Colin Powell Review

Saw him on Jon Stewart, and had my usual reaction to watching him speak - damn, if the Republicans nominated him I'd vote a straight ticket. Of course, the Republican party will never nominate Colin Powell, despite the fact that he's the whitest black man I've ever seen. Think I'm being unfair? Via Kevin Drum:

LINDEN, Texas -- They picked up Billy Ray Johnson outside a convenience store in this East Texas bayou town, a place where Confederate flags fly in some front yards and a mural of barefoot slaves picking cotton greets patrons inside the local post office.

On a cool September night in 2003, they drove the 42-year-old mentally retarded black man to a cow pasture where a crowd of white youths was having a party. They got Johnson drunk, they made him dance, they jeered at him with racial epithets.

Then, according to court testimony, one of Johnson's assailants punched him in the face, knocking him out cold. They tossed his unconscious body into the back of a pickup and dumped him by the side of a dirt road, on top of a mound of stinging fire ants....

"It was a very unfortunate and senseless thing," said Wilford Penny, 73, who last month completed a 6-year term as Linden's mayor. "But I don't think there was anything racial about it. These guys were drinking, and this guy [Johnson] liked to dance. I'm not surprised when they get to drinking and use the n-word. The black boy was somewhere he shouldn't have been, although they brought him out there."

Anyone familiar with the history of southern racism will already know that referring to a 42-year-old black man as "boy" is a demeaning convention that dates back to slavery. And sure, this guy's 73 so he's old enough not to know better. But he's making excuses for guys much younger than he, and he's an example of exactly what's wrong with America. Making excuses for abuses of human rights - sound familiar? By the way, the men who did this were sentenced to no more than 60 days.