Southern Charm

by Pa Rock
Social Commentator

There was a cultural myth when I was growing up that said - whatever their faults, southerners could always be counted on for politeness. A southern lady was a lady. She might not like you, or your politics, or your Blue Tick Hound, but she would have you parked in a comfortable chair with a glass of cold and sweet iced tea before you could doff your ball cap and bid her good afternoon.

A southern gentleman was a gentleman. Oh, he might take a mistress and hit the bourbon a little too often, but he was a gentleman who subscribed to all of society's conventions regarding good manners.

She was Scarlett O'Hara and he was Colonel Sanders, and they were the poster people for order and decorum. But it was a myth. The ideal was false. There were no (or damned few) gentle southern souls sipping their mint juleps and dispensing kindness to every wayfarer who happened to stroll across their plantations. Real southerners at the time I was growing up were more apt to be raging crackers and hillbillies who fought integration and prayed to a white male God who smiled kindly on the likes of Bull Connor, Orville Faubus, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox. They bombed black churches, murdered civil rights workers, and overtly supported the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

But that was decades ago. Integration happened. The South slowly progressed into the American mainstream. Witness Atlanta, for example, a fairly liberal and progressive city that is leading the South into the twenty-first century. All of that ignorant cracker and hillbilly stuff is history - it's a New South.

Or is it?

Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican of South Carolina, showed his class and his ass tonight at the President's speech before Congress when he felt obliged to yell out "You lie!" at one point during the speech. He was, of course, playing to his voters back home - people who would appreciate name-calling and rudeness - ignorant crackers and hillbillies. Good job, Rep. Wilson. You may be the fool nationally, but the good ole boys back home are gonna love that shit. What a great sound bite for your next election! You really told that uppity colored boy a thing or two - by God!

Kudos to my senator, John McCain, for calling the fool, Joe Wilson, out on his bad behavior.

Update: I just heard Rachel Maddow say that Congressman Joe Wilson has issued a written apology to President Obama. So, in the words of the immortal Miss Emily Litella, "Never mind!"

(But I still think the slimeball will use the sound bite in his reelection campaign!)

The Most Trusted Man in America

by Pa Rock
Baby Boomer

Walter Cronkite, the anchor of the CBS Evening News throughout the 1960's and 1970's passed away this evening. The 92-year-old former television journalist was known to be near death for the past few days, so the cable networks were ready. MSNBC has been airing a Walter Fest all evening.

The recognition is good, and it is well deserved. They are running old clips of his announcement that JFK had been shot, and minutes later somberly telling America of the President's death in Dallas. There has been footage aired of him tonight with every President from Eisenhower through Clinton, and we have heard his famous on-air editorial in which he concluded that the Vietnam war was not winnable.

I remember all of that stuff because I was in high school and college during those years, and was already a budding news junkie. There were only three television networks at that time, and much of America got their daily dose of national news from Walter Cronkite. I think that my most vivid memory was of the color footage of the Vietnam combat and the daily body counts that Cronkite gave - bringing the war right into our living rooms.

Walter Cronkite was a part of everyone's family. He was giving us the news while we kicked our shoes off after a hard day at work or at school. Through his steady baritone voice we learned what was going on in the world as we set the table for dinner (families used to eat dinner around a table), and settled in for our evening meal. Shortly after retiring from CBS in the early 1980's, Cronkite was voted as the most trusted man in America by a national poll. - and the results of that poll were accepted as an obvious fact by a broad spectrum of the American public.

Even this old news hound learned something new about Cronkite from tonight's television coverage. Dan Rather, his replacement at CBS, told Rachel Maddow that Cronkite had flown into France on a glider shortly after D-Day. Hugh Downs, another news ancient, was interviewed over the phone and quoted Cronkite as saying that a person had to be a liberal in order to be a good journalist. (Need proof? Think of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. There's not an ounce of credibility or journalistic integrity in the lot!)

Walter Cronkite was a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, and still had family ties in the Show Me State. I know that because several years ago I was spending the evening with my friend Millie Crossland, a social worker and political maven in Kansas City. Millie was working in the office of Kay Barnes, the mayor of Kansas City, and her desk was located just outside of the mayor's inner-sanctum. We were in the office that night when Millie took me in to see where Mayor Barnes did her work. There, in the middle of the mayor's desk, was a small framed photo of Walter Cronkite. When I asked about it, Millie told me that he and Mayor Barnes were cousins.

Not surprisingly, no one anticipated the passing of Walter Cronkite in the 2009 Pa Rock's Dead Pool. In fact, most of the entrants were too young to have any clue as to who he was. That is too bad, because the craggy old journalist was, for a very long time, the face of American television news - and perhaps the face of America itself. He will be missed by the Boomers and the hearty few left of the World War II generation. An era is slipping away.

Democracy for All

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Black males were given the right to vote in this country via a Constitutional Amendment at the close of the Civil War. For the next several years many actually did get to vote, thanks in large part to the presence of Federal troops in the South during the period of time called Reconstruction. After Reconstruction ended in 1877 and Federal troops were removed from the Old Confederacy, the White southerners quickly moved to disenfranchise the former slaves.

The most common method used was intimidation. The Ku Klux Klan and other militant organizations worked to scare Blacks from voting, and, if they still persisted in their "uppity" ways, a more permanent solution was put into place, such as lynching.

Lynchings continued in some places into the mid-twentieth century, but much of the nation began to reject overt violence by the time some Blacks were fighting for their country during the First World War. Black units were fighting in some of the worst hellholes imaginable during the Second World War, yet after serving their country fiercely and proudly, they came home to find that they were still not welcome at the polls.

When violence began to wane as an acceptable way to keep Blacks in their place, emphasis was put on using more cunning measures. One of those was the "literacy test", which had actually been around for awhile. Persons presenting at the polls to vote were given an oral exam to determine their fitness to vote. Blacks were given difficult questions and quickly culled. Whites, more often that not, were given simple questions and passed the exam regardless of their answers.

Another strategy to keep Blacks from casting votes was a "poll tax." That was a fee, or tax, assessed at the polls that persons had to pay in order to vote. It discriminated against the poor, Blacks and Whites alike, and ensured that only the elitist segment of society got to participate in elections. The US Supreme Court outlawed poll taxes more than fifty years ago, and Blacks slowly worked their way into the mechanism of our democracy.

And now a Black man is hours away from being elected President of the United States. Record numbers of people have already voted, and this election promises to bring more total voters to the polls in this country than ever before. Old voters turnouts will not only be surpassed, they will be shattered!

But, we still have a problem.

Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's rising star and host of the new Rachel Maddow Show had an on-air editorial last night where she compared the crazy long lines that have been prevalent in early voting this year with the poll tax. She said, rightly I believe, that some people cannot afford to stand in line for five or more hours in order to cast a vote. They have job or family obligations that can't be ignored. Hence, a certain segment of the population, primarily the working poor, are still being denied the vote by not having the necessary amount of time to complete the process.

We used to charge money, now we charge time. Both limit access to the polls. Both interfere with a person's constitutional right to participate in our democracy.

Voter enthusiasm and turnout have been phenomenal this election cycle. Day after day TV reporters interview people standing in line who are gushing about how excited they are to be part of history, some saying they would stand in line all day if necessary. Many are older individuals who have never voted before because they felt that they would have no impact. Also, there are multitudes of young people eager to cast their first ballot in the most exciting election in modern memory.

Up to an amazing forty-percent of the electorate may have already voted, so the lines in early voting states may be manageable tomorrow. But what about the states that don't have early voting? What will their day be like tomorrow? I have three relatives who will be voting in one of those states tomorrow - Missouri - and I am anticipating that each will have some form of horror story to share tomorrow evening.

So, as America grows, and as America becomes more invested in democracy, what can be done to ensure that everyone gets to vote in a simple and expedient manner? Early voting helps, and one can hope that more states will adopt this process. Technology may also provide an answer. Instead of worrying about butterfly ballots and hanging chads - and standing in long lines for hours at a time, maybe we can soon get to the point where we can vote electronically from home, or the local library, or the neighborhood school via the Internet.

It is not only possible, it is within reach for every American to have quick and easy access to the voting process. True universal suffrage is a goal that can be reached. Hopefully President Obama will make that a priority!

Viva Keith!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Okay, I gave up on living without television and had my cable reconnected on Saturday. I immediately experienced a problem, and it only took me thirty-five minutes to get a human being on the telephone at Cox Cable. Some things never change!

Tonight I managed to get my Countdown jones sated! Keith did a "Special Comment" on Sarah Palin, and he was brutal! He was breathing so much fire I was afraid that my sprinklers would go off! I laughed until I hurt!

After Olbermann waxed Palin, I stayed on MSNBC and watched Rachel Maddow kick Pat Buchanan around the studio like he was an over-inflated beach ball.

Gosh, it's good to have my friends back. You betcha it is!