I do rather love how this interview coincides with Treason-In-Defense-Of-Slavery Day. Yay, for the continuation of the Southern Strategy!

But of course he was there to hear the good doctor.  Why, he didn’t even know that he wasn’t white.  Hey, I’ll bet if we get a bunch of guys together in my pickup truck, we can make him turn white!  Joe Bob, you git the rope…

(Haley speak.  Not my opinion!)

“I just don’t remember it as being that bad for racist white males”

FTFY, Haley.

Of course Haley Barbour will never become President—not because of his tone-deaf statements on the Jim Crow-era South, or his political positions, but because of them Duke Boys and that bumbling Sheriff Coltrane!

What the hell, on that note, I make a not so humble prediction:

Our next Republican President will not not be a southern, white male baby boomer. That well has gone dry.

“I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ‘62.”

Also in 1962 there were riots at the University of Mississippi in Oxford that left two dead and 75 injured.  Students were rioting over the admission of James Meredith to the University.  President Kennedy sent federal troops to control the riots.  A couple of years later three civil rights workers disappeared and were later found dead.  Maybe Barbour just has a bad memory of the history of his state.  Probably though, he’s a bigoted liar who looks back on those days of lynchings and hatred with nostalgia.

Oh, and in between those two years Byron de la Beckwith, a member of the Citizens’ Council shot and killed Medgar Evars.  I wonder if Barbour remembers that, or the death of Emmett Till.

I don’t really remember. The truth is, we couldn’t hear very well.

A couple hundred years of white male privilege jammed into one’s ears will do that to a person.

I don’t know about his friends, but I have no doubt that the ambitious little ratf*cker already had his eye on the main chance and was doing a little research for his future career. Given his stated admiration for the Citizens’ Councils, at the time he likely saw the sentiment behind them as an attractive political avenue for himself.

I imagine Barbour sitting on a car, straining to hear what the capitvatin’ n*gger preacher had to say, gauging the reaction of the white in the crowd, and whingeing at his buddies (Bud-drinking rednecks of the KKK variety) to quiet down so he could hear.

It was 1962 in Mississippi: what the hell else was there to do?

I actually think Mr. Barbour’s account is fairly true. If you live in the boonies you went to whatever show came round regardless of whether you personally interested in it. So they went to see King speak and having no personal interest in civil rights, or current events, or good speech writing Barbour and his friends hung out in the back of the crowed to drink beer/flirt with girls. To imply that they went there with the idea of causing trouble is ridiculous. I doubt any of those boys had enough nerve or drive to go to a rally and actually start shit. If someone else started shit they would probably gleefully join in, only to fade into the crowd when the cops showed up looking for responsible parties, each one crafting a story of how he daringly made a stand against those ******‘s, single-handedly fighting off fifty of them before giving the slip to the corrupt authorities.

So, Foghorn Leghorn there expects us to believe that he wanted to hear King speak, but didn’t bother to move in from the periphery in order to do so. That makes as much sense as the idea that White Citizens Councils kept the Klan out of Yazoo City in order to protect its black citizens, when, as Amanda implies, the Klan ban was likely a class-based, pre-emptive public relations measure.

Shocking, by the way, that the Weekly Standard interviewer didn’t press him on these non-sensical points.

I actually think Mr. Barbour’s account is fairly true. If you live in the boonies you went to whatever show came round regardless of whether you personally interested in it. So they went to see King speak and having no personal interest in civil rights, or current events, or good speech writing Barbour and his friends hung out in the back of the crowed to drink beer/flirt with girls.

And if their presence happened to be intimidating, goodness, that certainly wasn’t their intentions!  Certainly not during an era when civil rights workers were being killed by people that looked a lot like them!  Why, I never!

If you live in the boonies you went to whatever show came round regardless of whether you personally interested in it.

Whatever show indeed. Afternoon lynching canceled on account of black dude giving a speech? Let’s just truck the whole gang over there instead; nah, hang onto the rope and hoods, no point in going all the way back to the house to drop them off.

“We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do. We paid more attention to the girls than to King.”

And as a “girl” that shit sounds creepy as fuck. But I’m sure they kept their “watching” and “talking” totally polite, right? No, like, group stares at the black girls? No stares at the white girls who were there, remembering faces of girls who don’t know what kind of man they are supposed to listen to? No catcalls, I’m sure, saying whatever kinds of things a group of white boys in the South can think of to say, especially to a whole collection of low status women? Nah, I’m sure it was all good fun for everyone.

Could good ol’ boy Haley Barbour sell an image that’s any more cliché?  A (pardon me) fat, white, conservative Southern governor who thinks any problem can be solved by rolling progress back a century or so, and/or tax cuts.  The kind of guy who’s been speaking in code-words and dog whistles for so long he could talk straight if he wanted to.  A walking, breathing parody.  A living example of why the US is doomed unless we educate the electorate and take the proper functions of government seriously.

Anyone who wants to be elected so he can “drown it [government] in a bathtub” has pretty much already told you all you need to know to justify voting against him.  The barely concealed racism is just the icing on a shit cake…

The barely concealed racism is just the icing on a shit cake…

Goddamnit, he said vanilla frosting, not chocolate!

Comment #15: Bagelsan on 12/20 at 10:48 PM

Hahahahhahaha! Well done! Well. Done.

It was 1962 in Mississippi: what the hell else was there to do?

Lynch uppity “darkies”?

I wonder if the sheets weren’t white but ecru? Ugh. That jag is (and probably always has been) morally bankrupt and a worthless hunk of crud.

@Bagelsan: That was my thought as well. “We paid more attention to the girls than to King.” immediately struck me as “We sat our asses in the back and raged at all the white wimmens that were hanging out with the wrong race.”. I’m sure he’s got plenty to say about growing up in midst of the civil rights revolution, he just can’t say it in public.

Just what we need, presidential hopeful Boss Hog.

I actually think Mr. Barbour’s account is fairly true. If you live in the boonies you went to whatever show came round regardless of whether you personally interested in it. So they went to see King speak and having no personal interest in civil rights, or current events, or good speech writing Barbour and his friends hung out in the back of the crowed to drink beer/flirt with girls. To imply that they went there with the idea of causing trouble is ridiculous. I doubt any of those boys had enough nerve or drive to go to a rally and actually start shit. If someone else started shit they would probably gleefully join in, only to fade into the crowd when the cops showed up looking for responsible parties, each one crafting a story of how he daringly made a stand against those ******’s, single-handedly fighting off fifty of them before giving the slip to the corrupt authorities.
Comment #9: scrumby on 12/20 at 09:16 PM

Well, yeah, but this is privilege.  That you don’t think that your presence has a meaning.  Because it does.

I am a little worried with the focus on Southerners and the “other.”  I would guess that at least some of the White presence is of the kind that Chevy Chase had on Jane Curtin.  Interesting that I can’t find that onlne.  And that such a presence is not exclusively Southern.

A (pardon me) fat

You know what,  MikeEss, any time you know you have to preface an adjective with “pardon me” it’s pretty good clue you know you shouldn’t be using it.

Two scenarios seem plausible to me.  He didn’t go, but it’s not politically expedient to say that.  So he claims to have went when he didn’t.  Or he went, and behaved exactly like you’d expect of a 15 year old boy who would grow up and maintain a sympathy for white supremacists.

I went to a number of political gatherings as a youngster, but it’s rare that I remember much of anything of substance.  I got so many balloons at one political gathering that we had to let some go before coming back to my friend’s house where we spent the afternoon figuring out which Star Wars toys best balanced with which balloons for a really cool attack (I remember that Snaggletooth was the right weight, but don’t remember what Rudy Perpich said or even how to spell his name: confirmed by wikipedia and corrected.)  In college, I went to a Jerry Brown rally.  I remember his turtleneck more than any words he said, but I do remember thinking that there weren’t a lot of women present.

I grew up in a Minneapolis suburb.  One black family moved in when I was in the second grade (1978 or so.)  I lived three blocks from a part of Minneapolis that was mostly black.  Racism may have been a part of daily life for me, but it certainly was there.  But no, I had no idea it was going on.

I find Barbour’s memories of his youth to be completely believable.  (And lynchings happened everywhere in the country, not just in the South, so I doubt his presence at the event was to intimidate blacks.  Picking up girls was a much more likely explanation.)  Those citizens groups may or may not have been better than the alternatives, but they were still racist.  I can excuse some ignorance about his childhood, and think his adulthood is what should be focused upon.  That’s where Haley Barbour can prove to be a racist fucktard or a man who outgrew the world he came from.

And the racist fucktard wins by a mile.

“I just don’t remember it as being that bad,”

Wow, I can’t believe he managed to say that without a trace of irony.  We need to start some kind of award for most unexamined privilege, because this douche would win by a landslide.  I mean, I can’t believe he actually just said that.  I’m just baffled and amazed.  Is this guy for real or is it some ridiculously elaborate prank?

“You know what, MikeEss, any time you know you have to preface an adjective with “pardon me” it’s pretty good clue you know you shouldn’t be using it.”

You are totally correct.  My only defense is Barbour makes me so angry, disgusts me so deeply, that it’s hard not to pull out all the stops.  (I am on the chunky side myself, for what it’s worth…)

Those who compared him to Boss Hogg nailed it better than me, implying the “physical presence” of that vile piece of shit without coming right out and saying it.  The worst thing is he’s smart, in an evil genius kind of way, and doesn’t just run Hazzard County as his personal fiefdom, but a whole damn state.  Aaaaagggghhhh!

(Of course, the fact that he makes so many of us on the Left mad is exactly why some on the Right would vote for him, just like they do for Palin.  He could sell them all into slavery under Halliburton and it would be okay, just as long as he made Al Gore, the Dixie Chicks, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter upset…)

3letterjon—there’s a difference between being a “youngster” who’s worried about balloon retention and star wars toys, and a youth who is there with his friends to check out girls.

And MikeEss—have you watched the pilot episode of the Dukes of Hazzard in the last decade? Very interesting. Boss Hogg could easily be Karl Rove, and I swear when Roscoe is talking about fixing the election, he looks and sounds exactly like W to the point where I was calling him president Coltrain for a while.

An off-topic note: using a cable modem and a strong conection, every site I’ve attempted to load this morning has been fast, except for Pandagon.  This site has been really slow loading for a while now.  Perhaps your server simply doesn’t have the capacity a busy site like Pandagon requires.

Mighty Ponygirl, there is a difference, but it’s that kids of different ages do different things for entertainment when the main event doesn’t hold their interest.  Being a youth or a youngster and a young man at different times, I found political events to be pretty boring most of the time and generally people-watch, think of MST3K-style dialogues to the speeches, and see if the stickers and giveaways are of any use.

I can completely believe that Barbour went to the event to see girls and be seen, I can completely believe that he thinks of his town as being peaceful compared to some other towns where the racism wasn’t kept as much in check by citizens committees, (and I think that many of the commenters here should explore rural Midwestern towns to see what small-town racism is still like.)  I can forgive Barbour for having a rosy view of his childhood and the times in which he grew up, but I can’t forgive him for thinking that we need to go back to those days.  I really don’t care if he was a sympathizer for voting rights at age 15 or the Mississippi Junior Klansman of the Year for his rope skills.  What matters is today and Barbour’s ideas for the future in regards to race, and that’s why he’s a racist fuckwit.

Barbour is and remains a terrible human being, but I have trouble caring what a guy did when he was 15, so long as it wasn’t a violent felony.

Sure, maybe he didn’t care.  He was 15, and he’s kind of a selfish dude.

And I’ve predicted a Barbour win in the GOP primary for a year now.  No way the GOP doesn’t select a racist Southerner in response to an urban black candidate.

Obama may be a total tool on the economic front, but boy howdy is he engendering a good conversation on race.

“And MikeEss—have you watched the pilot episode of the Dukes of Hazzard in the last decade?”

I’m not sure I ever saw it, let alone in the last decade.  But I did watch plenty of episodes of the show (I hate to admit).  TV sucked back then, and there weren’t a lot of choices, so I watched at least some of just about every show on back in the day.

Boss Hogg: Either Karl Rove with a dash of Dick Cheney, or Dick Cheney with a dash of Karl Rove.

Either way, bad news when somebody tries to be like that in real life…

Roscoe Coltrane: Bush Jr. + Barney Fife…

I suspect if he was there that he and his buddies went to harass the marchers, then suddenly realized they were badly outnumbered. So they sat there and glared and muttered n****rs to themselves a lot…

“I asked him why he went out.

“We wanted to hear him speak.”

I asked what King had said that day.

“I don’t really remember. The truth is, we couldn’t hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do. We paid more attention to the girls than to King.”

So they went to the concert without tickets hoping they could hear it from the parking lot. Right.

Why do I get the feeling they were there to see which white folks they knew actually went inside to hear Dr. King speak and then harass them for it later? That seems somewhat more likely to me.

I was just listening to “the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” in the car this a.m. and one of the songs is “Oxford Town” (the album is from 1962, I believe)
“Oxford Town in the afternoon, everybody’s singin’ a softer tune, two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon, somebody better investigate soon….”
I agree, they weren’t there to hear what King had to say.

Agrees with Dana (stab me now, please).  This site does take it’s time loading.  None of my other favorite sites has this problem.

These creeps are in my area, about 45 minutes north.  Is there any way to infiltrate them?  How do you do it? 

Council of Conservative Citizens
Parishville, NY
White Nationalist

Why does everyone assume that even one syllable of what Barbour jowled has the least bit of truth to it? I’m from that state, was a teenager in those times, and keep close watch on the goings-on these days. Barbour is an inveterate lobbyist liar and practicing blatant racist as governor, who says things he wants people to believe but have little to nothing to do with facts or the truth.  Just ask the people of south Mississippi how much Katrina money Barbour diverted to his cronies and away from poor and lower-middle class citizens suffering from the storm, for instance.

I strongly doubt Barbour went to any rally or speech.  If so, however, it was to spy on the people going in or coming out, assuming it wasn’t an outdoor event, as well as general intimidation.  The commenters here who assume there was any other reason whatsoever besides some form/s of intimidation for Barbour to be there, or for any racist white kid to be there, are detached from the reality of the place then and probably suffer from diminished judgment and/or appreciation of reality now.

If you doubt a white Mississippi teenage boy back then could be so racist as to want to intimidate a King rally, here’s a true story.  At age 16, I attended a statewide civic training seminar called Mississippi Boys State in Jackson in the summer of 1968. One morning all us white boys, specially chosen in our own localities for future leadership roles, lined up to hear announcements before breakfast, and we grotesquely and spontaneously burst into cheering, hooting, hollering, clapping, and thanking God, unreservedly, for an appallingly long time, when it was announced that Bobby Kennedy had been shot dead the night before. The young adult chaperones joined in as well. I remained silent as did a few handfuls of others. The hundreds of others could have easily been at an old-time lynching (the greatest majority of which happened in THE SOUTH,btw).

Believe me, if Barbour was at the King rally, it wasn’t to look at girls, which is an obvious lie.  He would have been there to spy or otherwise intimidate. And he probably wasn’t there at all and uses his supposed proximity to the rally to pretend to have been open-minded and to try to lend credence to the dishonest point he was trying to make during the interview. He’s a full of shit liar and will never change. Get used to bigoted awful people acting awfully. Go back and look at footage from those times, of men and boys, women and girls, screaming and beating black kids trying to go to school, throwing heavy objects at them.  Then realize that’s what we’re still dealing with, with the likes of Barbour and Huckabee, et al., and Palin as well, people who hate and think they’re entitled to and believe they will get away with it.