A column by Wesley Pruden that appeared in yesterday's Washington Times is generating anger and controversy because of its views on race and President Obama.
Writing critically about Obama greeting the Japanese emperor with a deep bow, a move the State Department said was meant to show respect, Pruden opined (link added for clarity):
... Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America reported on the column, which triggered a storm of critical commentary around the blogosphere.
He no doubt wants to "do the right thing" by his lights, but the lights that illumine the Obama path are not necessarily the lights that illuminate the way for most of the rest of us.
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly slammed Pruden as part of a persistent "Know-Nothing strain" in U.S. politics. Left in Alabama called the column "Racist, Xenophobic, and Clueless." And Pam's House Blend blogger Pam Spaulding -- a civil rights advocate and board member of the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Facing South -- bluntly denounced what she called Pruden's "miscegenation analysis" as "racist bullsh*t."
This isn't the first time Pruden -- a Little Rock, Ark. native who once covered the civil rights movement for Dow Jones' now-defunct National Observer -- has generated controversy over his views on race and politics.
Four years ago, while still serving as the Washington Times' editor-in-chief, Pruden wrote another controversial column in which he denounced the U.S. Senate for unanimously approving a resolution apologizing for failing to enact a federal anti-lynching law during the height of Jim Crow-era violence. He accused the resolution's sponsors -- Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.) -- of putting on a "demonstration of manufactured remorse."
Pruden has also at times openly expressed sympathy for Confederate causes, as the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in a 2003 story about the Washington Times' promotion of extremist views. After Pruden was promoted from managing editor to editor in chief in 1992, he gave an interview to Southern Partisan, a pro-Confederate political magazine:
After singling out the Southern culture warrior, Sen. Jesse Helms, as a political hero, Pruden bragged about his great-grandmother shooting a Union cavalryman and boasted that the Times was the most "in-your-face" conservative newspaper in America. When Robert E. Lee's birthday rolls around every year, he said, "I make sure we have a story" -- especially because the occasion "falls around Martin Luther King's birthday."In 1997, Pruden hired as the Times' assistant national editor the Georgia-born Robert Stacy McCain -- a member of the neo-Confederate League of the South, a pro-secessionist organization that SPLC classifies as a hate group for its defense of segregation and slavery. With Pruden's approval, McCain began covering conferences sponsored by American Renaissance, a white nationalist journal, and reprinting excerpts from the journal in the paper's culture section.
And in 1998, Pruden spoke to the neo-Confederate United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Manassas Battlefield Park in Virginia, praising them for their efforts to "cherish and protect and preserve the heritage of our great Southern people." As SPLC reported:
Concluding with a flourish, Pruden said "Southerners ... hold loyalty to two countries in our hearts." The second country is one "baptized 137 years ago on this very field in the blood of First Manassas, a country no longer at the mercy of the vicissitudes in the tangled affairs of men, a country that lives within us, a country that will endure for as long as men and women know love. ... God bless America, God bless the Confederate States of America, and God bless you all."Loyalty to the pro-slavery CSA? What does that say about Pruden's instinct for what America is about?
(Photo of Wesley Pruden from the Southern Poverty Law Center's website.)
Thanks for this column. I am now a fan of the Washington Times and Wesley Pruden. Thank goodness for someone who speaks the truth!
November 19, 2009 8:09 AM | Reply
WE NEED two countries. We hate the left and they hate the right...why FORCE us to be together?
November 19, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply
The United States does bows down to no one and no country. That is has always been US policy.
Regarding Pruden. He is right on the money. We have been dominated by the "PC" crowd, Multiculturalist, and the Liberal left to long. They want us to embrace all cultures except the culture of the American South. We are sick of it! Sick, Sick, Sick; we respect our ancestors who gave all to defend thier homes. Most of whom did not own slaves! The more we are attacked, the more we will fight to keep their memory alive!
November 19, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply
How about Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush holding hands with Saudi King?
"Most" of whom did not own slaves...so that makes it right??
I do not hate the right...I just don't know who they are and where they come from..maybe under a rock?
November 19, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply
Mr. Quinn, you are so right that the United States should bow down to no one, especially CONFEDERATE TRAITORS. The Confederate States of America was the sworn enemy of the United States of America. If you're loyal to the CSA, you're disloyal to the USA. 144 years after the pro-slavery CSA's much-deserved defeat, it's time to pick a side! There's nothing wrong with embracing Southern culture and heritage, and remembering your ancestors who fought for the CSA. But that's something very different from giving your loyalty to an entity that was the enemy of the United States! It's the 21st century, not the 19th! It's time to acknowledge the CSA lost and MORALLY DESERVED TO LOSE!
November 19, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply
Well of course you're wrong (and clearly a racist so therefore an idiot) since many Presidents have bowed. I imagine you have no problem with a President kissing a Saudi ruler on the lips and holding his hand right?
November 19, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply
Well, that racist can write off any hopes of ever getting an honorary degree from sewanee university-
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=11584
November 19, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply
Dear Grimke Sister (Sarah or Angelina - both wonderful human beings!)
I was going to contribute something, but then read your post. As right wing callers to a thrice-divorced drug user say, "Ditto."
November 19, 2009 5:26 PM | Reply
Okay so the Confederate stuff is in questionable taste but there is NOTHING wrong with a white man expressing solidarity and loyalty for his own racial group. Every other group takes it for granted that they have a right to speak out and advocate in their own interest. And, frankly, no public figure is above criticism or mockery, least of all the President. Obama attended an openly radical black church for 20 years prior to being elected and his appeal to blacks is largely due to his being one of them so he's hardly race neutral himself. Advice for the Left: don't dish it out if you can't take it.
November 19, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply
We hare heading towards two nations its our destiny. The White people in America have the right to a homeland here in North America. Every other people are getting homelands and it is now our turn. Just watch us go when we get it. A new America with all the values and culture it was ment to have. The American culture will rise.
November 19, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply
We are heading towards two nations its our destiny. The White people in America have the right to a homeland here in North America. Every other people are getting homelands and it is now our turn. Just watch us go when we get it. A new America with all the values and culture it was ment to have. The American culture will rise.
November 19, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply
Racism? That card has been far too overplayed, expect no white man with a half-rational mind to care.
I'll start caring about whites using racial slurs or saying not so nice things about blacks when everyone else starts caring about the 37,000 black on white rapes that happen every year. Or the fact that many major businesses and universities have non-white quotas and discriminatory admission policies.
November 19, 2009 11:47 PM | Reply
Whites are the overwhelming majority of victims of racist violence, including rape and murder, and it can only happen because white-hating liberal racists work for it to happen, do everything in their. At least 75,000 innocent whites have been mass-murdered since the 1960s by black hate-criminals who operate in the atmosphere of white-hating racism stoked by the Nazi left. At least 3 MILLION whites have been subjected to racist mass-rape since then, and tens of millions have been ethically cleansed. Thousands of those who have been murdered, and tens or hundreds of thousands of those mass raped by the hate of liberalism for no other crime than being white have been children. Liberals spend their lifetimes sponsoring racist mass-violence against whites by lying about the real nature of racist violence in America and making sure that no discussion of anti-white violence is ever allowed in the mainstream media or politics. So when you hear "people" like Sue Sturgis or the SPLC accusing someone of racism remember that those are accusations coming from racist war-criminals who don't have a moral right to accuse anyone of anything.
November 20, 2009 1:26 AM | Reply
grimke,
I said nothing about fighting for the CSA as a country. I do not advocate secession I said we will fight to keep their (our ancestors) memory alive. I love the United States and what we have accomplished during our history, except for the four years of the War. That's the problem with you liberals. You lash out before you read or listen to the facts.
W. G. O'Quinn
November 20, 2009 1:32 PM | Reply
Anti-racist is code for anti white.
The term "racist" is code for shut up.
November 20, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply
The United Daughters of the Confederacy is a "neo-Confederate" organization? So, are the Daughters of the American Revolution now terrorists since they honor enemies of the Crown? Leftist Liberals aren't known for internally consistent logic. No, the UDC is an old mummified organization - the Left has nothing to fear from them. At least to Ms. Sturgis' credit, she didn't think the UDC was a birth control device.
November 21, 2009 12:15 AM | Reply
Nixon gave a deep bow in China.
There is video of Bush giving a slight bow.
And who can forget Bush and Cheney holding hand with members of the House of Saud several times.
U.S. Policy is generally to give the signs of respect in other countries.
November 21, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply
If you're loyal to the CSA, you're disloyal to the USA.
If you mean the USA as it is now constructed, then yes, THANK GOD I am a traitor to THAT BOLSHEVIK PIECE OF SHIT.
If you mean the USA as she was ORIGINALLY CONSTRUCTED, then YOU are merely an ignoramus.
Good day, madam
November 21, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply