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Paul R. Hollrah
Loose Lips
October 1, 2008
At a
March 3, 2002 Presidential Gala at Ford’s Theater, in Washington,
President George W. Bush was seated in the front row. When emcee Kelsey
Grammer introduced blind musician Stevie Wonder, the president smiled
and raised his right hand in a perfunctory wave. It was clear to those
seated nearby that his gesture was intended for Grammer, one of
Hollywood’s few unabashed Republicans. Nevertheless, the Washington
Post published a story the following day implying that Bush had
waved at Stevie Wonder, saying, “The Prez is such a dolt, he waves at
blind folks,” and Democrats all across the country repeated the fiction.
Months
later, on December 5, 2002, while participating in the 100th
birthday celebration of Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) made what liberals and Democrats charged was a
“racially insensitive” remark. Clearly, Lott was attempting only to
patronize the longest-serving member of the senate, but liberals and
Democrats claimed racial bias and used his remark to drive him from his
senate leadership position.
But while
Democrats and the mainstream media are always anxious to make up such
stories if they can make a Republican look foolish, we rarely have to
make up such stories about liberal Democrats. For example, at a campaign
appearance in Columbia, Missouri on Tuesday, September 9, Senator Joe
Biden began his speech by recognizing a number of local politicians. He
said, “Uh, uh, Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up, Chuck,
let ‘em see you.”
Chuck
Graham is a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair for the past
twenty-seven years from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.
Realizing his gaffe, Biden said, “Oh, God love you. What am I talking
about? I tell you what... you're making everybody else stand up, though,
pal. I tell you what, stand up for Chuck.” Walking to where Graham was
seated, Biden said, “Can you tell I'm new at this?”
Like
baseball players who’ve never learned that when they’re playing in a
televised game there are certain parts of the anatomy that should not be
scratched, Joe Biden is a politician who has never learned to think
before he speaks. Had Barack Obama been present he could have saved
Biden a lot of embarrassment. If the mere sight of Obama can cause
chills to run up the leg of a liberal NBC commentator, who knows what
miracles he might be able to perform?
He may even be able to
outdo Senator John Kerry in the performance of miracles. In an October
10, 2004 campaign appearance in Iowa, Senator John Edwards was regaling
his audience with outlandish promises of the importance of stem cell
research, and the wonderful things that would happen if only the people
were wise enough to elect John Kerry as President of the United States.
Referring to the deceased actor, Christopher Reeve, he said, “Well, if
we can do the work that we can do in this country – the work we will do
when John Kerry is president – people like Christopher Reeve are going
to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”
On Wednesday, September 24, Representative Alcee
Hastings (D-FL) had a dire warning for Jewish Democrats about Governor
Sarah Palin. He said that they should be very wary of Republican vice
presidential nominee Sarah Palin because
“anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what
they do with Jews and blacks... If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason
for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you
damn well had better pay attention.”
This, of course, comes from a Democrat, a former federal
judge, who was impeached, convicted, and removed from the bench in 1989
after being charged with taking $150,000 from a defendant in exchange
for a lenient sentence. Four years later, Democrats elected him to the
U.S. House of Representatives, the same legislative body that had
impeached him, and in 2006, after Democrats took control of the House,
Hastings was in line to be chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. After weeks of pressure from across the
country, Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi was forced to withhold the
appointment.
Hastings’ remark was
greeted with polite laughter, but had his Jewish audience given the
matter a bit of thought, it might have occurred to them that it is no
less obscene for a black man to be a member of the Democratic Party than
it is for a Jew to be a member of the Nazi Party. For more than 200
years, Democrats oppressed and murdered African Americans as cruelly and
as indiscriminately as the Nazis murdered Jews during the 1930s and
‘40s. It makes one wonder why they were even in the same room with
Hastings?
On Monday,
September 22, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden sat down
for a friendly chat with Katie Couric of CBS News. In a typical burst of
Biden verbal excess, he suggested that today’s leaders could take a
lesson from Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to a financial
crisis.
Biden
explained to Couric, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D.
Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you
know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
Biden had apparently forgotten that Republican Herbert Hoover was in
office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. He had also
apparently forgotten that there was no television at the time.
Television was not introduced to the public until the 1939 World's Fair,
and most American families did not have television sets in their living
rooms until 1946 or 1947.
Unfortunately for the Obama-Biden ticket, Katie Couric wasn’t quite as
quick on her feet as George Stephanopoulos, who pulled Barack Obama’s
chestnuts out of the fire recently when Barack used the phrase, “my
Muslim religion.” Stephanopoulos quickly corrected him, saying, “You
mean Christian religion, don’t you?”
During
World War II, every American was warned repeatedly to be very careful
about what they said in public. Posters and billboards across the
country carried the warning, “Loose lips... sink ships!” It looks as if
today’s Democrats may yet sink their own ship with loose lips. |
