Saturday, 18 October 2003

HaleyWatch Day 3

No new mainstream media coverage today of the Haley Barbour/Council of Conservative Citizens flap; the best resource is still Friday’s Associated Press report by Emily Wagster Pettus, who covers the Mississippi political beat for the AP. (Abbreviated versions have appeared elsewhere, including in today’s New York Times, but for the whole context I recommend reading the full version.)

However, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger’s lead editorial Saturday calls on Barbour, and other Mississippi politicians, to repudiate the Council. They write, in part:

Separatist groups — whether predominantly white or black — have no place in modern Mississippi. Neither do groups that preach hatred and distrust of religious groups.

The CCC is entitled to its views and enjoys all First Amendment rights to publish and display what it pleases on its Web site. But, at some point, Mississippi’s political elite in both parties need to stop winking and nudging over the CCC’s obvious entrenchment at the Black Hawk political gatherings and decide if they want to be identified with white supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carries a lengthy, mostly negative profile of Barbour. It contains something that might be some more grist for the mill:

According to [Gene] Triggs, the once thriving town [Yazoo City] has never recovered from the period of school integration in the 1970’s and 80’s, when many whites, like Haley and Marsha Barbour, packed their children off to the private academies that were opening across the state. “Any parent has the right to send their kids where they can get the best education,” Triggs says, but keeping your kids in public school “was one positive stand a person could take to make the community better. I felt he should have exerted some leadership, and he never did.”

Around the blogosphere, things have also gotten quiet; apparently, some of those who jumped on for partisan advantage are having trouble trying to justify Democrats’ past participation in the rally, including appearances by Ronnie Musgrove and attorney general Mike Moore. However, there are at least some new posts:

My posts on the topic, in reverse chronological order, appear here.