Posted on 02/21/2004 3:28:26 PM PST by optimistically_conservative
Kevin Phillips, author of a best-selling book that is harshly critical of President Bush, said Friday that the Atlanta History Center had withdrawn an invitation for him to speak next Wednesday for political reasons.
The History Center said the invitation to Phillips, author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," had been merely "tentative."
Spokeswoman Hillary Hardwick said Phillips' talk and planned book-signing, scheduled for Wednesday evening, had been canceled while planners were finalizing the center's regular schedule of speakers.
Andy Ambrose, deputy director of the center, issued a written statement Friday in which he said that Phillips' tentative booking was killed because "both sides of a political opinion regarding a presidential candidate could not be presented."
"We regret," he added, "the confusion this has caused, but Mr. Phillips was never on a public calendar for this year's lecture series."
Hardwick said Phillips had been invited to speak last month. Phillips said he had never considered the engagement tentative and would have been here Wednesday.
Phillips said he was told through his publicist, Yen Cheong of the Viking Penguin publishing house, that the History Center's board "had decided it wouldn't be appropriate to have a political book [author] in an election year."
Cheong said she was called by Lynn Rollins, manager of adult and community education at the History Center, and that "my interpretation of the conversation was they would have turned down Ann Coulter for the same reason." Coulter is a conservative commentator and author.
Phillips noted that Tommy Hills, Gov. Sonny Perdue's chief financial officer, is chairman of the board of the History Center and declared that the cancellation "doesn't sound like a complete coincidence."
Hills did not return calls to his office at the state Capitol.
Sheffield Hale, chairman-elect of the center's board of directors, said he didn't even know Phillips had been invited.
"We typically would not get involved in a decision as to who would speak at the History Center," he said. "You've caught me flatfooted. I would have gone and gotten my book autographed."
Phillips, a political theorist who originated Richard Nixon's Southern strategy in the 1960s, wrote an op-ed piece for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year critical of Republican economic policies and labeled Perdue as one of the new "political flagbearers of the Old Confederacy."
"I wasn't a great fan of Perdue," Phillips said.
"My book has become extremely controversial," he said. "Three of seven book reviews have used the word 'devastating' [to President Bush]," he said. "It doesn't surprise me that people connected with the [Bush administration] in Atlanta or Washington are not interested in publicity for this book."
Hmmm....Does that qualify for the Ann-iacs to post pics?
On NPR he's been foaming at the mouth and close to meltdown.
A good example of the powerful reaction some have to Dubya.
You posted her name.
This seems to be a very series problem for you!
You tawlkin to me? You tawlkin to me? I don't see anyone else on that post. You must be tawlking to me.
Now you have a problem.
It is another mark of our times that nut cases like this get a public platform and book contracts.
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