DJ, I really appreciate your clarification. I apologize for being bitchy to you last night - I was getting hammered from all sides and it got my adrenalin up - I am a fighter by nature.
Because I grew up in the Jim Crow South before integration, I know a great deal about racial prejudice, but it wasn't until I was a teenager that I ever heard of anti-Semitism, believe it or not. There were no Jews around and nobody ever said anything bad about Jews that I can remember until I was in high school, and even then, it was just jokes.
That is, until my mother started college at LSU, and I used to hang out there during the summer while she was in class or working on projects. LSU had, maybe still has, a public forum called "Free Speech Alley" - this was in the mid-to late 1960's - anybody could get up and talk about anything.
There was a guy named David Duke who used to wear a Nazi uniform and talk about White Power. Everybody laughed at him and booed, but he didn't care. He'd hand out literature, and I'd read it, because I am always curious to see what people have to say.
Later, when I moved to New Orleans, I'd see him from time to time - I never spoke to him, but I recognized him. For example, the first time I saw "Triumph of the Will," he and maybe half a dozen other men sat together towards the front wearing Brown Shirt uniforms, and cheering. They left during the second movie, which was a documentary about WWII, when the Germans started losing.
He was active in the KKK, too.
I started working in printing plants, doing pre-press for newspapers, because the pay was good, I was making $15/hr. in 1983 when I quit to go to law school.
A couple of the places I worked printed newspapers for Duke, White Power newspapers and KKK newspapers. I used to take home a copy and read them, and I saved them, but I must have thrown them away because last time I looked for them I couldn't find them. He would bring in the page layouts and hand them to me, because I was the one who shot the film that was used to make the printing plates, and stripped the flats, and corrected the film, and burned the plates, and he was always appreciative of my good work, and the good work everyone did, very polite.
I could tell he bleached his hair, and I swear he had on eye-liner. He worked out with weights, that was apparent, and he always had a body-guard, and I caught a distinct homoerotic vibration - I'm fairly good at picking that up, because I've had many homosexual friends.
David Duke was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, and ran for Louisiana Governor, but lost to Edwin Edwards. Edwards was later convicted of various federal crimes, taking bribes, mostly. Edwards' unsavory activities were rather well-known, but as one campaign bumper sticker explained, "Vote for the Crook - It's Important."
Duke has never made his racism a secret. He has had quite a bit of plastic surgery, to make himself look more Aryan, I think, and could be called handsome, I suppose. He still bleaches his hair.
duke.org
Growing up in that type of environment has left me very suspicious. I wish I could tell you how many times someone has, out of the blue, expressed anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-American Indian, anti-Asian, etc., beliefs to me. It always strikes me as if they pulled back a smiling mask to reveal writhing maggots. |
