Cheney's Spirit of Strom Thurmond

Even death can't keep Strom Thurmond out of the news.

The former Republican Senator from South Carolina, a prominent opponent of desegregation and co-author of the Southern Manifesto, has been resurrected through reports detailing the shameful slave ownership of his ancestors.

While it's not news that the family once owned slaves, recent reports
tying a prominent African-American spiritual leader and social activist to the Thurmond family have given a face to what is terribly difficult for those of us never affected by the times to imagine. On February 25th, it was reported that Reverend Al Sharpton is a descendant of slaves owned by the Thurmond family, a revelation Reverend Sharpton referred to as “probably the most shocking thing in my life.”

Ahh, inequality in America. Due in part to Senator Barack Obama’s bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, the issue of race in America is clearly something we’ll be seeing more and more of in the months to come. In fact, even the accomplishments of Senator Obama are being overshadowed by a study indicating that his paternal ancestors were likely slave owners themselves. Receiving much less media attention is the fact that the same study also shows that Republican Senator John McCain and former Democratic Senator John Edwards, both 2008 Presidential hopefuls, are also descendants of slave owners.

Having owned slaves in any capacity is reprehensible; on this all civilized Americans will agree. Still, why the nearly exclusive focus on Senator Obama? The criticism leveled against Senator Obama is not only a smear campaign against an African-American who has an excellent shot of becoming America's first African-American president, but is also a way to lessen the guilt many whites feel about their own ancestral history. The fact that an African-American has ties not to slaves, but to slave owners, makes for a juicy soundbite. The “liberal media” needs to take a page from the Obama playbook and highlight the fact that while Obama’s paternal ancestors were far from perfect, they also broke the chain of racism in their own home, eventually raising a son who met, fell in love with and married a Kenyan student who would eventually go on to mother Senator Obama, a man who may well be President of the United States.

Any why, liberal media, with all the attention surrounding slave ownership, segregation and Strom Thurmond haven’t you been showing this picture?





That’s right, Vice President Dick Cheney chose to fly around the middle east in The Spirit of Strom Thurmond, a C-17 Globemaster that has been in use by the United States Air Force since 2002. How much common sense must one possess to demand, oh, I don't know - ANYTHING BUT THAT? I guess The Passion of James Earl Ray wasn't available.


Apparently Dick felt that The Spirit of Strom Thurmond would be less recognizable to terrorists than would Air Force Two. While this choice is clearly pathetic, it’s also unforgivable considering that this is the same politician who tries to convince the nation that any criticism of the ongoing war in Iraq “hurts our troops.” I’m supposed to believe that a man who would agree to fly in The Spirit of Strom Thurmond actually cares about the feelings of his fellow Americans? How must the thousands of African-Americans serving this country in Iraq feel about the fact that our nation’s second in command sees nothing wrong with flying in a plane named for a racist man who felt that blacks and whites were not to stand side by side?

What is wrong with our “liberal” media? A disgraceful action like this, had it been committed by a member of the Democratic party, would have been covered to no end in the form of talking points by every prominent pundit for the Republican party. Republicans are genius when it comes to talking points: they realize that you can’t get the base fired up over twelve different things every day, so they all work together, focusing entirely the same preselected points. This works not only to ensure that their issue-of-the-day will stay at the forefront, but also cements these preselected "outrages" in the minds of the Republican base. That kind of communication collaboration is brilliant, and speakers for the Democratic party would be well advised to get on board with the tactic.

The fact that Cheney sees nothing wrong with tooling around in The Spirit of Strom Thurmond further proves that there is no mainstream "liberal" media. Had Cheney actually thought otherwise, he never would have flown in a plane bearing such an offensive name. He was able to do so because he knew that his actions would receive minimal coverage from the mainstream media.

Democrats, it's up to us. We need to get on message - a shared message- and expose the current Republican leadership, and those who support it, as the pathetic, power-crazed egomaniacs that they are.