[...] For the last 25 years, the GOP has sought to cultivate new black leadership to supplant the left-leaning cadre of traditional black leaders. The tactic reached public notoriety in the early 1980s, when a young Congressman from Georgia named Newt Gingrich publicly argued against trying to appeal to traditional black leadership. "It is in the interest of the Republican Party and Ronald Reagan to invent new black leadership, so to speak. People who have a belief in discipline, hard-work and patriotism, the kind of people who applauded Regan's actions in (invading) Grenada."
King apparently is one of those invented black leaders suggested by Gingrich, who incidentally remains an influential GOP strategist. King is best known for his wild hair, his "only in America" mock patriotism and his shady dealings in the disreputable boxing business. That public image and his prison record make him an odd pitchman for a law-and-order administration with a solid base on the Christian right. "What's next for the GOP?" one Republican blogger asked, "a photo-op with OJ?"
Perhaps the Bush administration's success with picking external leadership for Iraq has convinced it that picking King as a black leader just might work. In fact, this mindset may also have infected Illinois Republicans, who drafted Maryland's Alan Keyes for a Senate run against Illinois Democrat Barack Obama. Since Obama is African-American, GOP leaders reasoned, they could oppose him best with Keyes, one of their African-Americans.
Maybe the corporate mania for outsourcing has inspired Bushites to look beyond the shores of political propriety, as it were, by seeking an unlikely advocate like King. Whatever the reasons may be for enlisting King, the Bush campaign has chosen a man who has developed a reputation for skullduggery. It's a well-earned reputation: he shot a man to death in 1954 in what was ruled self-defense; he was convicted of manslaughter in 1967 for beating a man to death. Ohio governor James Rhodes pardoned him for that crime, however. Since his release from jail, he's been indicted on federal charges of tax fraud and racketeering, but never convicted. He also survived three grand jury investigations, though they took a toll on his already tarnished image.
Moreover, he's been sued by several of the fighters he's promoted – including Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. For many in the black community, King's pseudo-eloquence and exaggerated affability come across as mere hustler affectations; he is seen as little more than an amusing oddity. If nothing else, his choice reveals just how tone deaf the GOP is to the tenor of the times in black America. It's likely they've noticed the hip-hop community is gearing-up to get out the vote against Bush and they figured someone as flamboyant as King could serve as an appropriate counterweight. [...]
| Go back for the rest of Salim Muwakkil's AlterNet article "Out to Punch"
posted in articles on August 17, 2004 1:04 AM | t (0)
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