Home OP-ED Bye, Bye, Byrdie

Bye, Bye, Byrdie

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A pastiche of unsolicited but solidly pragmatic advice:

If you suspect you are going to die, say, before the Fourth of July, and you have committed a reasonable number of sins, run, do not walk, to the Culver City Democratic Club. Hurriedly change your registration from Republican to Democrat before you keel over, and your obituary will read more pleasantly.

Yesterday’s overblown death of the ancient West Virginia gasbag Robert (By Cracky, He’s Our Bobby) Byrd showed again how liberal racists are treated at death as if they have redeemed themselves while Republicans are cast as unrepentant crimemongers. When former segregationists Sen. Strom Thurmond and Sen. Jesse Helms, Republicans, died, the boys at the liberal newspapers bared their fangs and drooled down their chins and shot them between their eyes.

Taking his signals from his adored President Obama, Eugene (Lordy, How I Hate Republicans, in a Measured Way, of Course) Robinson of the Washington Post has surfaced as one of the abysmal black racists in public life.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Robinson, of the same generation, think alike about race relations, a broad, divisive notion that the President has brought back into fashion.

You may recall that last July 22, the dingy, foul-mouthed Harvard professor, little Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose name is taller than he is, ignited a race-based ruckus with police while trying to, classily, break into his own home. Winning the kind of international fame prostitutes would kill for, Prof. Gates charged racism when Cambridge police attempted to arrest him. Spotting an opening to score racial points, the intemperate Mr. Obama hollered, “Yeah, racist cop.”

Between them, Mr. Obama and the professor don’t have enough money to pay for the fawning avalanche of media publicity that subsequently accrued to both.

A Senator for the Byrds

Comes now the death of the creaky Sen. Robert (Lordy, How I Adore White People) Byrd at 92 years old. While The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times substituted gushing love letters for standard obituaries, both left-wing journals treated Mr. Byrd’s foibles as if they were placing a newborn on his changing table. Not until the 16th paragraph, in each case, did the worshipful newspapers mention, parenthetically, that he was a Ku Klux Klansman for years. Further, 12 years after coming to Congress, Bobby (I Am Sinless Because I Am a Dem) Byrd voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With slick dispatch that would impress Mayor I Love Me, both newspapers shoveled that news under a shaggy rug and seamlessly morphed into more pleasant takes that you could caress and consider in polite company.

Over at the Washington Post, the essayist Mr. Robinson, who regularly specializes in racist diatribes, uncorked another dandy this morning. A therapist of my acquaintance digested Mr. Robinson’s gooey Ain’t He a Wonderful White Guy? essay about the racist Sen. Byrd and archly concluded:

“In his heart, he wants to be a white man. He clearly identifies with whites because he knows that is where the power is.”

Forgiveness must be infectious this week. It has invaded the psyches of many liberals, like Mr. Robinson, who said, generously, sure, Byrd was a KKK member and maybe he voted against the Civil Rights Act, but, hey, baby, “he was a man of his age” —everybody did it.

A cockeyed black man justifies a white racist by saying “everybody did it.”

This really is the silly Age of Obama.

Is there a serious person in the house?

Let’s see a show of hands from everyone in the room who joined the KKK and voted against the Civil Rights Act because, hey, everybody was doing it.

To quote the dreadful Mr. Robinson and his chippy chirping of Sen. Byrd:

“Byrd’s trajectory, from bitter segregationist to beloved dean of the Senate, is actually a hopeful, quintessentially American story. He was a man of his age, and his views on race closely tracked the views of the constituents he so loyally represented.”

Astounding conclusion.

In a single sentence, this sickening racist insulted the civil rights fighters of the ‘50s and ‘60s. But he had one more knife to thrust into the heart of common sense:

“Robert Byrd’s amazing career reminds us that times really do change. And so do people.”

Unfortunately, the race-baiting Mr. Robinson shows no sign of changing.