Hey, remember Joe Wilson? He's the douchebag who belly-flopped his way into the national spotlight as America's Latest Embarrassment on the Right™ when he heckled the President Wednesday night. Well, all that who-the-hell-was-that? has resulted into a bit of googling and binging into his background. Which, it seems, may have unearthed at least one zombified skeleton in it. Wilson lists himself as a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Who the hell are they, you ask?
The SPLC describes the Sons of Confederate Veterans as "a Southern heritage group ... largely dominated by racial extremists." I'm kinder in my assessment. I prefer to think of them as just a bunch of Regular Folks who yearn for a simpler time when one group of people were property belonging to another group of people, and those distinctions of class and commodity were made by something so simple and honest as the color of one's skin. The Good Old Days, as they're now known.
Wilson was also one of the self-proclaimed "Magnificent Seven" who fought to keep the Confederate flag flying above the South Carolina state capitol. Ironic, that, to anyone who's actually seen The Magnificent Seven. But then, Joe Wilson is no Steve McQueen. In fact, Joe Wilson is not even a Robert Vaughn.
So, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe Wilson's outburst was not because he let his "emotions get the best of [him]" but maybe because he just can't stomach the idea of a black man as his President and refuses to give him the respect he deserves.
By the way, though Wilson later apologized for the outburst, he followed up that totes sincere apology by commenting "I will not be muzzled." Which, you know, totally doesn't undermine his apology at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment