community. It was not an ordinary mob “lynching an effigy”. All the joys of Ku Kluxery were indulged. A straw effigy was introduced as “Al Smith, Democratic nominee for President”. Asked what should be done the crowd yelled, “Lynch him!” A vengeful Democratic Klansman plunged a knife into the effigy’s throat, while another poured on mercurochrome to heighten the effect of the “assassination.” A shot or two was fired into the effigy and it was then, amid the frenzy of the klan and its sympathizers, dragged around to hall to allow those present to vent their anger with kicks. The Robert E Lee Klavern in Alabama also assailed Governor Smith and did everything except “lynch” the Democratic candidate.

It should be said that the persons responsible in most cases for keeping alive and formenting hatred against Governor Smith in Georgia and Alabama are the preachers, those women who are members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and a handful of anti-Catholic newspapers.
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10-7, Alabama dispatch: The primary objection to Smith is his Catholicism. His wet views com second, his Tammany affiliation third. But it is hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. The simple truth is that there would be only a negligible amount of bolting among Democrats if Smith were not Catholic, regardless of his Tammany affiliations and his opposition to prohibition and regardless of his supposed views on immigration and his fondness for “those dirty Italians” as some speakers characterize them.

Klan politicians and preachers in Methodist and Baptist pulpits are the chief purveyors of evil reports about Smith. Some of these are Democrats, some are Republicans. All of them, however, enjoy the blessing of the Republican Campaign Committee of Alabama; indeed the Republican National Committee Chairman, Oliver D Street, last year a bitter foe of the Klan, now is attacking Smith because of his religion and printing his attack in a Klan organ, The American Standard of Birmingham. […]

Dr. Bob Jones, best known Methodist evangelist in the South and proprietor of Bob Jones College, is making 100 speeches for Hoover in Alabama. Jones tells his audiences that Catholics regard the children of non-Catholic parents as illegitimate. Though a vehement prohibitionist, Jones has repeatedly said, “I’d rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House.” He also is fond of saying that he’d “rather see a nigger” president than Smith. We are told that in Italy the watchword of the priests is, “If you can’t convert ’em, kill ’em.” Jones assures us this is true.

Other speakers, including Senator Heflin, say that every American President who has been assassinated was killed by a Catholic and that a Catholic shot Roosevelt. The “Anti-Smith Democratic Campaign Committee”, Judge Hugh A Locke Chairman, in his campaign book denoucnes Smith as a “negro lover”, and a “negro boot-licker”. He asserts that Smith favors and practices social equality (oh, the horror of it all!) and favors miscegenation. “Al Smith owes his entire political career to support by the lowest element of society. His plan of campaign is and has always been to divide the decent element of society between himself and his opponent, and then get the office by solidifying the negro, the alien, and the criminal element behind him.”
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11-12, FDR surveys the wreckage: While Mr. Roosevelt has remained silent on this phrase of the situation, it is said that he believes the survey will show that many Democrats in the South who left the party to vote for Herbert Hoover can be brought back within the regular ranks if they are handled tactfully. He is said to feel that if intensive work is carried on, not for three months but for at least three years, not only can the losses of November 6 be met but important gains can be effected. Or maybe a Great Depression can submerge the difficulty, with the Democratic troubles in the South simmering back to the surface by the end of the 1930s and remaining there… indefinitely, bubbling over in 1948 before bursting in full in 1968.)
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11-15: In his letter, Mr. Hoover says he is not at all unmindful of the conditions which for years brought about the political solidarity of the South, an apparent reference to the race question and resentment to the Republican Party’s reconstruction policy following the Civil War; but he expresses the belief “that the time has come when in all sections men and women should vote from their convictions as to conditions at the present time and not based on things of former generations.”
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11-25: The press of Tennessee and Arkansas has been much concerned since the election with the future political status of the negro, due to the break in the solid south. The word has passed that negro leaders in the North are prepared to fight in Congress for relief from the “Jim Crow” laws of the South and that they are going to call upon the Republicans, whose cause they aided in the recent election, to help them win their point. And the odd bed-fellows theory of politics wins true: the “negro” vote aided with the KKK vote. Take a wild guess on which constituency is going to win out in this battle! Previous efforts to break the “Jim Crow” law have been defeated by the votes of the Congressmen from the Solid South and Tammany Hall, but in the light of the events of the past few weeks the old cohesion is gone and the situation has reached panicky stage in some quarters. Wait. If Tammany man Al Smith is part of the political machine that historically stops Jim Crow laws, how can he then also be smeared by Bob Jones and company as a “negro lover”? For instance, editorial expression from Chattanooga is that Senator Glass and Senator Swanson of Virginia and Senator Sheppard of Texas, whose states refused to listen to them in the fight for the election of Governor Smith, will be keen to combat the rumored plans of the Republicans when the onslaught of the south begins in Congress. These men were in a sense repudiated by the voters of their states and it is quite possible that they will be more or less quiescent. Again, the confused political alliance is confusing this New York Times writer on what pressure is being brought to bear on these Senators, as well as confusing the following esteeemed individual.

It is understood that John R Hawkins, the negro who seconded the nomination of Hoover, is to lead the fight and that the first assault will be on the “Jim Crow” law of Virignia, because it joins DC where no such law exists. Virginia will be only the first step, it is understood, and other states of the South may expect to be asked to defend their right to enforce an act that deals with racial discrimination.

Newspapers of the region that supported the Democratic cause valiantly wax sarcastic in their comment on the situation, and although they express chagrin that things are as they are, they insist that Democratic bolters are merely being “given a taste of the menu which has been prepared for them by the negro leaders of the North.” The intimation is that they deserve all they recieve.
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12-4: At a meeting of the Presbyterian Ministers Association of New York, Reverend Harry Bowlby: “The revolt of the Solid South was a rebuke to Governor Smith, who had the effrontery to kick aside the Democratic platform and to pose before the country as being himself the Democratic Party. Now that Governor Smith has discovered his avowed attitudes as the cahmpion of the open saloon has nearly wrecked the Democratic Party, I believe that he has the good sense to step aside.”
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11-16, CH Patterson: What do the American people care about really statesmanlike questions, such as cooperation with foreign nations, peace and international trade? They are willing to vote on strict party lines, unless their prejudices are involved. Apparently, they neither know nor care about what such questions mean. The small futilities, however, engage them desparately.

One prominent paper in New England speaks of the “immense benefit” to the South of the election of Herbert Hoover! Any northerner who has lived in teh South knows that it is a disaster. I acknowledge, as a Republican, that Hoover’s election is a good thing for the country as a whole, but for the South especially it is a misfortune. Not that the South loved Hoover more but that it loves Catholics and liquor less! The choice of Hoover confirms all their prejudices. This victory will set back the progress of religious liberty and education in the South.
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11-27: Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has little use for the World Court, Governor Alfred Smith, Senator Reed of Missouri, or violations of the 18th Amendment. He made this plain in an address here [in Atlanta] tonight when he outlined Klan policies for the coming two years. The organization would continue along the line of its present endevor, he said. You mean it’s not going to stray from its platform of terrorizing blacks and Catholics? What departure, exactly, am I supposed to expect from the KKK?

“The Klan restored control in Reconstruction Days, and we will do the same now,” he said referring to violation of Prohibition. And the Minutemen will restore order at the Border.) Governor Smith came in for a hearty share of the Wizard’s vocal artillery. The Governor has proved himself a “bad citizen” by advocating the repeal of the Mullen-Gage law in New York, he charged. He referred to Governor Smith as “the great nullifer of today” and declared that “what was good for Calhourn, the first Great Nullifier, will be ample for Al Smith in 1928.” I don’t have time to google it — either refreshing my memory or teaching it to me for the first time, so will some historian please tell me what happened to Calhourn? “The Catholic Church is all right for Al Smtih but it does not fit an Imperial Wizard.” I think I’ll frame that quote. “Georgia will have her revenge in 1928 for the insult furnished at the national convention by the playing of ‘Marching Through Georgia,'” Um…? I wish we lived in an age where we could Dual! He asserted that a coffin would lead a procession with a funeral dirge, and that the inscription of the conffin would tell the uninformed “Here lies the political remains of Al Smith.”

The article then goes on to quote this KKK Wizard in praise of Woodrow Wilson, his prohibition policy and his war policies… which confuses me because it is in mark contrast to his having “no use for the World Court”, a Wilsonian creature that. Then again, I imagine Wilson’s approval of “Birth of a Nation” trumps all.