I'm not quite fully sure what to think about the McKinney situation. I know that will be a heresy to the trolls, but I actually use my brain and recognize that the real world is more complex than they usually think. I don't think, at this point, there is enough information publicly to come to a conclusion about this incident.
Let's take a closer look:
For her part, McKinney wasn't backing down from the argument. She charged anew that racism is behind what she said is a pattern of difficulty in clearing Hill security checkpoints.
Now, if this is accurate -- and if it is, other black members of Congress should've had similar problems -- then McKinney certainly has a defense. If she has faced a history of racial profiling (something that is always wrong), then this type of response is legitimate.
"Cynthia McKinney is a racist," Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends," a day after abandoning his re-election bid under a cloud of ethics charges. "She has a long history of racism. Everything is racism with her. This is incredible arrogance that sometimes hits these members of Congress, but especially Cynthia McKinney."
The fact that one of the most evil, corrupt members of Congress calls McKinney a racist makes me much more likely to believe her. Particularly when he says racist code words such as "these members." He should lose his job over that remark.
Last Wednesday's incident in a House office building has caused a commotion on Capitol Hill, where security in the era of terrorist threat is tighter than ever and where authorities had to order an evacuation just Monday because of a power outage.
I'm certainly sensitive to this and think that it is legitimate for security to stop anyone they don't recognize -- even a member of Congress -- before allowing them into the building. I know McKinney will say that she shouldn't have to face that kind of scrutiny, but I think the average person would see the legitimacy of such stops. Unless, of course, it is only McKinney or only black members that are getting stopped.
Gainer said that racism, however, was not a factor.
"I've seen our officers stop white members and black members, Latinos, male and females," he told CNN. "It's not an issue about what your race or gender is. It's an issue about making sure people who come into our building are recognized if they're not going through the magnetometer, and this officer at that moment didn't recognize her."
Now if this is true -- and it certainly should be easy to produce these white, black, Latino, male and female members who have been similarly stopped -- then it undercuts McKinney's story. This is something that needs to be looked into to determine the veracity. If Gainer can back this one up, then McKinney is 100% wrong.
Police also have said that McKinney was failing to wear a pin that lawmakers are asked to display when entering Capitol facilities.
This one is just silly. Security should not be based on wearing a pin. It's laughable. Besides, a reporter working at the Capitol told Olbermann earlier that half the members of Congress fail to wear these pins. McKinney says:
But she said Wednesday: "Face recognition is the issue .... The pin doesn't have my name on it and it doesn't have my picture on it, and so security should not be based on a pin ... People are focused on my hairdo."
The pin is just not a valid security system. The last accusation was the "inappropriate touching." If the officer grabbed someone's arm he thought was a security risk, I don't see that as inappropriate. If he grabbed or touched something else -- a breast perhaps -- then he should be in trouble and her response is appropriate.
All that being said, we don't currently know and probably won't for a while. Originally, I thought I had read that this was caught on film, but I've since read that it wasn't, so we'll probably never know 100%, but there are many, many witnesses that can shed light on the case and we should certainly wait until more of that information has been gathered before coming to a conclusion.