http://www.miamiherald.com/516/story/528574.html
Miami Herald
Magazine attacks Democrats for racist past
By Marc Caputo
May. 10, 2008
For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:
The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.
That's all tucked in the back of the Sarasota-based National Black Republican Association's 60-page mag, the first half of which touts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's civil rights record and the Republican Party of Florida's minority outreach efforts that the association has helped coordinate.
The strident comments and images -- replete with a Ku Klux Klan rally snapshot that notes ''every person in this photo was a Democrat'' -- has outraged Democrats and caught the Republican Party of Florida flat-footed as well.
''Oh my gosh,'' party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said when told of the magazine's content, which she described as "inflammatory.''
Though the magazine lists the party as a financial sponsor, Van Sickle said the GOP ''had no editorial control'' and that party chairman Jim Greer "is disappointed in some of the content.''
Van Sickle is listed as a contributing writer, but she said that's because she helped supply the content and photographs concerning Greer, Crist and the party.
The black Republican association's chairwoman, Frances Rice, said her group operated independently of the party and is aggressive about its viewpoint because it wants to ''wake up'' black voters and "shed the light of truth on the racist past and failed socialism of the Democratic Party.''
But Democrats suspect Republicans knew more about the magazine's content than they're admitting. Democrats got wind of the publication, dated Fall 2007, at a black voter event Tuesday in Tallahassee where Republicans were passing out the magazine.
''Shame on Chairman Greer and the Republicans,'' said Jacksonville Democratic Sen. Tony Hill. "They should be about bringing people together, not demagoguery about the KKK. That's not going to win African Americans today, and Barack Obama is showing that.''
If Republicans could get 25 percent of the black vote nationwide, according to Rice's magazine, the party would win Congress and the White House. But to do that, Rice said, she wants black voters to know the Democrats' history of "slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.''
Rice said black voters tend to be religious and aren't as receptive to the secularism underpinning the Democratic Party -- hence the ''Democrats Wage War on God'' article.
She said the magazine features articles from top black thinkers and conservatives to hold black leaders accountable.
As for listing the ''Top 10 Democratic Sex Scandals,'' Rice said her publication sought to ''balance'' the news media's coverage of Republican woes.
Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski quickly rattled off the names of Republicans caught in sex scandals: "There's no Mark Foley, no Larry Craig, no David Vitter. Where's Bob Allen? He's the guy who said he was afraid of black guys and that's why he offered a police officer $20 to perform a sex act.''
One of the articles in the magazine says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice contends she knew Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and ''there's no way they were Democrats'' in the 1960s, a time when racist southern Democrats were fire-hosing black protesters and trying to keep them out of public schools. Her association, established in 2005, aired political ads concerning King's political leanings in 2006 political radio ads in Florida, Maryland Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Democrats counter that King was nonpartisan. Hill and other Democrats say they don't dispute the central facts about the Democratic Party's role in pushing slavery, seceding from the Union and precipitating the Civil War.
And they acknowledged that those pictured in the old KKK snapshot were likely Democrats, but said that was many decades ago.
But Democrats say the magazine omits the fact that many Southern Democrats joined the GOP after the 1960s civil rights movement.
'You could change the caption to say, `All of these people are now Republicans,' because the Democratic Party no longer suited their racist Southern strategy,'' said Dan Gelber, a Democratic state legislator from Miami Beach.
________________________________
Dan Gelber is no Jack Gordon, that's for sure!
Instead of being a Profile in Courage and taking the necessary heat for his leadership role in the FL primary debacle, and so many other issues, he's an Alibi Ike for the Ages.
No wonder he likes Obama -now!
My memory is a bit hazy on this point, so I need some help to pin this down.
For decades, in an open mockery of fairness, the Dade County Commission didn't have member districts until towards the end of the 20th Century, when the Dept. of Justice said get with the program -or else.
The same sunny Miami where for far longer than most people think, the Orange Bowl Committee routinely had team functions at restricted clubs.
So what exactly was Dan Gelber doing to insure that African-Americans and Hispanics were given their fair chance at the ballot box in Dade County?
________________________________________
Since many of you no doubt haven't read my other blog before, to help explain where I stand on the Miami Herald, past, present and future, here's what I wrote in the second anchor of South Beach Hoosier when I started it last year, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/ modestly calling it, Dave's Intentions for South Beach Hoosier
South Beach Hoosier will offer commentary on popular culture, public policy and national politics -largely from a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) p.o.v., with some policy differences-advertising & marketing news and innovations; the business side of Show Biz, especially the film industry; as well as insight on international trade, financial services and U.S. foreign policy, where from 1988-2003, I had a front-row seat for these and many other contentious and implacable issues on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks and policy groups.
Fortunately for me, besides being blessed with a great memory for details, I also took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at Capitol Hill hearings -inc. important Congressional mark-ups- as well as at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at Brookings, SAIS, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al.
Stories that, for whatever reason, NEVER saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the WSJ or the Washington Post.
Which naturally had the entirely predictable ripple effect of insuring that these stories and issues NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR.
South Beach Hoosier will also examine the latest amusing or not-so-amusing scandals, cover-ups, controversies, contretemps and mis-adventures bedeviling South Florida, something I became used to while growing up in North Miami Beach in the late 1960's and the 70's.
Fortunately, because of my news-junkie DNA and myriad magazine subscriptions, and long-standing relationships with media types in Miami, I was able to keep up pretty well with the South Florida area while living in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette and Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA.
Communities where sensible civic activism and high standards of journalism were the norm and not the exception.
Due to my own personal/business/political interests and experiences in those cities, as well as my good fortune to have a large number of well-informed and well-connected friends and former housemates while living there, many but not all of whom are or were reporters, columnists, editors, TV/film producers, along with a few who are now well-placed in Statehouses and legal circles across the country, I'll have a deep bench of facts, opinions, point-of-views and fact-checkers to work with.
That's the goal for South Beach Hoosier.
It's my hope that this'll help me offer up pinpoint criticism, whether of national and South Florida pols, media organizations and sports or show biz personalities, that have heretofore evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability -as well as well-aimed brickbats.
To examine the proverbial case of the latest dog that doesn't bark, or analyze why the latest case of media conventional wisdom has -again- been proven wrong, and why.
This is especially true of The Miami Herald, the morning newspaper I grew-up with and have suffered with since first leaving North Miami Beach for Bloomington in the fall of '79, as its most talented people jumped ship and the paper become evermore a shell of what it once was: an excellent newspaper with talented and respected reporters and editors telling compelling and intriguing stories of intrinsic value to its readers throughout polyglot and transient South Florida.
Television news-wise, when I'd return to South Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston, and DC, whether for Christmas vacation, Baltimore Oriole spring training games or visits for weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a tangible difference in a community.
Reporters who might have the talent and ability to convey to the waves of newcomers and visitors to the area, a nuanced sense of South Florida's decidedly mixed historical past, by writing with the proper amount of factual research, balanced perspective and sense of disbelief, to describe the events unfolding around them.
Then, ending the piece by dropping the hammer on whichever local corrupt/incompetent miscreant, pol or agency hack was the target of their ire, for attempting to perpetrate yet another in a long of of dubious acts against the people of South Florida.
Sadly for the people of South Florida, things have gotten so bad now that The Herald's numerous flaws are as much for what they don't publish, as much as for the self-evident mediocre quality of its writing and reporting, lack of thorough fact-checking, and inadequate search for conflicts of interest.
For all the talk of improving the paper by the new McClatchy management, it shows no tangible signs of changing for the better any time soon, a great disappointment to its readers.
It's common knowledge within the industry that The Herald's website is a joke compared to the efforts of many smaller circulation newspapers. www.miamiherald.com
Frankly, the website itself remains a constant source of embarrassment for Herald reporters and columnists, who are constantly besieged by readers and told yet another horror story about not being able to find recent Herald stories that should be on the paper's website but aren't.
The reporters can do little more than shrug their shoulders in response.
Even in the year 2008, The Herald still DOESN'T have a permanent Public Ombudsman to represent the interests of both its readers and basic fairness, like many newspapers with much smaller circulation numbers!
Meanwhile, with much more to fear and lose, The New York Times has an independent Public Editor, currently Clark Hoyt, who weekly takes the Times' policy, owners, editors, reporters and columnists to task publicly, even providing links back to the original story or column in question, unlike the once-in-a-while effort at the Herald. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html?8qa
Meanwhile The Herald's Sunday attempt at high-minded opinion-shaping and public policy, Issues & Ideas, is so embarrassing and muddled on so many different levels that it's all one can do to not laugh from crying, so feeble is its effort, so low is its aim, so puny the actual result.
Yet rather than seeking the creative input of bright and knowledgable new faces who familiar with the real problems of South Florida, The Herald still regularly farms-out the Guest Op-Ed space in the paper to people living outside of the area, more than any other newspaper in America I've ever read.
They continually run long excerpts in their editorial space from parochial interest groups whose political sentiments echo that of the the Herald's own Editorial Board.
Even worse, if possible, in many cases these particular guest editorial tangents have already appeared in other forums or publications!
And speaking of the Herald's Editorial Board, who's on that exactly, anyway?
It's a great mystery that nobody seems able to fully explain away, yet The New York Times, under the guidance of Andy Rosenthal, has an entire webpage specifically devoted to detailing the background and credentials of its Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html
Hmmm... call me old-fashioned, but South Beach Hoosier prefers transparency!
With more news coming out of South Florida than once ever seemed possible, and with the area's annual dance with hurricanes always fraught with danger, this area desperately needs an All-News radio station more than ever before, yet there's NO sign of one on the horizon to replicate the crucial role once served by CBS Radio affiliate, WINZ-AM 940.
Even worse, if possible, there's no LOCAL 24 hour cable news channel to replicate the important role played by a NewsChannel 8 in Washington, D.C., http://www.news8.net/ which gives a depth of coverage to D.C. and the VA/MD suburbs that people in South Florida can only dream about with envy: LIVE call-in TV programs with tough reporters who weekly or monthly grill the DC Mayor, Virginia and Maryland governors, as well as the VA and MD County Managers or Supervisors, the REAL powers in the area.
But then it's not like COMCAST is stepping up to the plate, either!
If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack of PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY here among Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials.
South Beach Hoosier aims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru simple public scrutiny, or requires a degree of investigation and follow-up public exposure of incompetency, cronyism or negligence -South Florida's usual "Perfect Storm."
In other words, a catalyst for positive change.
"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."-Preacher Purl encouraging the underdog Hickory basketball team before the title game against favored South Bend Central in Hoosiers, 1986. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091217/ 
