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perhaps journalists should have waited for the release the "full version" of the tape, including the comments leading up to the clip circulated, and the follow-on comments where, after defending the plight of the black man, he defends hispanics. Maybe they could have even done a teeny little bit of research before issuing knee-jerk reactions and labeling Bundy racist.

And for those journalists that don't know the history of the West or bothered to take two minutes to look it up, the finest cotton in the world came from Arizona, with Texas and Oklahoma close behind. Cotton helped build the West as much as cattle did, so it would not be unusual for a seasoned westerner to think of growing and picking cotton as a valid and respectable occupation for the unskilled laborer in the Western states. Only racial knee-jerks and people ignorant of Western agriculture would exclusively associate the phrase “pick cotton” with the South and try to twist it as a racial insult. He also mentioned growing turnips and chickens, which are not an exclusive Southern items, either.

Before his circulated comments, Bundy talked about having witnessed the Watts riots, how he could see blacks were unhappy, that they didn't feel they had any freedoms, and, he acknowledges “they didn't have them”. That "it was wrong", and that he didn't want blacks or hispanics "to go back to that", that we had made progress since then and "we can make a difference right now by taking care of some of the bureaucracy and doing it in a peaceful way."

Then, in what was heralded to be the money shot, he talks about driving by the government projects, and seeing poor blacks with nothing to do and how unhappy they looked sitting there doing nothing, that they were never taught how to get off the dole or given the opportunity to be self-sufficient. In response to an off-camera comment, he acknowledges the fact blacks have physical ‘freedom’ following antebellum days, and acknowledges slavery was wrong, but asks what kind of freedom do poor blacks really have, consigned to government barracks surrounded by concrete, broken families, abortions encouraged, and fatherless children being raised by old people? He asks, as we have all asked, and have heard asked a thousand times in a dozen different ways, has the overall quality of life of poor blacks improved or become worse as wards of the government?

His defense of the hispanic immigrant (many of whom picked cotton as a means to become self-sufficient) is released as a separate tape. While certainly not an eloquent speaker, if one listens carefully to what he says it's obvious he meant no disrespect to any racial group and was, in fact, calling the government to task. imo The ‘Bundy is a Racist’ articles are nothing more than manufactured hysteria.