I never quite understand how the Clintons’ initial exploitation of racism was overlooked the first time around and has been airbrushed from the record since. After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, “for later.” Several police and prison-officer witnesses expressed extreme queasiness at this execution of a gravely impaired man, and the prison chaplain, Dennis Pigman, later resigned from the prison service. The whole dismal and cruel and pathetic story was told by Marshall Frady in a long essay in The New Yorker in 1993 and is also recounted in a chapter titled “Chameleon in Black and White” by your humble servant in his book No One Left To Lie To. For now, I just ask you to imagine what would have been said if a Republican governor, falling in the polls, had gone out of his way to execute a mentally incompetent African-American prisoner.
UPDATE: Mike Hendrix
Comment by Karl on 1/28 @ 4:30 pm #
Glad you snagged this one. Of course, Hitch is only scratching the surface. He might have noted, for example that Bill gave the nation’s highest civilian award  the Presidential Medal of Freedom  to his mentor, William J. Fulbright, who spent the vast majority of his public career and life as a proud segregationist.
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 4:35 pm #
Glad you’ve been covering the primary trail, Karl. I can’t keep all those donors and congresscritters straight. To do that, I’d have to dump a lot of the football and other useless info I keep in my head.
Comment by Karl on 1/28 @ 5:41 pm #
It helps to realize that the info on all those donors and congresscritters is also useless.
Comment by JD on 1/28 @ 5:42 pm #
Did serr8 photoshop that postcard, or is it real? It is a testament to serr8’s mad skillz that I have no idea.
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 5:46 pm #
No, that’s bona fide, not chopped.
Comment by JD on 1/28 @ 5:49 pm #
Holy Allah ! Imagine the overwrought outrage if Reagan, Bush, or any other Republican had done that. Fuck them. Fuck ‘em all. That ought to be copied and pasted onto every Hillary ad from now until election day.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 1/28 @ 6:18 pm #
Anyone have any idea what he did to earn that reputation?
Comment by B Moe on 1/28 @ 6:34 pm #
“Anyone have any idea what he did to earn that reputation?”
He told everybody he was one of the greatest champions of racial minorities among modern American presidents. About a million times.
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 6:38 pm #
He banged a lot of black women.
Comment by Barbula on 1/28 @ 6:41 pm #
Rector killed two people in cold blood – including a police officer. I don’t care what mental condition this pos was in, he breathed far too much of my air already, and good on Clinton for executing him.
Comment by JD on 1/28 @ 6:47 pm #
I think Barbula missed the point, entirely.
Anyone have any idea what he did to earn that reputation?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He told the press that he was great, and they picked it up and ran with it.
Comment by Barbula on 1/28 @ 6:54 pm #
Nope – I get the point – Clinton is racially manipulative, gets a free pass for actions which would draw hellfire for a Republican, and is laughably called ‘the first black president’.
Fair enough, I agree in spades.
I’ll just observe that it’s hard to bust his chops for seeing that this murderous asshole Rector was executed when I would do the same thing were I Gov of Arkansas.
Would you?
Comment by narciso on 1/28 @ 8:21 pm #
Rector deserved what he got and more; probably 12 years earlier. We see the insanity of a seemingly “open and shut” criminal prosecution of Brian Nichols, the one who shot the judge, some year back. According to Jeffrey Toobin, which one has to read with a trunk full of salt; the case has fallen apart. In office, Clinton’s higher sanctions fell
more often upon law enforcement that criminals. Fulbright to square the circle, ended his illustrious career
(ahem) as a lobbyist for UAE interests.
Comment by happyfeet on 1/28 @ 8:25 pm #
That’s just wrong about the pie. His guards best be doing some penance I think cause they could have just told him he could have more pie later. Jeez.
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 8:27 pm #
He spat in it, just to be sure.
Comment by happyfeet on 1/28 @ 8:32 pm #
I wonder but that the pie might be apocryphal pie though. Still… pie is pie.
Comment by Cowboy on 1/28 @ 9:04 pm #
Damn, Karl, another great post.
Keep at it–this latest shows with such clarity the depths of depravity and dishonesty to which the Clintons have visited again, and again, and again….
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 9:07 pm #
Damn Karl. ;-P
Comment by Cowboy on 1/28 @ 9:29 pm #
No, Dan.
Damn COMMA Karl.
Completely different–GRAMMARIST!!!!!!!
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 9:30 pm #
Yes, but . . . I wrote the post, see?
Comment by B Moe on 1/28 @ 9:43 pm #
“We see the insanity of a seemingly “open and shut†criminal prosecution of Brian Nichols, the one who shot the judge, some year back. According to Jeffrey Toobin, which one has to read with a trunk full of salt; the case has fallen apart.”
This case is a textbook example of everything wrong with the American Justice system. The parade of incompetence and outright idiocy is mind-boggling. Nichols only defense is that he can’t get a fair trial because everyone knows he is guilty, his lawyers have used it to soak the taxpayers of Georgia for millions of dollars, and the end is not in sight.
Comment by Cowboy on 1/28 @ 9:47 pm #
Sorry, Dan.
I blame the befuddlement of the bipartisan bitch-fest belying the biggest breach…
…or, of course, I could have read more closely!
Comment by Dan Collins on 1/28 @ 9:48 pm #
Naw. Taken as a compliment.
Comment by Cowboy on 1/28 @ 10:17 pm #
I AM SUPER-COWBOY!!!
My super-power is the ability to kill a thread with one inane, unrelated comment!!
Fear me.
Comment by Great Mencken's Ghost on 1/28 @ 11:22 pm #
Karl, it doesn’t matter. Once Hillary steals a few primaries, all the whingy Johnny Chaits and their ilk will be crawling back to the Clinton plantation house…
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[...] I had mentioned an episode in which Bill Clinton, boosting his anti-crime bona fides, had signed off on the execution of a black murderer who had lobotomized himself with a gun, rendering him incapable of [...]