Congressman Joe (“You Lie”) Wilson
Needs to Be Recalled in South
Carolina
That Congressman Joe Wilson was formally reprimanded
yesterday in the Senate for “breach of decorum and degraded proceeding the
joint session” of Congress is hardly satisfactory. If you recall, last week,
Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “You lie” as President Barack Obama explained to
the nation that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under the new
health care legislation.
The uncouth, unprincipled Wilson
needs to be recalled by the voters of South
Carolina. Even former president Jimmy Carter said Wilson’s statement was
racially motivated. Wilson’s unprecedented
outburst (some say he was told by Republican leaders to bellow the outburst “You
lie”) is not only illustrative of his extreme and reactionary opposition to
immigration, it is representative of his ultra-right wing Republican stance
against the first African American president of the United States. Wilson
is an incorrigible and unrepentant segregationist who voted to keep the
Confederate Flag flying over the South
Carolina statehouse, calling it “The Southern heritage, the Confederate
heritage is very honorable” (he lost the vote on the flag, 36-7).
Seasoned political observers know Wilson served as the aide to the unabashed
archenemy of African Americans, the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond,
arguably the fiercest opponent of Civil Rights legislation. Thurmond conducted
the longest filibuster in U.S.
history when he opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1957. Thurmond was exposed in
the last few years as a hypocrite and phony when it was revealed that he
fathered an illegitimate child by one of his black maids.
Furthermore, Wilson was a
member of the organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans, which the Southern
Poverty Law Center has described as having been “taken over in the past decade
by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession [from the United States]
and defend slavery as a benign [or innocent] institution.”
His laughable, half-hearted apology to President Obama,
which the president accepted, is nonetheless insufficient to redress his
boorish behavior and not enough for us to forget what he stands for: white
supremacy and racial separation. Because of this, Wilson needs to be ousted out of office.
–terry shropshire
