South Carolina strikes again

South Carolina, indisputably the worst state in the union ( in 1860 James Petigru, a congressman from the state, sheds some light: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”) , struck again tonight. Besides starting the civil war and having the lowest high school graduation rate (average of 53%), it's representatives continue to be the shockingly gauche. Another political leader - Republican Congressman Joe Wilson - embarrassed South Cacalacky when he interrupted President Obama's Health Care Address with a very audible shout of "You Lie!" Check out the video below and note the crowd's shock at this rare breach of protocol (around 1:20):



But Wilson is hardly the worst politician to come out of South Carolina. I will highlight more:


1) Current Governor Mark Sanford

From June 18 until June 24, 2009 (that is SIX whole days), the whereabouts of Governor Sanford were unknown to the public, including to his wife and four kids and the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for him, garnering nationwide news coverage. Lieutenant Governor André Bauer announced that he could not "take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts."

Before his disappearance, Governor Sanford told his staff that he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and while he was gone he did not answer 15 cell phone calls from his chief of staff Scott English; he also failed to call his family on Father's Day. Turns out this douche-bag was in Argentina (at least he picked such a ballin' country) with his mistress.


2) Governor & Senator Strom Thurmond: The biggest political bastard of all time?

First offense: He ran for President in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Here is a quote of his about desegregating the army:

"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." (Listen to the clip here)

He then continued his fight against racial equality well into the civil rights era. Thurmond supported racial segregation with the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator, speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to derail the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As an added bonus, at Thurmond's hundredth birthday party in December 2002, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott sparked controversy by praising Thurmond's 1948 candidacy for President and suggesting that the country would be better off if Thurmond had won, leading to Lott's resignation from his Leader post.

Shocking, right? Just wait, there's more!

Thurmond at 100

Second Offense: He served as Senator through the 1990s, and left office at age 100 as the oldest serving and longest-serving Senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). How do we reward someone who campaigned for federal enforcement of segregation? Let him stay in office until he is ridiculously old of course!

Third Offense: Shortly after Thurmond's death on June 26, 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams publicly revealed that she was Strom Thurmond's daughter. She was born to a black maid, Carrie "Tunch" Butler (1909–1948), on October 12, 1925, when Butler was 16 and Thurmond was 22. He helped pay her way through college and later paid her sums of money in cash or, through a nephew, checks. Though Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Washington-Williams when he was alive, he continued to support her financially and politically campaign to deny her rights - what a great dad!

Washington-Williams has stated that she did not reveal she was Thurmond's daughter during his lifetime because it "wasn't to the advantage of either one of us" (no kidding) and that she kept silent out of love and respect for her father (I doubt that last part). She denies that there was an agreement between the two to keep her connection to Thurmond silent (I also doubt that).


3) Preston Brooks

In May, 1856, Charles Sumner, a Democratic abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, gave a speech in the Senate, denouncing the “crime against Kansas.” The Kansas territory had been created and opened to settlement in 1854, but the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory had been left up to the inhabitants of the state. “The South,” David Donald writes “determined to create a new slave state in Kansas, had banded together ‘murderous robbers from Missouri,’ ‘hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization,’ ” (in Sumner’s words). Sumner’s impassioned rhetoric against this pro-slavery faction enraged Preston Brooks, a Democratic representative from South Carolina. On May 22nd, he stormed into the Senate and beat Sumner with a gold-handled cane, striking half a dozen blows to Sumner’s head, blinding him with blood.


4) John C. Calhoun

Calhoun, a Democrat, was elected Vice-President under John Adams in 1824, and retained the position under Andrew Jackson. But Jackson and Calhoun fought, primarily over the doctrine of nullification. Things escalated until, in 1830, Calhoun took the bold move of publishing a private correspondence between himself and Jackson. In 1831, he became the first Vice-President to resign his post. But his uppitiness didn’t stop there. Elected to the Senate the following year, he became the most vocal proponent of slavery in Congress, and in 1837 delivered his famous “Positive Good” speech. “I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.”