WOW

From Think Progress courtesy of AlterNet:

South Carolina Senate President Dresses Up Like
Confederate Soldier With Black Slaves At GOP Event

This past weekend, the National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) “held its annual fall Board of Directors meeting in Charleston, S.C.” In attendance at the event were major Republican leaders throughout the state, including Gov. Mark Sanford, who spoke to the audience gathered there.

One shocking moment at the NFRW meeting involved a special event called “The Southern Experience.” In this event, attendees dressed in clothing reminiscent of the Civil War and the antebellum South. As FITS News reports, South Carolina Senate President Glenn McConnell (R) participated in the event by dressing up as a Confederate General, and at many points posed with African Americans dressed as slaves. . .

More here.

So. . .is this just another racist dumbass conservative who accidentally let slip his real attitudes about race, or is it part of a trend? That is, and I'm certainly not the first liberal on the internet to speculate about this, it seems very likely that the debacle that was the Bush presidency, combined with the shambles of an economy he left us with, combined with Democratic ownership of most of Washington, which includes the dark skin of our Democratic President, is either making conservatives more racist, or motivating them to speak what they once felt was unspeakable.

I mean, this kind of bullshit appears to be happening all the time. Tea Partiers spit on Congressional Black Caucus members and hurl racial epithets at them as they enter Congress to vote on the health care bill. Dr. Laura stages an n-word party live on the radio. Crazed xenophobes stalk Hispanic people along the border. The list just goes on and on.

When I was a kid back in the 70s, and a teenager in the 80s, racism was definitely alive and well, but the Civil Rights Movement had so profoundly changed mainstream American culture that such sentiments were voiced only in private. Or while wearing a white hood. The struggle of the 50s and 60s may not have eradicated racism entirely, but it did manage to do away with public advocacy of race hatred. Today's proud bigotry is something very new in my lifetime.

And it worries me.


Courtesy of FITS News

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