Alabama's Taliban

http://www.counterpunch.com/


Two "holier than thou" preachers, one black and one white, visited my office on different days last week but on the same mission. The men are riled up over words I wrote about Chief Justice Roy Moore running for Governor on a 5000-pound statute or monument promoting the Ten Commandments. The white preacher also was not pleased with some words I spoke about Condi Rice on this show. The two evangelical visitors are, to me, Alabamas equivalent of the intolerant Taliban in Afghanistan.

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The white preacher wanted me to know that regardless of what I thought, said and tried to make fun of, Judge Moore will be the next governor of Alabama. I said that would not surprise me in the least. In fact, that would be par-for-the-course. I also said that state government in Alabama is located on a hill in Montgomery called "Goat Hill" and that is a perfect name and Moore is the latest justification for the name. The white preacher didn't seem to grasp that last point.

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The black preacher wanted me to know that Moore and Wallace are not comparable, politically or any other way. The preacher is only half right. Moore and Wallace are both similar and different. Each man qualified as an ambitious, self-styled states rights Alabama politician who defied federal law and led misguided populist revolts, but the similarities probably end there. Wallace founded a political party (the American Independent Party) and wanted to be president but Moore appears to aim no higher than the governors office and would turn Alabama into a quasi-Christian theocracy to get there.

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The white preacher who visited with me accused me of having made up out of "thin air" that Condi Rice's family opposed the 1960s civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. He had no facts to refute my charge but the man just couldnâot believe that blacks as prominent as the Rice family would have opposed a black civil rights movement. I explained that upper class, educated blacks had the most to lose from opposing the white establishment and most of them regularly denounced the black marchers and protesters. I also suggested that the preacher read the book, Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921, by Professor Brian Kelly of Belfast, Ireland.

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(someone learned I didn't 'believe' and sent around a spanish only speaking preacher to see me. we shook hands and I sent him on his way. he came back with a translator. poor woman seemed embarrassed to translate that I didn't believe and didn't want to talk to the preacher. I finally got them off my porch and thankfully they haven't come back. being nice and polite doesn't work. pointing them out the gate with several firm NOs did the trick. the american taliban lives.)

:D
:D
:D

They like to come around on weekends here. They'd invariably lean on the doorbell and pound on the door just after I'd gotten to sleep after a 12 hour night shift.

I was RABID.

They don't came back now.

Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

I'm 30 minutes from B'ham.