Updated and reposted: After Howard Dean gets attacked for suggesting the Democratic Party needs to respond to the Republicans Southern Strategy,
Zell Miller likens his fellow Democrats in the senate to racist murderers.
Miller said Senate Democrats are "standing in the doorway" and blocking nomination. "And they have a sign: Conservative African-American women need not apply," the lawmaker said. Miller added that if they still try to do so, their "reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched," he said.
If that's not "political hate speech," I don't know what is. Will the outrage be in proportion to the offense? Or is it okay for Miller to invoke a symbol that is deeply painful to many because he's practically a Republican? Will any registered Republicans use the word "lynch"?
At least somebody is calling Zell on his languange: According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, took sharp exception to Miller's words":
"Senator Zell Miller's comment equating opposition to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to a lynching is despicable on its face," said Henderson. "Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the South."
Miller stuck by his vocabulary.
"I am not the first to use this analogy," the senator replied Thursday in a prepared statement. "African-American columnist Thomas Sowell first used it in a column on October 24, 2003 [actually October 21 --JM], and I think it sums up the situation accurately."
Henderson's statement, on the civilrights.org web site, demands Zell Miller apologize. He ought to.