W.Va. GOP attacks Senator Robert C. Byrd in his hospital bed - classless

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Apparently, they've never heard of privacy. From the rapidly-deteriorating, rightwing rag that is The Charleston Daily Mail:
---
As Sen. Robert Byrd remains hospitalized for nearly a fourth week, some Republican officials are questioning why his staff hasn't been more forthcoming with details on his condition.

Byrd, D-W.Va., is recovering from a staph infection in an undisclosed facility. The 91-year-old senator was admitted to a hospital in mid-May with a high temperature caused by an infection. Two weeks later, Byrd acquired a staph infection while in the hospital, prolonging his stay.

On Thursday, Byrd spokesman Jesse Jacobs said the senator continues to get better every day. But he wasn't sure when Byrd would be released from the hospital.

<..>

In West Virginia, some public officials say his constituents deserve to know a little more. After all, they've supported Byrd all of these years.

http://www.dailymail.com/News/statenews/200906110987
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It goes on to interview only Republicans

[dkf]

1. Typical.

I'm not even fazed.

[Strong Atheist]

13. You may not be, but your cat looks unhappy. nt.

[bluestateguy]

2. It's so obvious that they are chomping at the bit for him to die

They've been grooming that Shelly Moore Whatever Her Name is to run for that seat for years.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. As classless as this?

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

— Robert C. Byrd

[Staph]

6. Pot calling kettle -- classless?

That quote dates from 1944. Let's look at a few more quotes from my senator:

When running for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he announced "After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan."

In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics, but to "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena."

In 2005, I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened.”


So tell me, in your life, my dear Cessna Invesco Palin, have you ever done anything that you later regretted? Have you ever made a mistake? Senator Byrd has admitted, over and over, that joining the KKK 65 years ago was a bad idea. When you are able to say that you have never made a mistake in 65 years, then you are justified in making a classless remark.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. Wow, back in ye olde 1997, when the world was young...

...he was telling people to avoid the KKK because it might inhibit their political ambitions. Such a genuine altruist.

So tell me, in your life, my dear Cessna Invesco Palin, have you ever done anything that you later regretted?

Yeah. Smoking, drinking whiskey, also there was this one time I smashed up the vestibule of an apartment building in Boston because somebody burned me on a deal to buy an eigth of weed. Also, having sex with my friend's ex was probably not such a good idea. But I never joined the motherfucking Klan.

Have you ever made a mistake?

Plenty of them. I had a pretty lousy relationship with my parents from the age of 16 to the age of 22. But for some reason or other these personal issues didn't make me hate non-whites and homosexuals.

Senator Byrd has admitted, over and over, that joining the KKK 65 years ago was a bad idea.

Yes. As per the '97 quote you cited, he thought it was very bad for his political career in the long run.

When you are able to say that you have never made a mistake in 65 years, then you are justified in making a classless remark.

Well, I'll get back to you after I join up with a racist organization that hangs black people for fun. I don't know about you, but that's not the kind of "mistake" I make on a regular basis.

[Staph]

8. Note to self -- take a deep breath before typing.

Let's take a quote from someone else:

Listening to Senator Byrd I felt with full force all the essential contradictions of me in this new place, with its marble busts, its arcane traditions, its memories and its ghosts. I pondered the fact that, according to his own autobiography, Senator Byrd had received his first taste of leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the Raleigh County Ku Klux Klan, an association that he had long disavowed, an error he attributed—no doubt correctly—to the time and place in which he'd been raised, but which continued to surface as an issue throughout his career. I thought about how he had joined other giants of the Senate, like J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Richard Russell of Georgia, in Southern resistance to civil rights legislation. I wondered if this would matter to the liberals who now lionized Senator Byrd for his principled opposition to the Iraq War resolution—the MoveOn.org crowd, the heirs of the political counterculture the senator had spent much of his career disdaining.

I wondered if it should matter. Senator Byrd's life—like most of ours—has been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in that sense I realized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose rules and design reflect the grand compromise of America's founding: the bargain between Northern states and Southern states, the Senate's role as a guardian against the passions of the moment, a defender of minority rights and state sovereignty, but also a tool to protect the wealthy from the rabble, and assure slaveholders of noninterference with their peculiar institution. Stamped into the very fiber of the Senate, within its genetic code, was the same contest between power and principle that characterized America as a whole, a lasting expression of that great debate among a few brilliant, flawed men that had concluded with the creation of a form of government unique in its genius—yet blind to the whip and the chain.

-- Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

Robert Byrd endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 West Virginia primary, and campaigned for Obama during that primary, despite his health issues. The easy (and non-controversial) choice would have been to endorse Hillary Clinton, who eventually won that primary.



I'm guessing that you are not from West Virginia. In my experience, DUers that display that kind of virulent hate for Robert Byrd come from somewhere else. He's my senator. He was Adenoid Hynkel's senator (until AH moved across the river to Kentucky). Go protest the mote in the eye of your own senators and leave ours alone.

[dsc]

9. When he repents his terrible gay rights record

then I might talk. During the height of the AIDS crisis he fought against funding for AIDS, from his post as Democratic Senate Leader, because "there were no gays in West Virginia". He spoke in a homophobic fashion for a constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality. He is a hate filled bigot plain and simple.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

10. This thread is about the GOP's "classless" attacks on Byrd

and your contribution to this thread is to make further "classless" attacks on Byrd? I don't think that there's anybody here on DU that's going to defend Byrd's past actions, comments, etc. but kicking somebody around when he/she is ailing seems to be a perfect example of the kind of classlessness that this thread is intending to criticize IMHO. Don't vote for the guy if you don't like him and/or want to hold him accountable for his past actions, rhetoric, whatever, but I thought we were a little better than this here on DU. :shrug:

[Staph]

11. Thank you.

I was ready to give in to the opinion of the others and suggest that we take the old man out and waterboard him until he repents all of his evil past.

But then you reminded me that we are Democrats. We are liberals. We know how to forgive. Thanks.

[necso]

4. Cheap shot "artists".

Which brings up the question of what audience this plays (well) to.

...

Get well soon, Senator; our thoughts, prayers are with you.

[orleans]

5. wow--i wasn't aware he was in the hospital. n/t

[SoCalDem]

12. These are the same people who saw nothing wrong with storing

Strom at a local hospital, until it was time to vote. Then they sent aides over, to haul him to the senate, so someone could guide his shriveled claw to the button on the vote macheeeeen..and then trotted him back into storage.. they did this for YEARS...


That said, Sen Byrd's time has passed, and he probably should retire, so a younger person could start to serve.