Ramblings' Journal

Former Emerge editor attacks Rice just as AQ calls her a "hag"

George Curry, once editor of the now defunct Emerge magazine, and who once endorsed and encouraged a cover of his magazine depicting Clarence Thomas as a "lawn jockey," has penned a screed that goes after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The new piece appeared in today's Chicago Defender.

Curry wastes no time in insulting all black conservatives -- so that we know where he's coming from in the first place.

Few things are as repulsive as Black conservatives trying to advance the Republican agenda by mischaracterizing the Civil Rights Movement or distorting history.

When asked her thoughts on gun control, Rice replied: “Well, Larry, I come out of a – my personal experiences in which in Birmingham, Ala., my father and his friends defended our community in 1962 and 1963 against White nightriders by going to the head of the community, the head of the cul-de-sac, and sitting there armed. And so I’m very concerned about any abridgement of the Second Amendment…”

Moments later, she added: “…We have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that our Founding Fathers thought very important. And on this one, I think that they understood that there might be circumstances that people like my father experienced in Birmingham, Ala., when, in fact, the police weren’t going to protect you.”

The Curry piece goes further, insisting that Rice exploits the history of the Civil Rights movement, since her parents were not an active part of the movement.

Speaking at the 2000 Republican convention, Rice praised her father as “the first Republican I knew.” She declared, “Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.”

What Rice forgot was the truth: political parties don’t register voters in Alabama. Voters are added to the voting rolls by registrars. A profile of Rice written by Dale Russakoff, a reporter for the Washington Post and native of Birmingham, was even more telling.
After a White registrar asked Rice’s father a trick question to keep him from registering, according to Russakoff: “Rice says her father later learned of a Republican functionary in the registrar’s office who would register blacks secretly, as long as they registered Republicans – not the expansive grant of suffrage suggested in her speech.”

Rice’s exploitation of the Civil Rights Movement is even more notable because her middle-class parents, by her own admission, were not active in the movement. Her father, John Rice, was a minister and her mother, Angelena, was a school teacher.

Doesn't seem like exploitation to me. Sounds like she tells -- and has told -- the story of her father's experiences. A Republican helped him where a Democrat didn't. I don't see

Ah. But Curry deftly leaves out the fact that Democrats in that day, as a whole, were opposed to blacks voting and asserting their rights. Then again, that would be telling wouldn't it?

Mind you, also today, word has come up that a posting on an Al Qaeda-frequented Islamic internet message board, purportedly from Al Qaeda itself, refers to Rice as a "hag," and publishes a veiled death threat toward her.

"The hag wants the participation of the apostates and secularists who are claiming to be Sunnis. You should know that our [the Sunni] way is fighting you."

The statement griped that the Iraqi constitution "is written only by those who disavowed their belief in God's book."

In what sounded like an indirect death threat to Dr. Rice, the message continued, "Our belief entails that the sword and bullets are our way of holding dialogue with you."

Attacks from here at home, and attacks from overseas. Sounds like she can't quite catch a break, can she?

Posted by mhking at May 17, 2005 06:04 PM