Six degrees of Stacey Campfield

Rep. Campfield, you may have heard, is the supposedly racist state congressman in Tennessee who incensed the state's Black Caucus by asking for a copy of their bylaws. Apparently, they told him he couldn't have them unless he was a member, and made no bones about the fact that they wouldn't let him join if he wanted, what with his melanin deficiency.

It got uglier from there. Campfield maintains a blog, and he's had to cut off comments because he was getting death threats.

I love irony . I have been labeled a hate site . Why you may ask? ...

It was because I had a link to a sight that had a link to a site that quoted a black man who wrote for a black owned paper in a black run country about a thought he had that some call racist.

I use to play a game in the 7th or 8th grade called the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon. The object of this game was to link by association any one in the world to movie star Kevin Bacon in 7 steps or less. It was fun and simple to do.

Now I have become Kevin Bacon and some people are doing all they can to link me to what ever they can (many times fabricating it on computer as they go along.We used to call this cheating when I played the game).

I did a little research, and found the site he was referring to. (More on that in the next post.) Meanwhile, the skin-shade silliness is snowballing (is that a racist term, I wonder?) as the Southern Poverty Law Center jumped on his daring to quote the Reverend Doctor Saint Martin Luther King, Jr. (peace be upon him), which is apparently a sign of racism if it's done by a white guy. From the Washington Post story:

The long excerpts from the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech infuriated some readers. It prompted Campfield to ban reader comments after some of the angry postings included death threats.

Experts on race and hate groups said Campfield hit a nerve when he used King's words to take on a black institution. It's the same tactic white separatists often use, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Very typically these days we see white supremacists, hate groups, trying to use the words of King and other civil rights leaders to try to advance their agendas," Potok said.

If that's "intelligence," Mr. Potok, I'd like to see stupidity.

Campfield made a major pubic-relations misstep in comparing the Black Caucus' race-based admissions policy to that of the Ku Klux Klan, which is notoriously reluctant to accept non-white members. In fact, they get downright nasty about it, about as nasty as the Tennessee Black Caucus. The difference is, the Klan uses a nice, straightforward burning cross, while the Caucus prefers a sleazy innuendo-smear that leaves you with no defense whatsoever. You can always shoot cross-burners (and in fact, I recommend it). You can't do anything about the press, especially if you're a white politician with black enemies.