This page was last updated on July 18, 2010.
Byrd can’t be forgiven racist past; Lonzie Cox, Jr.; Beaver County Times; July 18, 2010. I am not related to Mr. Cox.
Most of Mr. Cox’s at least 55 letters since 2004 are tinged with race. This letter is not one of the exceptions.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“At the recent funeral for Sen. Robert Byrd, Bill Clinton mentioned Byrd’s ‘brief’ membership in the KKK.”
[RWC] To learn just about all you need to know about Mr. Cox, consider the following. In his nearly 60 letters since 2004, Mr. Cox never mentioned fellow Democrat Robert Byrd’s “racist past” until after Mr. Byrd’s death. Heck, Mr. Cox even ignored (denied?) Mr. Byrd’s existence in 2004 when he wrote, “[Zell] Miller is the last of the old segregationist Southern Democrats.” Now, though, Mr. Cox dedicates most of a letter to Mr. Byrd’s racism. As long as Mr. Byrd was alive and able to cast votes for leftist policies, Mr. Cox said not a peep. It’s not like Mr. Cox didn’t have the opportunity. Readers familiar with Mr. Cox’s letter-writing body of work know he sees bigotry and racism everywhere he looks, even when it’s not there. Mr. Cox simply has double standards, one set for those who agree with his beliefs and another set for those who don’t.
“Brief membership in that group is like a brief membership in the Nazi SS or the Communist KGB.
“The fact is that my family came north to get away from people like Byrd during his brief KKK fling. Who knows what Byrd did there and to whom?
“Byrd supposedly apologized for voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and against Thurgood Marshall for the Supreme Court. OK, but I heard an older generation of blacks state that the United States would never strive to provide liberty and justice for all until all the old racists like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and Byrd died out.”
[RWC] “Byrd supposedly apologized for voting against … Thurgood Marshall for the Supreme Court.” You’ll note Mr. Cox failed to note Mr. Byrd also voted against current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. That’s because Mr. Cox was OK with the Byrd vote against Mr. Thomas. You see, Mr. Cox refers to Justice Thomas as “Clarence (the uncle) Thomas” because his political positions differ from those of Mr. Thomas.
“Enter Ronald Reagan, who outdid Nixon and Goldwater in their race-baiting southern strategy to get elected. From this movement came the misguided Reagan Democrats who gave Reagan not one, but two terms to destroy the steel industry in particular and American union workers in general.”
[RWC] Mr. Cox’s lame claims about Mr. Reagan regarding racism and the steel industry are old topics for Mr. Cox (here and here). The same is true for Mr. Cox’s claims about Messrs. Nixon and Goldwater (here and here).
“The most recent wave of racist and anti-worker Reaganism is the tea-bagger movement, whose mindless chant of ‘socialism, socialism, socialism’ is dwiving everybody as kwazy as Elmer Fudd. (sic)”
[RWC] Instead of making a cowardly drive-by accusation like “racist and anti-worker Reaganism is the [tea party] movement,” it would have been nice for Mr. Cox to provide substantiated examples of “racist and anti-worker” policies. That would be out of character for Mr. Cox, however.
It’s not a Lonzie Cox letter without name-calling. In this case, I suspect it’s a case of projection. That is, leftism is the home of racism, anti-worker policies, and real tea baggers.
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