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The Stories of O

William Parham

Sarah Palin: I dont have a clue

Remembrance of things past. Before the Beatles, before Woodstock, in the 50s and60s of an Elvis Presley era, I remember a hot Texas summer night -- no air conditioner,no TV, Hank Williams on the radio (the original, not the junior) with sporadic news ofcivil rights demonstrations in the South, interweaving with the chink-chink of the country

music sounds. Lets say it was 1959, 1961, or some such year.

I was just a kid as I recall my uncle saying something to the effect that he wished hecould go to Alabama, Mississippi, or wherever disturbances were happening at thatmoment. He was a bit agitated about it. I knew something about those demonstrations,reading of them in Life magazine, that visual surrogate for those of us who didnt have aTV.

It was the pictures I recall the most: The hate on the face of Sheriff Bull Connor, therigid face of Governor George Wallace standing in the doorway confronting the AttorneyGeneral of the US at the University of Alabama. These searing images were matched inintensity only by the terror on the faces of a row of black children walking to their first day

in a desegregated school in Mississippi. A tough job, but somebody had to do it andthe children did it.

I was very moved by those pictures and, because no one ever talked about it in myhouse, I assumed everyone else felt the same silent outrage. They didnt. My uncledidnt. I quickly realized that when he said he wanted to go South, this hot-temperedCajun meant he wanted to kick some African-American ass (he used a more quaint

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term). These sentiments were so commonplace they were totally unremarkable in mychildhood neck of the woods.

That was then, this is now. Nowwe have a candidate for the President of the UnitedStates saying that he vows to whip Obamas you know what. We have a VicePresidential candidate saying I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees

America the way you and I see America. Care to spell that out? At the rallies in whichthese sentiments were voiced, no one calmly questioned what exactly do you mean bythat? The response instead was a raucous kill him, treason.

Language matters. An article in last months New York Times reminds us that in theSouth of the past, certain words were commonly used and understood as codes forvilification and license to violence. Last month, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia,described the Obamas as uppity. When challenged on this usage later, Westmorelandbackpedaled by saying that the dictionary definition carried no racial meaning. Strictlyspeaking, true. But that word has a meaning and force that every person in the Southknows. The dictionary meaning may be neutral, but the colloquial connotation hasalways been crystal clear.

The term uppity was applied to black people who were confident and articulate in thingsthat mattered. It was a potent word and handy incitement for lynchings, burnings, andother assorted southern amusements. The accumulated intensity of that word sparked arace riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, in which a white mob nearly eradicated the mostaffluent black community (Greenwood) in the US.

It gets worse: In Sarah Palins convention speech, she used an unattributed quote fromthe late, fake-populist journalist, Westbrook Pegler. Since the 1930s, Pegler had beenknown as an unabashed anti-semite and racist. So much so that he was bounced fromthe Journal of the John Birch Society in 1964 for alleged anti-semitism. Thats so far outyou cant even see it.

In the 1960s, Pegler had a wish for then presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy: Somewhite patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premisesbefore the snow falls. And it was so accomplished before the snow fell, in June 1968,although not by a white patriot of the Southern tier. Shouldnt someone have told Palinabout Pegler? Would it have mattered to her if they had?

And then there was the man in the audience last week at a Johnstown, Pennsylvaniarally, grinning as he held up a stuffed monkey doll with an Obama bumper stickerwrapped around its forehead. CBS News caught this one on video.

What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American

history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division....This is the recent opinion of John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia. He should knowsomething about verbal and physical abuse in that destructive period in Americanhistory. His skull was fractured by police while on the now infamous Selma, Alabamafreedom march in 1965.

Are these recent campaign antics trivial? David Gergen, the soul of moderateconcerned journalism, remarked on all this anger out there. There is this free-floating

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sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think were notfar from that.

Foreseeing such, Americas Homeland Security Secretary, after consultation withCongress, gave Obama Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidentialcandidate in American history, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

Remembrance of things past -- Americas 60s. Now, the story of O, the stories of allthe Os. In order to get through this difficult period in American campaign history withoutincident, those in positions of leadership have to say enough to the language ofthreadbare disguised hatred and violence. Its appalling, dangerous and beneath us.