“We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Certainly an interesting quote from Sarah Palin’s RNC acceptance speech. The quote is originally attributed to Westbrook Pegler who was a racist and specifically anti-Semitic. Today Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had something to say about the quote. You can find his remarks at the Huffingonpost.com :
“Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that ‘some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.’
It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.”
Keep in mind that African Americans made up only 36 of the 2,380 GOP delegates at this year’s RNC, the lowest number since conventions began tracking 40 years ago. In the speech Palin also mocked community organizing. One wonders whether Palin or her speechwriters gave any thought to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Pegler line used in Palin’s speech was also quoted glowingly by Pat Buchanan in his book Right From the Beginning.
Strangely enough the Palin speech was supposedly written by Matthew Scully. Time claims that Scully wrote at least parts of the speech before Palin was chosen by McCain. Here is the next strange twist. Scully is an animal rights advocate. In fact, he’s a vegetarian, hates the NRA and has fought against certain types of hunting, including aerial hunting, which Palin supports. Here is a review of a book written by Scully:
“Dominion (written by Scully) is a horrible, wonderful, important book. It is horrible in its subject, a half-reportorial, half-philosophical examination of some of the most repugnant things that human beings do to animals…. The book is wonderful in its eloquent, mordant clarity, and its hilarious fillets of sanctimonious cant and hypocrisy…. Dominion is important in large measure because the author, an avowed conservative Republican and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is an unexpected defender of the animals against the depredations of profit driven corporations, swaggering, gun-loving hunters, proponents of renewed ‘harvesting’ of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity’s romper room, to play with, rearrange, and plunder at will…. This is a beautiful book, and a balm to the scared, lonely animal in us all. — Natalie Angier, The New York Times Book Review
Sounds like Matthew Scully is to animal rights advocates what Log Cabin Republicans are to LGBT Americans. But what is the deal with the Pegler quote? Why quote a racist & mock community organizers during such a white-faced convention?
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that McCain is running against a man with dark skin. I’m sure that it wasn’t a secret squirrel code or was it?
2 Lesbos Goin At It 