The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.
The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.
I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race. I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton. But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it…
Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black. Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe. For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both…
“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!
It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.” Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”
Growing up in the South in the 1940’s, I thought it was all about honor. We stood when people played Dixie and wore confederate caps to school. It’s hard to believe now, but I didn’t know that the Civil War was about slavery. And in my house, a racial slur was grounds for a good spanking. How pride in the confederacy and an injunction against racism could comfortably coexists strikes me as ludicrous now – but that’s the way it was. In early adolescence, my homework assignment was to write about an editorial. The one I picked said the Supreme Court had made a mistake that day. They’d ruled against the Constitution. I looked up the reference in the source of all knowledge, the Compton’s Encyclopedia. So I announced that the editorial was right as I sat on the living room floor writing my report. My mom looked over her glasses and said, "What makes you think the Constitution is right?" The decision was Brown versus the Board of Education. The reference was the 14th Amendment. So, I picked another editorial.
Although I became increasingly sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement throughout college, it was the bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham that finally brought the whole thing into focus for me. I could still love my South for her story, and her beauty, her people – but I could no longer verenerate anything that had to do with her racism. There are a lot of us who feel that way. When it came time to settle, I came back to the South. It feels like home. And I’ll have to admit that I feel like people like me have an obligation to stay here to neutralize the remnants of our racist past. That sounds too lofty to be true, but it’s something I’ve felt nonetheless.
When Congressman Joe Wilson yelled out at President Obama’s speech the other night, it felt like a dagger. It wasn’t what he objected to, or whether he was right. It was his contemptuousness. To treat another person with contempt, you have to depersonalize them, dehumanize them, and that’s what Wilson did. He said he was caught up in his emotions. I believe him. I’ve seen that kind of emotion my whole life. It’s called hatred. While I expect Congressman Wilson would deny that characterization, but if it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. My own emotion that night was shame, even moreso when I found out that he was from South Carolina – the cradle of the Confederacy. I’ve deluded myself that all the insane attacks against Obama are something other than racism, but Joe Wilson put that to rest with two simple words, "You lie!"
I’d hazard that he doesn’t recognize the connections between his outward behavior and his inner historiography. He is vehement that his one apology is enough, that he owes nothing to the body of which he is privileged to be associated. Preston Brooks thought the same thing. Because he’d assaulted Senator Sumner in the Senate chamber, and he (Brooks) was a U.S. Representative, he didn’t figure the House had any claim in the matter.
Near as I can tell, the rules of the House specifically address calling the President a “liar”. You can’t do it. There are straightforward mechanisms for entering a reprimand into the Congressional Record. This would not require any further statement or assignation from Rep. WIlson. It needs to entered and voted on and left behind TODAY.
To Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver II:
Dear Sir,
I respectfully request that you either lend your support or take a leadership initiative to ensure that Representative Wilson’s clear violation of the rules of the House of Representatives is promptly dealt with in the manner that existing mechanisms specify. Representative Wilson should be relieved that a reprimand entered into the record is the extent of his liability after his public defamation of the President and Commander in Chief.
As I understand it, no further discussion is really necessary in order to ensure that the House has met its accountabilities in the matter and can move on about the business of the people.
Sincerely,
F. Carl Mahoney
Kansas City
Mickey, I too grew up in the South, only a decade earlier; and I also grew up thinking the status quo was ok because “they” preferred to live in their own part of town and have their own schools. I wasn’t so sure that they preferred to have their own drinking fountains and restrooms, but that was a small detail. Separate but equal was the myth that we comforted ourselves with.
My wake up moment came around 1950 when I was a high school senior, working at the local hospital as a sort of nurses’ helper (if I were black I would have been an called an orderly). The RNs were all white, except one; and it was she that I respected the most and most enjoyed working with. She was smart and fun.
But when it came time to go to the staff dining room for lunch, I was invited to sit at the table with the doctors and white nurses, and she had to sit at the table with the orderlies and maids. I’d like to say that I protested, but I didn’t. What I did was to start thinking.
That was my wake up to the injustices that tradition had made me blind to. The marvelous ending to this story is that 25 years later, that same black RN was elected to membership on the Hospital Authority Board and served with distinction for many years.
Everything you say is true. Those are my memories, too. I really didn’t know that segregation was evil when I was young. Sometimes I think that racism will remain a prominent part of our national character until those generations that went to integrated schools are all that remain of us, some time after my generation and one or two other subsequent ones have passed on. It’s just hatred, and it’s the most pernicious and persistent trait imaginable.
I’ve had this idea borrowed from the simplistic metaphor of human personality as iceberg. My idea is that poor manners and discourtesy are the parts that are visible above the water and the huge underwater part contains a lot of the vilest and most horrific stuff of human capabilities like racial hatred, bigotry and prejudice, stereotyping, intolerance, tribalism, war, murder, genocide and so on. I wish I could sign Congressman Wilson up for a good long day of psychological testing – methinks he would reinforce the theory.
Wilson offers such fertile soil for psychological speculation. I like your metaphor of the lurking monster under the water. I was struck by his alternating idealization and devaluing. He went nuts when Strom’s daughter was revealed or when another Congressman [correctly] suggested that we had formerly supported Hussein, yet he completely devalues Obama. He lives in a black and white Dan Brown world of Angels and Demons.
I’m getting scared. All this hatred makes me worry for President Obama’s safety.
We’re all worried for President Obama’s safety, as we should be. This is the way the Ku Klux Klan worked…