Isn't that special?

Where's the Outrage?

For fear that some may think they are taken out of context, we reprint the offending part here in its entirety: "My sons are 25 and 30. They are blond-haired and blue-eyed. One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean if you go into a black community, you cannot sell a gun to any black person, or does that mean because my -- " . . .

for context

Instead, she told Mr. Watt, who is African American, that she wanted "to apologize to my colleague for his sensitivities." . . .

That's right, my imaginary audience. Not for her words, but for his sensitivities. Like, "I'm sorry you're sensitive about this issue."

Yet more astonishing than Mrs. Cubin's obtuseness was that when the full House considered whether to have Mrs. Cubin's words "taken down" as offensive -- a move that would have stricken them from the record and kept her from speaking for the rest of the day -- it voted in her favor, 227 to 195. Not a single Republican lawmaker voted against the remarks. Afterward, not a word of criticism from House Republican leaders. Upon being asked for comment, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday ventured (through a spokesman) to say that the remarks "clearly left the wrong impression." He also described Mrs. Cubin as a "sensitive and at heart a very good person." Maybe so; but shrugging off the offensiveness of her statement is no more appropriate now than when Republican leaders tried the same tactic immediately after Mr. Lott made his remark.

The reason the Republicans refuse to speak out against the obviously racist sentiments Mrs. Cubin expressed, perhaps accidentally, is that the public seems to only absorb and react to things presented in the press, and any response here is newsworthy. It's better from their viewpoint to simply say nothing.

Unfortunately, that too is a response.

If all the bloggers out there hadn't kept discussing Trent Lott's gaffe until so many people knew about it the press no longer could ignore it, it would have faded away. The clumsiness of his "apologies" were just more grist for the mill. This deserves equal, if not more, exposure. Not because she's in a leadership position, but because the entire party refuses to address the issue.

During the Trent Lott flap, Black Republicans staunchly supported their party while calling for Lott to step down. He stepped down, but not out--stepped into another, slightly less influential leadership position, in fact. At the time, recognizing ethics in the Beltway are based on power relationship rather than moral ones, I found the Republican Party's decision to be rational because Lott was threatening to resign entirely, leaving a slot that was almost certain to be filled by a Democrat. And afterward Black Republicans wrote several editorials about how they hoped this opened the eyes of the party, how Lott's stepping down was a bellweather of greater racial sentivity on the part of the party, yadita, yadita. I'm now waiting to see how many of them can do the right thing and, like Glen C. Loury, admit their error.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/11/2003 10:38:29 AM |