Media Libs, Oblivious to Rather and Byrd, Bash 'Racist' Jesse Helms
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NewsMax.com
Friday, Aug. 31, 2001 9:31 a.m. EDT
There they go again.
Six weeks after media liberals broke their necks looking the other way when CBS big Dan Rather uttered a racial epithet during a nationally broadcast radio interview, they've rediscovered their racial sensitivity.
No, they're still not upset with the "CBS Evening News" anchorman, who derided his bosses as "Buckwheats" for caving in to pressure to cover the Gary Condit story. Or Sen. Robert Byrd, who in March uttered the phrase "white n----rs" on national TV.
The target of their racial attacks is GOP conservative icon Sen. Jesse Helms, whose announcement that he's retiring drew this lovely parting shot from the so-called "dean" of the Washington press corps, David Broder:
"Jesse Helms, White Racist" was the headline atop Broder's Washington Post column Wednesday.
The "dean," upset that enough reporters hadn't used the opportunity of Helms' retirement to smear him as a racist, eagerly picked up the slack.
"What really sets Helms apart," Broder noted, "is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country - a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired."
Of course, Broder didn't have to do all the heavy lifting on the Helms smear himself. PBS's Mark Shields was actually first out of the box, bashing Helms as racist just days after his announcement.
"Jesse Helms was an unreconstructed segregationist and came from segregationist politics, and he never really changed," Shields told Jim Lehrer's "News Hour."
Needless to say, neither Broder nor Shields had a word to say about Rather's "Buckwheat" slur, which even most in the conservative media ignored. But what about Byrd's "white n----r" remark?
A Lexis-Nexis search turns up not a peep from either of the liberal commentators on the West Virginia Democrat's outrageous epithet.
Helms bashers stayed mum on Byrd despite the leading liberal's amply documented background in the Ku Klux Klan. And Byrd wasn't just a foot soldier - he was a Kleagle, an official KKK recruiter.
The prominent Democrat officially severed his ties to the Klan in 1943. But three years later he wrote a letter to the hate group's Imperial Wizard.
"The Klan is needed today as never before," explained Byrd. "I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the Union."
In another musing from Byrd's so-called post-Klan period, he complained about blacks in the military, vowing never to fight "with a Negro by my side."
"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
Surely that kind of over-the-top race baiting would have drawn the ire of racially sensitive liberals everywhere, right?
Well, not exactly. Only columnist Michelle Malkin thought the Byrd quotes were worth recycling in the wake of his nationally televised racial slur. Broder, Shields and the rest of the media libs stayed dead silent.
Their excuse, of course, was that Byrd offered his slurs many, many years ago.
But that's the point. Byrd's "White n----r" remark, coming just five months ago, shows that the West Virginia Democrat remains the unreconstructed bigot he was in the 1940s - the same accusation Shields and Broder leveled against Helms without a single similar incident on his record.
There's a lesson here for Republicans, though they obstinately refuse to learn it: Liberals will bash Republicans as racists no matter what the evidence shows.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, for instance - by bringing the city's annual homicide rate down from 2,100 to 600 during his tenure - has arguably done more for minorities than any politician of his time.
The victims of New York's formerly staggering murder rate were largely black and brown, meaning that thousands of blacks and Hispanics are alive today because of his get-tough-on-crime policies.
But instead of being hailed as a hero, Giuliani is routinely trashed as a racist by libs like Hillary Clinton, who try to win black votes by ginning up issues like racial profiling and police brutality. Meanwhile, her husband makes up stories about whites burning down black churches in his native Arkansas.
The GOP's docile acceptance of the liberal double standard on race has real political consequences.
George Bush won a record 27 percent of the black vote in the 1998 Texas governor's race. But after national Democrats smeared him as a racist during the presidential campaign, using surrogates like the NAACP to link him to the dragging death of James Byrd, he won just 5 percent of the black vote in his home state.
Meanwhile, nary a national Republican said "boo" when Bill Clinton was accused of using the "N" word by two reputable witnesses on national TV. And when four witnesses charged that Mrs. Clinton had once called a campaign aide a "f---ing Jew bastard," her Senate opponent, Rick Lazio, refused to touch the issue.
Imagine the media feeding frenzy if either of those allegations had been leveled against Jesse Helms - or George Bush, for that matter.
When the GOP fails to call libs like the Clintons on their race-baiting, when conservatives sit idly by as Byrd and Rather hurl racial epithets - and speak out only when Democrats attack one of their own - they send a message, loud and clear:
Democrats are the party of racial sensitivity, Republicans could care less.
But when Republicans fight fire with fire, and libs come to understand that they won't get a free pass for their own transgressions, experience suggests the politics of race baiting quickly evaporates.
That's what happened in Missouri's U.S. Senate race last year. Before he died, Missouri Democratic Senate hopeful Gov. Mel Carnahan tried to paint then-Sen. John Aschroft as a racist. Ashcroft's aides responded by unearthing a 40-year-old photo of Carnahan performing in a blackface minstrel show.
It worked like a charm. The Carnahan campaign immediately stopped its race baiting against Ashcroft, and the rest of the campaign was fought on the issues.
The Republican Party and its few friends in the press need to wise up - and soon. As long as the politics of race is a one-way street, George Bush and the rest of his party will be lucky to break into double digits when it comes to black support - no matter what Bush's actual record on race turns out to be.
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David Broder, trash mouth
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
By Joseph Farah© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
The illustrious David Broder wrote a column a couple of weeks ago for the Washington Post that shows why he remains one of the darlings of the beltway media establishment.
Titled, "Jesse Helms, white racist," this was determined to be the official political epitaph of the man known as "Senator No, R-N.C."
Broder attacked his media establishment colleagues in a way they love to be attacked – for being too nice to conservatives and Republicans.
Broder claims it wasn't Helms' conservative credentials that set him apart among his colleagues. It was his racism.
"What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country – a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired," he wrote. "A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life."
Let's examine the evidence Broder puts forward to substantiate the heavy charge against Helms that he is ready, willing and able to "pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans."
Now, before we do so, I feel it is important to point out that I am by no means a member of Jesse Helms' amen corner. I have written many critical articles about the man. But is he a racist? That's the serious charge raised by Broder.
"To the best of my knowledge, Helms has never done what the late George Wallace did well before his death – recant and apologize for his use of racial issues," Broder wrote. "And that use was blatant."
No it isn't, Broder. At least you don't make the case in your column.
As evidence Broder writes, "In 1984, when Helms faced his toughest opponent in Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the late Bill Peterson, one of the most evenhanded reporters I have ever known, summed up what 'some said was the meanest Senate campaign in history. Racial epithets and standing in school doors are no longer fashionable,' Peterson wrote, 'but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master.'"
That's opinion, Broder – not evidence, not fact. Where's the beef?
Broder continues: "A year before the election, when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a national holiday. (Strom) Thurmond and the Senate majority were on the other side, but the next poll showed Helms had halved his deficit."
That's evidence of racism? To oppose a national holiday for a black man is racist? I suppose if some idiot proposed a national holiday honoring Rodney King, all opponents would be labeled racist. Is it possible to have a civil debate about issues involving race today without the use of such insulting epithets?
I very much opposed a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King. I would be in favor of repealing it today. Does that make me a racist?
Again, Broder resorts to citing the second-hand reporting of Peterson to make his spurious case: "Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives. ... On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by 'homosexuals, the labor union bosses and the crooks' and said he feared a large 'bloc vote.' What did he mean? 'The black vote,' Helms said." He won, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Racist? Hardly. The black vote in this country is a bloc vote. Blacks vote Democratic to the tune of 90 percent or more. Why is it racist to acknowledge reality?
And here's the clincher from Broder: "In 1990, locked in a tight race with an African American Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms aired a final-week TV ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter, while an announcer said, 'You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.' Once again, he pulled through."
Big deal! Helms opposed illegal, unconstitutional racial quotas in the name of misguided affirmative-action programs. Good for him. I do, too. Most Americans do. That's why Helms was a political winner most of his career.
"That is not a history to be sanitized," concludes Broder.
Is that your best shot? You hurl around defamatory charges like "racist" with such flimsy evidence? For doing so, you ought to have your mouth washed out with soap. Volatile insults like that are beneath you and your lofty position. They are a discredit to you and your profession.
So sanitize that.
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Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com and writes a daily column.