Shortly after President Bush nominated Samuel Alito -
Strip Search Sammy - to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, Sen. Bill Frist and Alito's family paid their respects to Rosa Parks, who lay in state at the Capitol.
To some, it appeared that the Senator, the nominee and his family were simply paying homage to the deceased Civil Rights pioneer. To others - those with a brain and the sense to use it - it constituted a cheap political stunt: A party built on hatred, bigotry and racism was trying to whitewash its past and its disgraceful nominee, in the process simultaneously taking advantage of Parks and slapping African Americans everywhere in the face.
It was clear that the Republicans had calculated yesterday's stunt to deflect attention away from Alito's lackluster record on race. It was also clear that the Republicans failed miserably.
Were the Republicans trying to cover yesterday for not actively speaking out against lynching? If you'll recall, when a recent apology for not acting sooner against the act
passed the Senate, it did so lacking a sizeable portion - more than a quarter - of Republicans as co-sponsors.
In fact, it was Frist himself who prevented the standard roll-call vote, forcing instead a voice vote - ayes versus nays. That way, those racist Senators in Frist's party weren't made to go on the record with their true feelings. What's worse, not only did these Senators fail to cosponsor the measure, but they also did so knowing they could have signed it after the fact. That's right, there are still a group of southern Republican Senators unwilling to go on the record as opposing lynching.
Had the victims of lynching looked more like Alito and less like Parks, would these Senators have cosponsored the apology? Of course they would have. But America is content to let obscenities like this occur while forcing Howard Dean to apologize for calling Republicans the party of white Christians. It's only in this world where people like Frist and Alito can get away with using Parks as a political prop.
But maybe it wasn't the lynchings the pair was thinking about. Perhaps it was the administration's lackluster, criminally negligent response to Hurricane Katrina. At no time - before, during or after - did the Bush administration do its job in helping those dying along the Gulf Coast. While people drowned, Bush played guitar. While people were stranded, Bush used lifesavers as props. While people tried to start anew, they were herded like cattle into places more closely resembling concentration camps than houses of hope.
The area will never be the same, either - as far as the underprivileged are concerned. A group - largely African American - never given a chance before disaster struck doesn't look to get one now. Painted as idiots, drug-addicted thugs and scumbags, the victims of Hurricane Katrina stand as little chance to reap the benefits of the reconstruction as Frist and Alito did reaching out to help those in need. Perhaps they were there to tell Parks, posthumously, that she never would have gotten herself into that mess if she had been able to afford her own car instead of riding the bus.
Or perhaps they were there to tell her that, had she been aborted, her "crime" of civil disobedience could have been avoided. After all, we're talking about two adherents - Frist and Alito - to the party that spawned "moral arbiters" like Bill Bennett. The same Bennett who recently said the following:
But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.
If Katrina didn't convince you that racism was back under the Bush administration, Bennett's comments - torn directly from the
unofficial Republican talking points - will. And while Bennett gets a free pass for his prejudices, Democrats
get called racist for simply pointing out their objections to the qualifications of people like Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales.
Attacking opponents from their own weaknesses has been a longtime Republican ploy. Everyone knows how truly abysmal the Republicans' record on race is. And everyone knows how lackluster Alito's history in the area has been. Yet Frist paraded Alito through the Rotunda, where they proceeded to use the death of a true heroine, a true Civil Rights pioneer, as a photo opportunity - a picture that says "We're friendly to African Americans." But they're not, and everyone knows it.
Because if it were up to the Frists and Alitos of the world, Parks would not be a hero; instead, she'd be yet another uppity African American looking for special rights, not appreciating all that society has bestowed upon them. To them, she wasn't a pioneer, she was an unlawful, unruly criminal. And no photo opportunity will ever convince anyone otherwise.