{"id":3472,"date":"2005-02-02T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2005-02-02T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3472.html"},"modified":"2005-02-02T12:00:56","modified_gmt":"2005-02-02T17:00:56","slug":"good-news-bad-news-on-lynching-apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/good-news-bad-news-on-lynching-apology\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news, bad news on lynching apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Senate considering a measure<\/a> to formally apologize for the Senate’s role in blocking anti-lynching legislation for decades as African Americans were being murdered across the south. The problem, however, lies in the senator who’s leading the way on this — Virginia’s George Allen (R).<\/p>\n

“I have come to believe that as a leader you need to take a stand,” Mr. Allen said in an interview. He and Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, are co-sponsors of the bill, which they first introduced last fall and are re-introducing during Black History Month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like the message, but not the messenger. As David Sirota noted<\/a> yesterday, Allen’s record on racial issues makes him a poor choice for this effort.<\/p>\n

According to the Associated Press in 2000, Allen was discovered to have been displaying a hangman’s noose and the confederate flag in his law office. As governor, Allen “signed a Confederate Heritage Month proclamation without denouncing slavery.” Allen also “opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King” and referred to the NAACP as an “extremist group.”<\/p>\n

According to reporters, Allen did not apologize, but instead “defended the flag and noose as mere decorations.” What sensitivity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Allen believes African Americans deserve an apology, he’s right. Now if only Allen realized everything he has to apologize for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Senate considering a measure to formally apologize for the Senate’s role in blocking anti-lynching legislation for decades as African Americans were being murdered across the south. The problem, however, lies in the senator who’s leading the way on this — Virginia’s George Allen (R). “I have come to believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}