At
least that’s the way Scalise, who is about to become the majority whip in the
House of Representatives, tries to tell the story. He didn’t know that the
group – European-American Unity and Rights Organization – was affiliated with
one-time Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist politician David Duke.
DUKE,
OF COURSE, downplays the racial hang-ups his group’s members have, claiming
they’re merely using their right to express their views and organize themselves
for future electoral power.
But
what caught my attention in the reports coming from the Washington Post and New
Orleans Times-Picayune, which appear to be inspired by a report in the New
Orleans alternative weekly paper The Gambit, was the fact that a baseball club
took the situation seriously enough to back off of the conference.
That
ball club was the Iowa Cubs, the Des Moines-based outfit that is the Chicago
Cubs top minor league affiliate.
It
seems the Iowa Cubs were in New Orleans the same weekend as the conference in 2002 to play a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs, and in fact were supposed to stay in the same hotel where the event was
held.
THE
IOWA CUBS at the time had six African-Americans among their 30 ballplayers and
coaches who travel with the team, and Cubs management thought there was enough
potential for an incident that they didn’t want their team subjected to being
in contact with so many EURO (that’s what they call themselves) members.
“We
would just as soon stay away from a group that will create controversy,” team
general manager Sam Bernabe said to The Gambit back then. The Zephyrs, who
according to Pacific Coast League rules cover the costs of teams traveling to
New Orleans to play their team, found another hotel.
There
wound up being no confrontation between racially-motivated ideologues and
future Cubs ballplayers.
But
what does it say that a minor league baseball team knew more about the group
that Scalise was to speak to, than Scalise did himself?
FOR
THE EXPLANATION that Scalise has given in recent days to the Post and Picayune
news reports is that he was poorly staffed at that point in his service in the Louisiana
Legislature and didn’t know what the EURO group was about,
He
says now he never would have spoken to the group if he had comprehended what
they stood for or that Duke (who served one term in that state Legislature and
has tried unsuccessfully running for governor and president) was connected to
them.
But
the Washington Post reported that Scalise was invited to the conference by
long-time associates of Duke, and quoted people who say that Scalise should
have realized there was a connection – unless he’s truly clueless about the
Louisiana political scene.
Although
I also realize that the reason all of this is coming out now is because there
are those people who want to have the new Republican-run Congress (both
chambers) tainted with all kinds of unseemly allegations.
BURY
THEM IN muck, and maybe some of it will stick and bolster the political
opposition’s chances of making the GOP domination of Congress a mere two-year
run. I’m not ignoring the self-serving reasons for this tawdry story coming out
now.
But
still, it appears that the Iowa Cubs management was more capable than Scalise
of identifying a potentially ugly situation and avoiding it. Which makes me
wonder how much the people of Louisiana are suffering from his apparent lack of
a political IQ?
Perhaps
Iowa Cubs management should be in charge of coping with racial tensions,
instead of training future ballplayers? Since based on the performance of the
major league Cubs in recent years, they haven’t exactly succeeded at the
latter!
Although I suspect Scalise would be just as inept as Cubs management at running a ball club.
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