Everyone Is Disenfranchised

The Washington Dispatch ^ | October 9, 2003 | Frank Salvato

[The Rant]

I was going to write about the need for politics and government to be separated but after I read the first line I keeled over from the pain in my belly, as I was laughing too hard. Although the ultimate goal would be to have politicians campaign from their political parties and then disengage from the political arena after they were elected to office so they could better connect with their constituents and do the work they were elected to do without due influence of their political parties, this notion will always remain a pipedream. Politics is embedded into our governmental system and there is little, if anything at all, we can do about it. What we can do is point out when gross inequities, hypocrisy and out-right lying occurs. Therefore, I introduce to you (as if he needs an introduction) the Good Reverend Jesse Jackson.

As I watched the coverage of the California Recall Election it was hard not to see the good reverend Jackson at Gray Davis’s side much of Election Day. The Good Reverend was on the podiums with Davis standing just to his side and a bit back; the Good Reverend walked into the polling places ahead of Davis and exited prior to his exit. He traveled with Davis in his motorcades and was even afforded an all access pass for the party that would encompass the last moments Davis would be governor of the State of California. Jackson was with Davis as he turned from shining star of the Democratic Party, a possible Democratic presidential candidate in years to come and a Clintonian favorite, to a fallen icon of the tax and spend liberal machine that is the Democratic Party in the United States today.

Now, I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw the Good Reverend Jackson at Davis’s side. Having grown up in the Chicago area I have become quite aware that whenever there is an opportunity for him to show up on television you can count on him being there. Good or bad, appropriate or not, if there is a media opportunity that the Good Reverend Jackson can exploit he will be there, rhyming quip in hand, to tell you how the event, or the lack of one, affected the African-American population more adversely than any other portion of the population. He has a gift for being able to see the gross inequity affecting the African-American community in just about any situation. To try to sum him up in a simple op-ed piece is to not pay enough homage to a spectacular man, or should I say a spectacle of a man. Truth be told, he has fallen quite a bit from the heights he held during the years of the Civil Rights movement that saw him marching with Martin Luther King. One wouldn’t be out of line if they asked what had happened to the Good Reverend’s vision, sense of fairness and moral compass. It seems that for the Good Reverend Jackson the goal of racial equality has been replaced by the opportunism of special interest, a sad state for such a noble dream.

But back we go to election night.

As I sat listening to so many talking heads contemplate the “what ifs” of the recall vote I was vindicated in my thoughts about the Good Reverend’s opportunistic style. Sure enough, there he was at the Gray Davis Campaign Gala, earpiece in place, ready to talk to Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes. As the wide ranging political spectrum could be accurately defined by placing Sean Hannity on the right and the Good Reverend furthest on the left, I turned up the volume and waited for the verbal jousting to begin. I wasn’t disappointed.

It would seem that the Good Reverend was in California, and at Gray Davis’s side, to protest the fact that there weren’t enough polling places available for the many Californians that were expected to vote in the recall election. Wearing the term “disenfranchised” like a Sheriff from the Old West would wear a badge, the Good Reverend was in rare form as he touted the incredible obstacles that kept the disenfranchised voters from exercising their rights to vote. Ironically, the polls were still open, and would remain open for another hour, when he was making these assertions. He went on to somehow connect the disenfranchisement of voters who still had time to vote with the Presidential Election of 2000 and the Florida debacle and then the financial mess that the Democrats in the California Legislature brought upon their state while blaming all of these things on President Bush who purposely refused to get involved with the California recall in the first place. You have to hand it to the Good Reverend; he is good at the spin. George W. Bush was to blame for there not being enough polling places for the Good Reverends phantom disenfranchised voters in California.

But there is a flaw in the Good Reverend’s thoughts on this matter, a flaw that even Sean Hannity didn’t pick up on. Although it was true that there were a smaller number of polling places available in which the California voters could cast their ballots, the voting process was open to early voting and absentee voting. Therefore, there were no incredibly oppressive time constraints by which the California voters had to adhere. They could have voted early, and I mean days early not just hours early, or they could have voted absentee if their situations satisfied the criteria for receiving an absentee ballot. It is hard to argue that anyone was disenfranchised from the voting process because of the smaller number of polling places simply by virtue of the fact there was an extended voting period that spanned days, not hours. The blame for someone not being able to cast a ballot during the time afforded by the State of California in this recall election must lay with the individual and not the system, contrary to what the Good Reverend would have you believe.

Now, I wouldn’t be the first to say that the Good Reverend Jackson is a political opportunist and royalty within the propaganda machine that is the Democratic Party in the United States today, but when asked if he would be pressing the matter of disenfranchisement should the impossible come to pass and Gray Davis were to be retained as governor do you know what he said? The Good Reverend looked straight into the camera and said, “Well, no!” Can you imagine that? His response was tantamount to saying, “If Gray Davis wins then no voters will have been disenfranchised but if anyone else wins (which is now the case) then voters must have been disenfranchised.” Hannity’s jaw dropped, Colmes started to stutter as he does when something incredibly partisan and transparent is said on the show and I had to start giggling and shaking my head. The Good Reverend had brought hypocrisy to a new height. He didn’t disappoint any of us at all but instead raised the bar for future demagogues that will surely come forward from within the ranks of the Democratic Party.

So, as Schwarzenegger takes his seat behind the governor’s desk in Sacramento to do battle with the tax and spend Democratic California Legislature and as the Democratic machine in California does its best to pin the problems the liberal California Legislature brought upon the state itself onto President Bush somehow, you can rest assured that those who are blinded by the Good Reverend’s bogus assertions of disenfranchisement will be claiming Schwarzenegger’s rise to office was as illegitimate as President Bush’s victory in Florida in 2000. They will march on, defiant of the facts and ignorant of the truth, as minions in the Good Reverend’s congregation, wherever that may be.

Come to think of it, the Good Reverend Jesse Jackson is like a superhero. Look up the sky, it’s a bird, no a plane, it’s Reverend Man, appearing at media events all over the world in an effort to spread fictitious facts, questionable truths, spin, hypocrisy and inequality in the name of liberal special interest and the Democratic Party everywhere. Just watch out you don’t step in what he is dropping on all of us, it’s hard to get off your shoes.

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Frank Salvato is a political media consultant, a freelance writer from the Midwest and the Managing Editor for www.TheRant.us. He is a contributing writer to The Washington Dispatch, OpinionEditorials.com and AmericanDaily.com. He has appeared as a guest panelist on The O’Reilly Factor and his pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com and occasionally featured in The Washington Time sand The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.

[The Rant]

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[isthisnickcool]

Well, Jackson has improved over the years. It's been a long time since he wiped the blood of a dying "friend" on himself.

[TSgt]

The word Disenfranchised should be stricken from the English language.

[lowbridge]

bump

[Sasha152]

Hannity talked about this on his radio show. It is funny. Jackson got caught in a web of political correctness, and hyprocisy, for anyone listening to hear. He must be kicking himself. Want to bet that "the media", (the left leaning media) will forget it, or even deny it ever happened?