One wicked thunderstorm didn’t create the Grand Canyon.
While President Donald Trump’s recent finding of “nice people” among neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan terrorists earns headlines, the set-up for that statement percolated for better than half a century within the Republican Party.
Back in the 1960’s Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act and welcomed former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond into the party of Lincoln. Thurmond’s progeny includes a mixed-race daughter he fathered with a black servant – a daughter he never acknowledged during his life. [history recounted in New York Times on 6/27/2003] Candidate Richard Nixon famously employed his “Southern Strategy” in 1968 “systematically making veiled (and often not-so-veiled) racist appeals to white voters.” [ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-04/birth-of-the-southern-strategy ]
By the reign of King Ronnie, the GOP happily included long-time Senator Jesse Helms: “The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s this far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.” [ https://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2008/07/07/top-ten-quotes-from-jesse-helms ]
Racism and bigotry doesn’t co-exist with the Republican Party, it has been grafted into the party’s DNA.
Still, something Molly Ivins said comes to mind: “It’s hard to convince people that you’re killing them for their own good.” Selling hate requires friends…such as Rush Limbaugh and, here in St. Louis, KMOX.
In his 1992 book, The Way Things Ought To Be, [download it for free at https://elwoodrodenalay.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/the-way-things-ought-to-be-by-rush-h-limbaugh.pdf] Rush complained at length about “feminazis” (a term he credits to his friend economics professor Tom Hazlett). On the radio he famously said…
A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that
as many abortions as possible are performed…They don’t need men to be happy.
They certainly don’t want males to be able to exercise any control over them.
[ https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh ]
And, “The NAACP should have riot rehearsals. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.” [see above]
The former First Lady was “Moochelle Obama” [from www.rushlimbaugh.com from the 8/8/10 broadcast] while Rush’s “respect” for former President Obama can be summed up in a song played repeatedly on his show, “Barack The Magic Negro” [ https://newsone.com/16051/top-10-racist-limbaugh-quotes/ & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N08ZIsSPKuo ]. (A candidate for a top GOP office shared that song with friends one Christmas [ http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/26/rnc.obama.satire/ ].)
KMOX?
Well, in the mid-1990’s when clear-channel, 50,000 watt KMOX bought Rush’ show away from 5,000 watt WIBV 1260 AM in Belleville, Illinois, bigotry and hate got respectable on the Voice of St. Louis.
On the old KMOX Jack Buck interviewed former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Today’s KMOX? After Rush’s daily rants Mark Reardon fans the same flames. For example, it’s been three years since Charlie Dooley – the African American who led Missouri’s most populous and prosperous county – left office. Yet, Reardon still uses an edited sound bite mocking Dooley to demean the retired office holder. True, he loves lobbing ad hominine at all sorts of people (especially when they’re black, Democrat or both). Reardon gave “Uncle Ted” Nugent an open invitation to call-in or visit anytime. That uncle publicly called the former President a “piece of shit” and a “subhuman mongrel” and wanted Obama to “suck on my machine gun.” [ https://thinkprogress.org/trump-hosts-ted-nugent-white-house-c0da4b94c51/ ]
Of course, it’s all okay because Uncle Ted has dined with Trump in the White House. And, all ‘good people’ (read: ‘white Republicans’) know that, well, they are superior. Nazis and the KKK are “extreme” but they’re welcome in the Republican party.
Remember, the Grand Canyon didn’t appear overnight. But, it is still getting deeper.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member
Well said. Sad that KMOX, once the vaunted “Voice of St. Louis” but now the Rant of a few St. Louisans, places ratings and profit so far above the interests of community — like safety and development. Sadder still, there is an audience, apparently, for Limbaugh’s filth.
Mark K.