Wall Street Journal 9/2/98 Clifford Alexander "When he's in trouble, and even when he's not, Bill Clinton is known to play fast and furious with issues of race. He did it again last Friday in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., in a speech commemorating the 35th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington. Mr. Clinton said the following: "Most of us who are old enough remember exactly where we were on Aug. 28, 1963. I was in my living room in Hot Springs, Ark. I remember the chair I was sitting in; I remember exactly where it was in the room; I remember exactly the position of the chair when I sat and watched on national television the great March on Washington unfold. I remember weeping uncontrollably during Martin Luther King's speech, and I remember thinking when it was over, my country would never be the same and neither would I." So spoke the man who in January could not remember whether he had been alone with Monica Lewinsky a few weeks earlier. And it wasn't the first time Mr. Clinton had suspiciously vivid memories on matters concerning race in America. On an earlier occasion he gravely told the nation of his vivid memory of church burnings in Arkansas when he was growing up. Journalists' inquiries revealed that there were no church burnings in Arkansas during Mr. Clinton's early years.. In his Martha's Vineyard speech he even compared himself to Nelson Mandela and Dr. King.."
The American Spectator 5/00 Mark Steyn One typical March weekend in Brooklyn: Vandals smash the face and arms of a marble shrine to Our Lady of Fatima at St. Gregory's Rornan Catholic Church. The same night, a wooden image of Christ is torn down from the cross and broken into pieces at St. Francis of Assisi-St. Blaise Church. For parishioners at St. Francis, it was the second assault on their church in little more than two months: In January, the statues of both Francis and Our Lady of Fatima were decapitated. But so what? This kind of thing is becoming routine. A dozen Catholic churches have been desecrated in Brooklyn in the last six months - though, in a belated attempt at ecumenicalisrn, in the last week of March an Episcopal church was targeted, too. The media, happy to hop on Jesse Jackson's and Bill Clinton's bandwagon and be taken for a ride about an entirely mythical spate of black church burnings a couple of years back, are largely indifferent to the actual, real assaults on churches which occur every day ..