http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37959947/ns/politics-capitol_hill Sen. Byrd, 92, hospitalized; condition called 'seriously ill' Longest serving U.S. lawmaker was first elected in 1952 WASHINGTON — Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress, is "seriously ill" and has been hospitalized, a spokesman for the West Virginia lawmaker said Sunday. In a statement, Byrd spokesman Jesse Jacobs said the senator was initially admitted to a Washington-area hospital late last week for what doctors thought was heat-related illness. "However, upon further examination by his doctors, other conditions have developed which has resulted in his condition being described as 'serious,"' Jacobs said. Byrd, 92, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952 and served six years there before moving to the U.S. Senate. In November, Byrd broke the record for congressional service that had been set by Democrat Carl Hayden of Arizona, who served in the House and Senate from 1912 to 1969. Byrd has been in frail health in recent years and was hospitalized three times in 2009. He has been confined to a wheelchair, but was present and voted "yes" for final Senate passage of the health care reform bill in March. Byrd has been the longest-serving senator since June 2006 and was elected to an unprecedented ninth term in November 2006. His colleagues have elected him to more leadership positions than any senator in history. He has cast more than 18,000 votes and has a nearly 98 percent attendance record over the course of his career. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Byrd later became a champion of civil rights. He has also been a staunch supporter of his home state's coal industry and more recently has spoken out about environmental and safety issues. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
I'm all for forgiveness, but if he was a member of the GOP, as a former Klansman he would have been run out of town long ago. Since he is a Dem, he is treated like a respected elder statesman. Hope he gets better.
It's not because he's a Dem -- it's because he long ago saw the error of his ways and repented by becoming a valuable and outspoken advocate for civil rights. Would that all past and current racists (not to mention bigots of other sorts such as those who are anti-equal rights for gays and lesbians) would do the same, regardless of party affiliation.
This would mean something if the GOP hadn't embraced quasi-Klansmen like Helms, Thurmond and Lott in the thick of the Civil Rights movement. Thurmond used n-bombs like commas in some of his older speeches; he still made President Pro-Tem. And don't forget that it's less about the party than state, seniority and pork.
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Malarky. It became politically disastrous to publically voice racist views. That's all. Witness how Sen. Byrd is loudly against gay marriage and gays in the military. After all, it's still cool to hate on the homos.
I don't think that Byrd's repentence of racist views was just an act and from what I have heard he did genuinely regret that past. I agree though that he had a way to go before he let go of all of his biggoted views
There are lots of people out there who are against gay marriage/military - I don't think they are all racists. You may be right that he was secretly still racist, but I don't think him being anti-gay is evidence of that. In that part of the country, Helms and Thurmond showed that it's possible to be borderline racist and still be immensely popular. He probably couldn't outright racist, but he didn't have to flip to the other side entirely. For example, just after Hillary completely obliterated Obama in the WV primary, Byrd came out and endorsed Obama - that didn't benefit him at all. Here's an interesting perspective from Audacity of Hope from when Obama first met Byrd: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/28/robert-byrd-obama-aides-r_n_627579.html 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.
I'm sure political calculation had something to do with his change in views but as Major notes he didn't have to go as far as he did to express regret over his past, and still stay in office, and I there is little to indicate that wasn't an honestly held view. For the record I never was a big fan of Byrd but I viewed him negatively more for all of his pork barrel spending than his racists past. Unfortunatly many people from his generation and part of the country had vile racist pasts but at least Byrd showed regret over it.
This is true and a far more "real" debate point. But I'm not about to be as silly as to suggest that this was all honest remorse on his part. If you're willing to make that foolish argument, there is an enormous double standard at work. I won't take part.
You obviously totally missed my point. I don't care if gay-bashing is linked to racism or not - the point was that bigots are only vocally bigoted inasmuch as it is popular, because most of them are moral cowards at heart.
Byrd was an opportunist. He held up his finger as the winds changed. Let's not celebrate him because he wound up on "our" side, or believe that his convictions ever really changed. From as recently as 2001: [rquoter]"My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white n-----s. I've seen a lot of white n-----s in my time. I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much."[/rquoter] Intrinsic in that statement, left unsaid, is that if he sees "white n-----s" then he still sees black "n-----s" too. It's a mental dichotomy, a classification of the Other that, in trying to mount a defense for the crimes of his past, proves particularly revealing. 2001! This is your changed man? "I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much." Indeed; let's all agree to let bygones be bygones, so we can hear a thousand lily-livered hagiographies today focusing on Byrd as the master of Senate arcana, and about Byrd as the fiddlingest fiddler of the Senate, and gloss over all that youthful indiscretion (in his twenties, in his thirties). NY Times: "Robert C. Byrd, a Pillar of the Senate, Dies at 92" [rquoter]...In the early 1940s, he organized a 150-member klavern, or chapter, of the Klan in Sophia, W.Va., and was chosen its leader. Afterward, Joel L. Baskin, the Klan’s grand dragon for the region, suggested that Mr. Byrd use his “talents for leadership” by going into politics. “Suddenly, lights flashed in my mind!” Mr. Byrd later wrote. “Someone important had recognized my abilities.” ‘A Sad Mistake’ Mr. Byrd insisted that his klavern had never conducted white-supremacist marches or engaged in racial violence. [Right, they were the good Klan them history books don't talk much about.] He said in his autobiography that he had joined the Klan because he shared its anti-Communist creed and wanted to be associated with the leading people in his part of West Virginia. He conceded, however, that he also “reflected the fears and prejudices” of the time. [/rquoter] Today NPR ran a clip of him bemoaning the influence of money on elections, stating that his first Senate campaign had cost only $50 grand. Well how did he get elected, without any money? Because he willingly associated himself with a secret organization of virulent racists, who held sway over the levers of power of the South, perhaps? Because he filibustered the Civil Rights Act, and was a firm defender of States' Rights (wink wink, nudge nudge). So he joined up/started a chapter because he "wanted to be associated with the leading people" of West Viriginia? So let's give the benefit of the doubt; maybe he wasn't a racist himself, but was willing to play the part to get elected, willing to vote the part, willing to continue to subjugate an entire race of people, for oh so many decades, until the tides of history finally turned and he could vote what he knew to be the right way? This man was no leader; if you want the picture of the most craven of politicians, Robert Byrd is your man. Seriously, ---- that guy. Good riddance.
