Missouri Senate Nominee McCaskill: Bush Let NOLA Blacks Die
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James Joyner | Friday, September 8, 2006 |
Jim Addison is highlighting a report by blogger Antonio French that Claire McCaskill, the Democratic challenger for Jim Talent’s Missouri Senate seat, went all Kanye West at a public meeting.
In a spirited voice, she told them that she would do everything she could to make clear to every Democratic voter that “George Bush has no better friend than Jim Talent.”
McCaskill said she would remind people that “George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black.”
Kevin Aylward, Addison’s publisher, e-mails, “In August, George Allen’s ‘Macaca’ comment made the front page of the Washington Post (more than once), and was the top midterm election story nationwide for nearly two weeks. Tuesday in Missouri, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Claire McCaskill accused the President of genocide on his own people.” And he notes that the press is totally ignoring the story, as evidenced by a GoogleNews search which reveals that a lone story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch–itself a response to French’s report–is the extent of the non-blog coverage.
My initial response was skepticism, given that I have no basis for trusting French’s credibility. He provides an amateurish YouTube video from the meeting which, oddly, does not seem to include the incident in question:
Yet, the McCaskill camp does not seem to be denying the words, only the interpretation. From the Post-Dispatch story:
McCaskill’s spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh said her comment was referring to “what many people felt about the tragedy of the response to Katrina.”
“Claire believes the response was gross incompetence that turned tragic because so many people in New Orleans did not have the resources to help themselves,” Marsh added.
As Dean Esmay notes, such race-baiting “has wide currency in the black community.” Indeed, from the O.J. trial to the CIA plots to infect black people with AIDS and get them hooked on crack to the NAACP’s lynching ad to the rantings of Maxine Watts, Al Sharpton, and Cynthia McKinney, there is clearly a willingness to believe almost any charge made against white Republicans.
More than forty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965–and more than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education–there are some very deep wounds that have not healed. The GOP needs to do more. But it’s very hard to make much progress when black leaders, self-appointed and otherwise, continue to hurl such outrageous charges for cyncial purposes.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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i wouldn't be shocked if the statements were made. trust me, the gloves will be off, especially for democrats, in the missouri senate race. desperation will yield the worst in people.
Off topic/spam comment in violation of site policies deleted.
“Claire believes the response was gross incompetence that turned tragic...
Hers?
...because so many people in New Orleans did not have the resources to help themselves,”
Maybe she should be asking why people that live in a hurricane prone area, below sea level, that were warned of an impending storm, did not thave the ability to help themselves. Surely these preparations should have occurred long before the alarms sounded.
For that matter, what have they done to prepare for the next storm? Are they even prepared to 'help themselves' now? Why not? What is she going to do for her constituents to change this, blame the next President?
Of course the MSM aren't carrying the story. As legion put it in a comment on another thread, the right already owns the mass media. So of course they wouldn't want to say anything that could help a republican. If that isn't proof that legion is correct, the right and not the left controls the media, I don't know what is.
I still have a vivid memory of New Orleans residents at the Superdome complaining they need help. They complain that the place was a mess and there was trash lying around everywhere. The reporter should have told them to get off their ass and clean the place up.
To be fair, there was some in other places that did just that although I think it was in Mississippi.
Look on the bright side, Ms. McCaskill must think George W. Bush loves poor black people in Mississippi since he didn't let them die in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
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