Cry Me a River

So, according to the Times article,

…Essie Mae Washington-Williams told the world this week that she was Strom Thurmond’s … daughter …

Mary T. Thompkins Freeman, a niece of the late senator, … said Ms. Washington-Williams’s announcement “was like a blight on the family.”

But the same sentence tells us that Thompkins Freeman died at 100 in June! Did she comment on the announcement from beyond the grave?

On the contrary, it sounds as though this “news” has been very nearly public for a long time now. If the Times skirts around this fact, does this mean they too have known? And how long?

Maybe the Times really is Pravda. This sure feels like Kremlinology.

As a longtime amateur Dixieologist, I’ve known about Essie Mae (by name) for years. I can’t imagine that Thurmond’s relatives didn’t either, or the Washington press corps.

That being said, I am not sure whether the press’s previous silence about this story belongs in the “We Need A Better Press Corps Aleph Null” file or not. One would have to be a special sort of ssholea indeed to upset a nonagenarian in poor health, even if it is the Lich King himself.

A still spawning octogenarian, though: hey, go for it.

C.

What struck me was that not a single one of them acknowledged or appreciated the enormous amount that she sacrificed to protect him (and, given the nepotism the article describes, them). I’m just guessing that he wouldn’t have carried all of those southern states in 1948 had she done this then.

Well, the confusion over which person in that sentence is dead and which is speaking is the fault of the writer.

Mary T. Thompkins Freeman, a niece of the late senator, who died at 100 in June, said Ms. Washington-Williams’s announcement “was like a blight on the family.”

Obviously that’s ambiguous and misleading. That comma after ‘senator’ shouldn’t be there – the following clause could be in a parenthesis, but within the comma-including set between ‘Freeman’ and ‘said.’ The Times does a crappy job of editing.

And then there’s this interesting bit –

her uncle, a legendary politician in the South who rose to fame as a fiery segregationist

Fiery, huh. Well, that’s one word. Pathological, ignorant, bigoted, ruthless, dangerous, inflammatory – those might be some others. Fiery is an awfully nice way of putting it.

As Lear points out when Gloucester tries the same move in an attempt to pour oil on the waters between Lear and his daughter and son-in-law. ‘My liege you know the fiery quality of the duke – ‘

But Lear will have none of it. ‘Fiery?’ he interrupts, ‘what quality? Tell the hot duke – ‘ etcetera.

Tell the hot senator that a fiery segregationist is just a nice way of saying loathsome race-bater.

You can judge just how “secret” this was from the fact that a Washington Post columnist, Colbert King, mentioned it a year ago, and that it had been published elsewhere before that.

Given Thurmond’s repuatation as a tomcat, the surprise is that he had only one illegitimate child. Kweisi Mfume, who has a better tan than Thurmond, but resembles the early Thurmond in some ways, managed to father illegitimate children with three different women in less than two years. So far as I can tell, it didn’t hurt his career at the NAACP a bit.

Matt – Neither did Strom, as you would know if you read my post on Strom as a liberal some months ago. In his early career, he was about as liberal on race as a white politician could be in South Carolina. There’s some interesting bits on him in V. O Key’s classic, Southern Politics that supports this argument.

He switched, perhaps to save his own career in 1948, but even then he did very little race baiting. And then, as soon as it was safe to do so, he switched back again, being one of the first Southern senators to hire black staff members. And he was superb at constituent service for all South Carolinians at about the same time.

Considering his early career and his two switches, I see him as more of an opportunist than a racist.

I read that Ernest Hollings, whose record on race is by no means admirable, got to Thurmond’s left on the issue–they say he oversaw peaceful school desegregation from ’59 to ’63. But arguendo, I’ll accept “opportunistically promoted the idea that his children were less than fully human until it was safe not to” if you like.

And if the past is prologue, I don’t think it’s a good idea to continue this discussion, so I’ll sign off.

“I Was Strom Thurmon’d Daughter and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”

I don’t really have much of an opinion on this (dog bites man quality)…but I don’t understand the relevance of this:

Kweisi Mfume, who has a better tan than Thurmond, but resembles the early Thurmond in some ways, managed to father illegitimate children with three different women in less than two years. So far as I can tell, it didn’t hurt his career at the NAACP a bit.

What does Mfume, his “tan” and his illegitimate children have to do with the story? Forgive me if I’m jumping to the wrong conclusion, but…huh?

Is this the same technique as, say, when the topic is the suffering of blacks under slavery and the moral culpability of the whites involved, a clever apologist will speak up, “well, many Africans were enslaved by their own people, etc.?”
Yeah, that’s true, but, what’s the point?

I thought we were talking about Strom Thurmond, not “any random politically visible black” who might have engaged in tangentially-related behavior. The issue wasn’t promiscuity or adultery, it was the “discomfort” of the family, and the inferences to be drawn from such, right?

I’m probably being overly sensitive. My racist relatives commonly make comments like, “but blacks use the n-word, why can’t we?” And this reminded me of that.

But I probably missed the point, and made an ass of myself. If so I apologize. It wouldn’t be the first time.

To say that the announcement “was like a blight on the family” and that “For the first time in my life, I felt shame” might mean that the speaker is ashamed of the old goat’s hypocrisy because he/she was appalled by it, or it might mean that they simply thought it should be hushed up (its the difference between repenting of a crime because you know its wrong and repenting of it because you were caught). If the sentiment was the former it’s praiseworthy, if the latter it’s blameworthy.

You’d need the context to be sure of which was meant. But judging by some of the other comments I suspect the blameworthy interpretation is correct.

Some scattered points:

1. The New York Times article was intended to make Thurmond’s white descendants look bad. It had a far worse tone than other articles with their reactions. I suspect that it is not a fair statement of their views.

2. My point about Mfume is simple, though I should have been more direct. I think, from the evidence I have seen, that Strom Thurmond’s behavior was not as bad as Mfume’s. However–and this is the essential point–Mfume (like Jesse Jackson) is now a role model for young black men, while Strom Thurmond is not. Very few who condemn Thurmond have anything to say about Mfume, or Jesse Jackson, for that matter, even though Mfume’s behavior matters now and Thurmond’s doesn’t.

3. Not having been in the bedroom with Strom, I do not know whether what happened was rape. We don’t even know which one initiated the affair. (Those who think the power difference makes this unlikely should recall Monica Lewinsky.)

We do know that, according to the daughter, the relationship continued for a long time and that her mother spoke well of Strom. It may have been statuatory rape, of course. It may also have been a love story. We simply don’t know.

4. “Some dude” may want to look at the post I mentioned above, pointing out that, early in his career, Thurmond was about as favorable to blacks as a South Carolina politician could be then. For example, while Democratic senator Robert Byrd was joining the Klan, Thurmond was fighting the Klan.

The evidence from the beginning and end of his career sugggests that he was not a racist, or less of one than most Southern whites of his time.

5. Of course most politicians are opportunists, to some extent. Democratically elected politicians who do not, to some extent, follow popular opinion are usually replaced by politicians who will. That doesn’t make Thurmond different from, for example, John Kennedy, who was very hesitating in his efforts on civil rights.

That doesn’t make Thurmond different from, for example, John Kennedy, who was very hesitating in his efforts on civil rights.

“I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres into our swimming pools into our homes and into our churches.”
–Strom Thurmond, 1948.

Yeah, just like JFK. I gotta say, though, Jim Miller gets points for invoking Monica Lewinsky’s name. It’s all about the Clenis.