By Bill Wilson
Very few things in life are truly perfect. So, it is worth something when such a pristine event occurs. For over three decades liberal Democrat John Murtha has been a member of Congress representing western Pennsylvania. Today he was absolute perfection; the absolute perfect symbol of left-wing hypocrisy, deceit, and distain for the People.
Last week, Murtha was ruminating on the prospects of the Presidential contest in Pennsylvania. He expressed the view that Democrat Barrack Obama would carry the Keystone State but left open the door he would lose because western Pennsylvania was “racist.” Then the next morning, noticing that tens of thousands of his constituents did not like being slurred and treated like trash, he apologized.
Oh, he didn’t mean it. It was just a momentary slip of the tongue, right? Bull.
And now, in a fruitless effort to backtrack on those words, John Murtha claims he never meant to indict the entire Western Pennsylvania population as a horde of racists. Rather, they are just “really redneck”, according to the Congressman.
So instead of merely offending a specific segment of the population—Western Pennsylvania—Murtha has successfully painted an entire demographic—the “rednecks”, “hicks”, and country folk of our nation—with the same bigoted brush.
And in typical fashion, we would be foolish not to expect yet another dumbfounded apology in the coming days.
After 34 years are we to believe that John Murtha doesn’t know what he is saying? Has he entered that stage of life where we are to ignore his words and deeds because he doesn’t quite have control? Doubtful. But there is something else to consider.
From what perspective does John Murtha come to the opinion that people in western Pennsylvania are racist rednecks? Has he repeatedly heard his people tell racially charged jokes – and if so, how many times has he spoken up? How many times did he repeat that joke? Did he nod sympathetically when some constituent protested excessive welfare and other handouts and, perhaps, cast those programs in racial terms? Did he say anything, or just let it pass?
In other words, how many times over the last 34 years has John Murtha played the “race card” the other way – how often has he attacked Blacks by either omission or commission to ingratiate himself to the people of his district? So, for him now to play the card the opposite way, appealing to Black voters by kicking the very people he has very likely joked and jawed with (otherwise, how would he know how “racist” they are?) is…well, truly perfect hypocrisy.
This type of cynical manipulation goes on all the time. You see the education establishment embodied in the radical NEA union tell Black parents they should demand more public resources because those white parents are racists, while telling the white parents they should oppose meaningful school choice reform so “those people” don’t come to white neighborhood schools.
True, racial tensions still exist in America. But the people themselves do more in a single day to ease those tensions and seek a genuine harmony than anything hack politicians do in a lifetime. In point of fact, those politicians, like John Murtha, feed the beast and keep it alive because they profit from it. They can always be counted on to be a “solution” looking for a “problem.” And when they can’t find one, they create it.
John Murtha is the truly perfect symbol for the Left in America – an elitist in a Klan hood raising a Black Power fist.
Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
