Cynthia McKinney
AND THE TWO LOST BOYS
THIRTY
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... .” —Romans 1:20-22
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The war in Iraq rages on.
The economy continues to spiral. The president continues to claim an unprecedented expansion of executive powers. Thousands of students stage walk-outs from high schools and tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets in response to a proposed bill to make being or helping an illegal immigrant a felony. Aid to Katrina victims is expiring with hundreds being turned out onto the streets. And, in Milwaukee, efforts to find 11-year old Purvis Virginia Parker and 12-year old Quadrevion Henning have quietly shifted from a full-on manhunt to a cold case. And what is dominating the news? A congresswoman angry because some cop didn’t recognize her.
U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was stopped by a
Capitol Police officer last week when she walked around the
magnetometer in the Longworth House Office Building lobby. After
being asked to stop three times, a policeman grabbed McKinney
(likely by the arm), and McKinney allegedly punched the officer
in anger. This is, at best, a ten-minute deal. McKinney,
apparently late for a meeting and annoyed at a continuing
pattern of not being recognized by Capitol police, surely lashed
out in frustration and meant the officer no real harm. I mean,
she hit him with her cell phone, for Pete’s sake. The officer,
on the other hand, obviously meant McKinney no harm or insult,
as he grabbed her arm and didn’t club her with his baton or,
say, mace her as he’d have surely done to me.
I say, handshakes all around, a grinning photo op, and lessons
learned. Everybody’s an adult. But, of course, that wasn’t what
happened. What happened was a circus of unprecedented
proportions, the incident escalated first by the Capitol police
threatening to file charges, perhaps in an effort to embarrass
the Congresswoman and force her to apologize. Being no shrinking
violet, Representative McKinney fired back, characterizing the
incident as an example of racial profiling and accusing the
officer of racism. Which is where everything went wrong.
Had the congresswoman fired back with kindness, with, “This was
just a misunderstanding, the lobby procedures should be
reviewed, etc.” it is likely the incident would never have made
national headlines. But that wasn’t the path the congresswoman
took. Instead, she charged racism, which, in turn, required two
things: first, prominent black leaders and McKinney supporters
now *had* to rally to her cause, even if many doubted this
business could or should go the distance. And, secondly, her
accusal required the media to make a circus of it all.
Black leaders standing with McKinney showed a certain loyalty,
but it’s a Bush loyalty. It’s precisely the same kind of loyalty
and unity the Republican Party once showed the president,
backing President Bush’s play even when they knew—I mean, they
*knew*—the president was dead wrong. Even when they knew the
president was ill-informed, irrational, or simply lying, Bush’s
supporters backed him anyway. That’s what loyalty means, you
back your guy. But it’s the height of hypocrisy when you back
your guy when he’s sadly and tragically wrong, when lives are on
the line.
Lives were on the line while Rep. McKinney pressed her “case”
for racism. The lives of Purvis Parker and Quadrevion Henning,
two boys who went to play basketball and never came home.
Milwaukee police were tragically slow to take the boys’
disappearance seriously, refusing to send out an Amber alert
because, in their opinion, there was no evidence of a crime
having been committed. Well, other than two small boys not
returning home for days.
The clear and capricious double standard of justice and mercy
applied to those missing children is obvious. A missing 11-year
old blonde girl is national news. Two missing 11-year old blonde
girls would be a national obsession. It would be all anyone was
talking about. But nobody was talking about Purvis and Dre,
least of all Rep. McKinney. The only small hope those boys have
is the pressure of media attention. Pressure Rep. McKinney
single-handedly eliminated by dominating the small percentage of
news coverage devoted to minority issues.
The media was only beginning to investigate the story of the
missing Milwaukee children and the Milwaukee police’s slow and
inadequate response when the McKinney story broke and pushed the
missing children from what meager coverage they had been
receiving. While there seems to direct connection between the
two stories, the fact is mainstream media only covers X-Amount
of ‘black’ news. The missing children were “black” news. The
McKinney case was “black” news, and was a sexier story. I have
not heard much at all about the missing boys since the McKinney
story broke.
Absent the pressure of glaring video lights, Milwaukee PD and
the FBI have no real impetus to find the boys or find those
responsible for their vanishing. Black children vanish in
America every single day and, for the most part, it goes
unnoticed by major media. This case stood a chance of forcing
major news outlets to notice and ask tough questions of law
enforcement, but those questions were never asked. Most news
outlets merely picked the story up off the AP wire and gave it a
hand wave, without bothering to wonder why no Amber alert had
been sent out and why these children could be missing eight
(EIGHT) days before the case was even considered a crime?
While not from Wisconsin, these are answers Rep. McKinney surely
could have and should have demanded. A peppery firebrand,
McKinney has been tilting at windmills her entire career. She is
a well-known figure on Capitol Hill, an aggressive in-your-face
gal who presses for minority causes.
Bob Kemper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"She's one of the lone voices who offers an opposing view on
many questions,” said William Boone, a political science
professor at Clark Atlanta University. McKinney's critics, he
said, “all think that she's some person who's so far out there
and doesn't have a firm grasp of reality. That's totally wrong,”
McKinney entered her first political race without knowing it.
Her father wrote in her name for a state House seat in 1986
while she was living in Jamaica with her husband, Jamaican
politician Coy Grandison, and their son. By 1988, McKinney had
divorced Grandison and returned to the United States with her
son. She campaigned hard for the state House and won, creating
the only father-daughter legislative team in the nation.
She quickly made an impression by wearing pants on the floor of
the Georgia House of Representatives, defying rules requiring
women to wear skirts or dresses. She harshly criticized the 1991
invasion of Iraq, and her colleagues walked out of the state
House in protest. She called her own party's leaders “dinosaurs”
who consider blacks “no more than spare parts for their
whites-only party machine.”
“I'm attracted to fights,” she once said. McKinney was elected
to Congress in 1992 in a freshly drawn black-majority district.
She im-mediately called for a Justice Department investigation
into Georgia's kaolin industry, a prominent employer in her
district, on antitrust charges. In ensuing elections, even as
her district was altered around her, McKinney would continue to
easily win races often marked by racial overtones.
That streak ended in 2002 in a race in which McKinney's strong
support from Arab donors was one issue. McKinney's father
spelled out for reporters that he felt “J-E-W-S” helped bring
her down. Even in the moment of her defeat, however, McKinney
hinted at her return, telling supporters she simply wouldn't “be
in Congress for a couple of years.”
"I've got to be proud of what she did,” said Billy McKinney, who
was conspicuously absent from his daughter's successful ’94
campaign [to regain her congressional seat].
Leveling
charges of racism is always a risky endeavor. You can end up
suffering twice: once from the racism, once for doing nothing
about it. Even when circumstances are patently and obviously
racist, it really falls to a white person to [credibly] make
that charge. Soon as a black person charges racism, many whites
just roll their eyes and start tuning us out. McKinney, whose
sheer volume and flamboyance has made her a veritable thorn in
the side of Congress for more than a decade, has apparently
leveled similar complaints before, to the extent that such
charges from her carry increasingly less weight.
Charges of racism are like banging a drum. If you bang it too
often, people just wave you off, “Oh, it’s just ol’ gal banging
her drum.” Which isn’t to say her charges aren’t true—I wasn’t
there, but I’m reasonably certain they are. But three things
remain even truer
First: violence is never okay. It’s just not. The minute Rep.
McKinney struck the officer, she was in the wrong, period.
Second: McKinney’s vendetta fairly polarized congress, harming
important legislation while battle lines were drawn between the
Republicans (many of whom began wearing “I Love Capitol Police”
pins) and black Democrats, with white and Latino Democrats
uncomfortably caught in the crossfire. Once Rep. McKinney hit
the officer, she lost. It really was that simple. There was just
no justification for striking a police officer, a felony that
could cost her her congressional seat.
Third, and most tragically: she pushed Purvis and Dre off the
air. Now, mind you, that case was, likely, going off the air
anyway since no reporter—I mean, not one—seemed even the least
bit curious about the botched handling of their case. News
outlets, perhaps anxious to drop the story but not having a
comfortable way to do that, found their answer in the McKinney
circus, swapping “breaking” black news for the stifling horror
of the waiting in Milwaukee.
Thursday, with meager and tepid support from her Congressional and party allies and facing a possible felony conviction for assaulting a police officer which could cost her her Congressional seat and possibly land her in prison, Rep. McKinney issued a half-baked “apology” on the House floor. “I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all, and I regret its escalation and I apologize,” she said surrounded by colleagues on the House floor, missing the point that the incident didn’t merely “escalate”—she escalated it. McKinney was doubtlessly under pressure from congressional blacks and minorities as her accusations of racism fairly polarized their legislative agenda while providing a welcome distraction to President Bush's epic political turmoil. Late last week it was revealed that President Bush actually authorized Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby to leak a formerly classified CIA intelligence brief to the media, a crime for which Libby was indicted. Last year, Bush promised a swift investigation and housecleaning, which led to Vice President Dick Cheney tossing his chief of staff under the wheels of the bus. But now, it appears, that Bush himself is the leaker. McKinney's troubles sapped precious headline space and airtime away from the ensuing feeding frenzy.
McKinney lost her re-election bid two years ago after suggesting in a March 2002 radio interview that President Bush may have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and failed to prevent them. She implied that people close to the administration stood to gain financially from a war on terror. “We now know that there were enough warnings prior to Sept. 11 that we didn't even have to experience Sept. 11 at all,” McKinney said on Pacifica Radio, sparking a national uproar and drawing criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Fellow House Democrats have refused her demand to reinstate 10
years of seniority from her previous tenure, making it more
difficult for her to secure influential committee positions.
Many of them may still harbor grudges for her 9/11 remarks and
for a letter she wrote to a Saudi prince expressing empathy for
his claim that U.S. policy in the Middle East may have helped
provoke the attacks.
Moreover, [McKinney] once hand-wrote, but never submitted, a
bill to impeach Bush.
With each passing revelation about the Bush Administration, McKinney's charges seem increasingly less far-fetched, McKinney herself much less radical as she seemed. The unfortunate timing of her incident with the policeman threatened to undermine her rising credibility and has surely endangered her upcoming primary run.
But, I like her. I can't help it. Her smile is positively contagious and her energy is inspiring. She is, in the final analysis, a nut. And we could use a lot more nuts in congress. A lot more people who are unafraid to speak truth to power, to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. In an environment poisoned by lobbyists and special interests, McKinney's reputation is she shows up for work. She's aggressive. She comes to win.
That's why I take her to task here, for giving the Washington beast an opportunity to pierce her armor. That so beautiful and intelligent and inspiring a black woman could come across as petty, shallow and self-serving—which I doubt she actually is. I also doubt she's stupid. She must know the Washington establishment would love to be rid of her. why on earth she'd give them an opportunity to do her harm is beyond me.
So far as the facts of the case are concerned, from what I can surmise, I believe she just snapped, lashing out in anger. It was wrong of her to strike the officer, but, conversely, it is unlikely she intended the officer any real harm. I doubt she hit him with any more force than a chastising church lady. Both sides blew this out of proportion, but it was McKinney who ultimately lost. She's experienced enough to be smarter than that, to know how the political games work in Washington. And, mostly, that the moment a black woman cries racism, it is she who is put on trial.
My annoyance at McKinney is mostly about two little boys in Milwaukee, and the fact I have not heard their names mentioned on the news since this McKinney thing broke. Instead, all I saw was McKinney defending the indefensible—look, she hit the guy. Bottom line, the cops wanted her to eat it and she threatened Armageddon to avoid having to take that hit, only to have to take the hit anyway when she was likely confronted by her friends who, I imagine, warned her that she was becoming her own worst enemy. I imagine the Congressional Black Caucus' tepid response to all of this was a fair indicator that McKinney had placed them into an impossible position. They had to back their popular ally, but they knew she was wrong. And she knew it, too. This was becoming more about pride, about bruised egos, than anything else. None of which meant McKinney was wrong, but that she was being rope-a-doped by forces determined to undermine her political career.
Her pale and insincere apology—which bordered on sarcasm—smacked
of immaturity. She should have apologized to the officer,
apologized to the officer's family, especially the bad example
she set for his children. She should have apologized to the
Capitol police, who daily risk their lives working in ground
zero for terrorists and nuts hoping to write political
statements in blood. She should have apologized not for calling
the incident racial profiling, but for squandering an
opportunity to bring light to this issue by striking the
officer—something no one should ever do. That's the overall tone
of the statement she should have made.
Instead, she was like an unrepentant ten-year old facing bedtime without her supper. Her apology was mealy-mouthed and insincere, and she smirked her way through it, clearly under pressure and reluctant to give up her fight. The choked-out half-a-loaf murmuring of someone forced to swallow their own spleen.
Claims of racial bias grounded in transparent self-interest only
make the struggle of achieving actual social justice that much
harder. Rep. McKinney has squandered precious time and even more
precious energy and goodwill while taxing white America’s
patience such that, when next we step up to protest substantive
issues of social justice, we’ll have to work that much harder to
be deemed credible and taken seriously. All of this because some
cop grabbed her arm.
I’m grateful the circus has left town. I am deeply saddened that
there is still not one word mentioned about the missing boys.
Dozens of black congressmen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with
McKinney, and not one word from McKinney, from any of them,
about Purvis and Dre.
I wish she was actually remorseful. I wish her apology was
sincere. It’s not. And she’s perhaps too arrogant to even
realize what she truly should be sorry for: diverting precious
airtime and precious attention from things that really matter.
As of this writing, Purvis and Dre have still not come home.
Christopher J. Priest
10 April 2006
editor@praisenet.org
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