BIGOTS STILL DO NOT KNOW: SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH IT

Oops! There goes the tourist trade. Too bad for the fine citizens of the city of Hammond in northeastern Louisiana.

Hammond caught the world’s attention after Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, stood his ground after refusing to marry an interracial couple, a violation of a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows interracial marriage.

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” he told an Associated Press reporter on Thursday, Oct. 15. “There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage. I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

A biracial child will never be accepted by blacks or whites, and he or she need not dream of being elected president of the United States.* Like Barak Obama. Louisiana is part of the United States. Technically.

A news release was posted on the city of Hammond’s Web site imploring reporters to alter their dateline from Hammond to nearby Robert, La., where Bardwell lives. The city stressed that Bardwell was independently elected and has no formal affiliation with Hammond whatsoever.

The Bardwell account coincides with nearly a half-dozen other domestic instances rooted in prejudice, including the beating of a gay man, the nauseous Limbaugh-Sharpton confrontation and an Irish singer’s anti-Semitic rant; I’m excluding the South Carolina flap about Jews because of mixed feelings. I have never been able to comprehend the thinking - or lack thereof - behind these attitudes or at least why some people cannot grow out of them. I am left trying to second-guess their motives, but I can think of some responses to them.

The episode that affects me personally was Irish tenor Ronan Tynan’s offensive comment about a Jewish woman seeking an apartment in his East Side building in Manhattan. A real estate agent who accompanied the woman told Tynan, who sometimes sings “God Bless America” at Yankees playoff games, that “they are not Red Sox fans.”
To which Tynan shot back: “I don’t care about that, as long as they are not Jewish.”

The woman complained to the Yankees after the Oct. 15 encounter, and they swiftly suspended his gig, The New York Daily News reported. He apologized to her and claimed to be joking, but the victim said it did not sound like that. What was he thinking? I’ll get to my theory later.

Back to Bardwell: I do notice that this justice lives in the South some distance from any big city. Is this a southern thing? A backwoods vantage point? I do not wish to lump all southerners and/or rural residents with this guy. If there is any truth to this, TV host Jay Leno said it best when he suggested Bardwell clings to the belief that a married couple should not be of the same race but from the same family. West Virginia is not alone.

Returning to the North, a 49-year-old gay man was beaten to a pulp in the College Point section of northern Queens on Oct. 8, as his assailants spewed out anti-gay slurs, police told the News. I concede that my attitudes about homosexuals have been less than perfect, but I generally do not care about one’s sexual orientation. It is ghastly that anyone would discriminate or physically harm someone because of their sexual orientation. There is something wrong with it, as Seinfeld might say.

Friends of the two suspects, both in their twenties, rationalized their actions when they showed up at a rally against anti-gay violence. “This whole rally is so pathetic,” said Camelisse Kiana, 15. “I don’t think this is a hate crime because he doesn’t have nothing against gay people.” Added Marcel Gelmi, “It was an assault but it wasn’t a hate crime.” We suppose that makes it okay.

Most bizarre is the ongoing duel of the dolts: Rush Limbaugh and Al Sharpton…sorry, that’s the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton threatened to sue Limbaugh for accusing him of taking a “leading role” in the 1991 Crown Heights riots. Sharpton did take a “leading role” of forcing Limbaugh out of an investment team that sought to purchase part of the St. Louis Rams because of his well-documented racist rants on his radio show.

“I am definitely going to prove he makes reckless, unaccountable statements,” Sharpton said of Limbaugh.

Sharpton should know what he is talking about. During the funeral of 7-year-old Gavin Cato, whose death in an auto accident touched off the riots, Sharpton dubbed Crown Heights Jews as “diamond merchants” and referred to the “apartheid ambulance” service operated by ultra-Orthodox Jews there. Cato was fatally injured when struck by a vehicle operated by an Orthodox driver.

No reasonable person could side with either of these boneheads, but the merits favor Sharpton. His advocacy style has evolved to a more respectable level, though he has at best hinted at remorse for his revolting past. The right-wing Limbaugh still spouts absurdities like a little brat. Sharpton contends that Limbaugh’s accusation suggests that he committed a crime, which is true.

Limbaugh could clarify what he meant, but Sharpton still owes the Jewish community an explanation and apology after all these years.

It is not hard to speculate about what prompted Ronan Tynan’s conduct. I am not one to link a person’s drinking habits to an ethnic stereotype, but I am reminded of an incident in which a crude comment applies to Tynan.

A few years ago, a friendly but eccentric woman who had just flown into Boston from Ireland sat next to me on an Amtrak train headed for Maine. As the trip progressed, so did her eccentric ways. The more she spoke, the sooner I realized that she was soused.

As our conversation waned, she subsequently addressed a middle-aged couple across the aisle. After 10 minutes of chat, the husband chided her: “A little too much Irish whiskey, eh?”

Ouch. The woman was obnoxious, but responding to her with an ethnic slur was way out of line. It would have been a touche-moment if the Jewish woman in New York responded to Ronan Tynan with a line like that.

*I am not the only person to make the connection between Justice Bardwell’s remarks and the election of a biracial president, but this connection did occur to me soon after I learned of the episode and before I heard or read of it by others.