I nominate Haley Barbour for President of whitewashing racism, 2012
Image from The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction:
Today, Matt Yglesias read a cover story about Haley Barbour in the Weekly Standard so that you don’t have to. Thanks, Matt.
In the article, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour reminisces fondly about the ‘Citizens Councils’ of the 1960s, implying that they were an antidote to racism, holding the KKK at bay and smoothing over the desegregation of public schools. Yglesias does the rather elementary follow-up legwork that the Standard’s Andrew Ferguson just didn’t care enough to do: Yazoo City Citizens’ Council Was a White Supremacist Organization. Kind of sad that this needs to be pointed out.
This is something of a pattern for Barbour. Like Trent Lott before him, you don’t even have to trick this guy into spouting some racist shit: he’ll do it and just not see what the big deal is.
Update: TPM also on it.
