Something to take note of post-MLK Day:
Mike Huckabee recently said this in support of South Carolina’s right to fly the Confederate battle flag over the statehouse:
You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ’em what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.
Christopher Hitchens rightly calls this a “straightforward racist appeal,” noting, first, that both houses of the SC legislature voted to stop flying the Confederate flag back in 2000 — so the target audience of Huckabee’s remark is knuckle-draggers who want to see it re-hoisted. Hitchens continues:
“Your flag”? What an insult, not just to the descendants of slavery but to the many, many other loyalists and Unionists who fought and died to bring their state back into the Union. And what is the point of the “outside the state” slur? Wasn’t this exactly what Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas used to say, as if to make it seem that all was hunky-dory in his own tight little dominion until them goddam “outside agitators” arrived? In the end, as Gov. Huckabee may or may not recall, the 101st Airborne Division, most of them “outsiders” not from Arkansas, had to be sent by a Republican president to integrate the schools of Little Rock. That was a lot of trouble and expense that the big-mouth rednecks put us all to, but it was worth it. It’s insufferable to hear this glib idiot make a mockery of it now in order to try to get the Klan vote in South Carolina.
And another reason why this year’s Republican race stands in stark contrast the Democratic race. Obama’s MLK Day speech is well worth hearing (and his Wal-Mart comment against Hillary Clinton last night will go down as a defining moment of the campaign).
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