646 Who Is To Blame?

646 Who Is To Blame?

Sometimes, there's poetry in evil. That an effigy of President Obama is hanged from a tree in a southern state is not so surprising. We in the north have learned the hard lesson of prejudice, keep it to yourself.

But that the tree was in Plains, Georgia -- now that's poetic. Plains is, after all, the home of Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States and its most famously outspoken bigot. Of course, to link Carter to this incident would be imprudent to say the least. And it is highly unlikely that Plains' (Pop. 700) best known citizen would have anything directly to do with something so brazen as to hang doll with an Obama name tag from a neighborhood tree.

But indirectly is another matter.

This is written before a lot of evidence has been collected. But let's say someone from out of town picked Plains to embarrass Carter. Or because he had to use up his free night at a Quality Inn somewhere and Plains was on his route through Georgia. Or, maybe he's a local, maybe even one who has never seen the ex-President, let alone met him or -- perish forbid, read the books he's written.

That said, Carter's mushy, sentimental and, unrealistic view of the middle east, gives rise to justification for charges that he is anti-Israel and by extrapolation, anti Jewish. There's no doubt that everyone with claims to the so-called occupied territories wants some kind of detente. But to put that desire into Carter's inflammatory rhetoric runs deeper than a wish to end a war that's likely impossible to end.

Even the title of his 2006 book on the subject, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," is designed to inflame.

So little Plains, Georgia, has bigots -- a total shock.

By the time you see or hear this, we likely will know more about who-done-it and why. The local cops, the local sheriff and the Secret Service are all over this one. If they manage not to trip over each other's work, it'll be a miracle. But even if it was one guy acting alone, there's plenty of blame to share.

Reminder: The WestraDamus Retrodictions for 2009 (Wessays # 645) will be on the website, www.westradamus.com for the rest of the year.

Shrapnel:

--America's most entertaining radio evangelist, Rush Limbaugh, has gotten through his latest publicity stunt unscathed. His Hawaiian chest pains turned out to be neither a heart attack nor nothing else serious. But now, even more people will tune in.

--A lot of people wanted Limbaugh to die -- or at least to suffer intense pain. That's not a bad thought, but it's wrong. With new viggah, he'll continue his secret mission -- whether intentional. He's destroying the Republican Party.

--Notice, there weren't the screaming, blaring, hideously begging end-of-season sales following this past December's holiday season. That's because the shelves were so bare to begin with, there's almost nothing left over. You're going to pay full price for that toaster this month.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2010