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Political Slander

By Guest Editorial Writer James Heth
 

Ever since Lee Atwater joined the Republican Party every election since then has been marked by extreme political slander directed towards any Democrat opposing a Republican. It began with a scurrilous attack upon Michael Dukakis accusing him of carelessly allowing rapist Willie Hutton to come out of prison and wreck havoc on the world.

Political slander reached an art form under an Atwater protégé, Carl Rove, who managed G. W. Bush’s political campaigns both as a governor against Ann Richards and his presidential campaign swifboating attack on John Kerry’s service record in spite of the fact that Kerry was awarded the Navy Cross for bravery under fire.

While the Republicans have been using political slander in the recent elections it should be noted that the first use of political slander occurred in the presidential election in 1800 when the Democrat Thomas Jefferson hired James Callender, a hatchet man who already had been exposed as a libelist in Scotland. He wrote stories claiming the Republican John Adams wanted to attack France.  He was later convicted of slander and sent to prison. 

When he came out of prison he demanded that president Jefferson appoint him to a high paying federal postal job in Virginia and when Jefferson refused he then wrote articles stating Jefferson had an affair with a slave named Sally Hemings and in fact that she bore him five children. The story plagued Jefferson for the rest of his career.

Most historians however shrugged the story off to Callender’s propaganda, however1998 DNA testing proved a link between Hemings and Jefferson’s descendents

The fact is; political slander unfortunately has been a part of the American political process for many years and is still happening. Rush Limbaugh, a Republican propagandist in his radio broadcasts infers that Obama is a Muslim and a Marxist and that he confuses him with Osama Bin Laden. And so the scum keeps flowing obscuring the real issues in the coming election.

One only hopes that a future generation will rise above political garbage and introduce real democratic traditions back into politics.                      

James Heth


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Saturday September 6, 2008

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