Author: Dick

Neither one has a particularly appealing head o’ hair.

One has to wonder what’s up with former President George Herbert Walker Bush hanging out with all those undesirable Democratic types. First it was bill Clinton and now it is a real liberal, actor George Clooney.

Actually, Bush 41 was never that much of a right-winger when he was president. His presidency was a big dud as far as I was concerned especially considering his background as war hero, oilman, congressman, UN ambassador, CIA director, RNC chairman and vice president. Not many people had more of the right experience to become president that G.H.W. brought to the job. And also not many men could have such a background and have such a crappy presidential tenure. But, I always kind of liked him in his own goofy sort of way.

On the other hand, I’ve never been much of a George Clooney fan. I never liked “ER” or had any particular affinity for his movies. I was especially put out with him when, in the wake of Princess Diana’s death, he was calling publicly for a buffer zone between photographers and their subjects. That was just totally ridiculous. It likewise was irritating then and is now when others such as Paris Hilton complain about the paparazzi when it is those photographers themselves who should be thanked for boosting the stars’ careers.

But I was happy to see G.H.W. and Clooney teaming up as part of the effort between Bush 41 and former President Bill Clinton to raise funds for Katrina relief. I especially was gratified to see that the two traveled to Cameron, La., which had been wiped off the map by Hurricane Rita, to deliver $2 million in disaster relief.

Nothing but demolition and relief workers were in Cameron when I traveled there late last year to do some stories. And since I also experienced Rita and saw plenty of its aftermath, it was refreshing that some attention was being paid to victims of that storm because Katrina’s destruction sucked the air out of media hurricane coverage.

So kudos to G.H.W. and Clooney. But it really is kind of weird to see the two hanging together, even more so than Bush 41 and Clinton. The next thing you know G.H.W. will be Michael Moore’s new best friend.

Since writing recently about the televised town hall meeting concerning race on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now,” I thought I’d offer a brief post mortem.

The meeting held in my old adopted hometown of Beaumont, Texas, came about as a result of a controversial report earlier on Zahn’s show concerning the racist past of nearby Vidor. Vidor officials did not attend the town hall gathering figuring they’d just get slammed anyway. It’s too bad because they had a chance to say that “they get it.”

Basically, the town should acknowledge their past and deal with it. It’s been done in other cities. For instance, Waco’s tourist bureau does not hide the fact that the Branch Davidian saga — which actually occurred 10 miles outside of Waco — happened and that it was a sad chapter in American history. Likewise, Dallas does not try anymore to deny John F. Kennedy was murdered on its streets. A museum is now located where Oswald allegedly fired the fatal shots.

A couple of great points were made on the Zahn forum by my friend, author Joyce King, who wrote the book “Hate Crime” about the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, the town in which I was born.

First, Joyce said something on the show that she had said to me before about racial reconciliation that I thought was particularly poignant:

“Part of the problem is trying to forget history when we have never learned history. I begin a lot of lectures telling students, blacks and whites are in a marriage arranged by God. Neither one of us can get a divorce. We ought to stop trying.”

The crowd applauded another good observation that Joyce made based on her experience covering and researching the Byrd dragging death:

“You know what leads to racial healing? Justice. We saw it with James Byrd Jr. These three white guy were arrested within 24 hours of the crime without international media pressure. There was no pressure. And I have to mention my good friend, Sheriff Billy Rowles, who’s not with us tonight. There was no pressure on him to do this. He arrested them. Arrest, convictions, that sends a powerful message to this country that justice is the way to open the door to healing.”

To acknowledge the past would be the easy part for Vidor in dealing with its legacy. The difficult part is distancing itself from all the knuckleheads and idiots who seem to be drawn to Vidor like moths. Exhibit A, the cop who took lewd pictures of a 17-year-old on the hood of his squad car. Speaking of Vidor police, I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this photo which I must warn you contains sexually explicit Mardi Gras breasts being flashed .

Luckily, a former Vidor resident was not arrested after California police looked at him as a person of interest in the Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters. Another man was arrested in that fire.

Billy Hutson, who had been the person of interest, had been a trainee with the Vidor Volunteer Fire Department when he was arrested in 1997 for torching (what else?) a mobile home. He pleaded guilty in 1998 to those charges and was sentenced to 10 years. Obviously, he didn’t spend 10 years in prison.

Yes, the town of Vidor may be making slow progress in confronting its racist past but it still has a lot of work in other areas as well.

Beaumont has had its own racial tensions as shown by this telegram to Gov. Coke Stevenson concerning a race riot.

A town hall meeting on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” will be held this evening in Beaumont, Texas, to discuss the issue of race. The meeting stems from a report on past racial problems in nearby Vidor.

Vidor city officials have chosen not to attend the meeting as they feel they are being picked on just because of the city’s racist past.

It is unfortunate that Vidor officials are too defeatist or for whatever reasons to attend the forum. They would have the chance to make their case a positive one before a national audience.

Beaumont seems like a good place for the forum as the town has had its problems with race over time (of course what city hasn’t?) The telegram above was sent to then Gov. Coke Stevenson about the Beaumont race riot in 1943. Attempts to find out exactly what the role was of the person sending the telegram were not successful. One reference found Baker, at one time, being chairman of the now-defunct Texas State Board of Control which was responsible for state buildings and supplies. Perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much, eh?

After extensive (a couple of minutes) research it was determined that Coke Stevenson was not named for Coca Cola or cocaine. According to Wikipedia, he was named for a Methodist bishop. Stevenson’s larger claim to fame was his loss by a margin of 87 votes to Lyndon B. Johnson for the U.S. Senate in the 1948 election in which Johnson carried the deceased vote.

As for Beaumont, it isn’t perfect but they no longer have race riots there and this writer kind of misses the place.

The Zahn town hall meeting will air at 7 p.m. Central time this evening.

This Vidor, Texas, billboard pictures one of the town’s eight African Americans.

A big hubbub that could turn into a brouhaha or perhaps even a schiamazzo has been taking place in Southeast Texas over a CNN report that some residents watched while others were unable to view it.

The “Paula Zahn Now” show had been doing special reports on race in America and one of the towns featured was Vidor, Texas. Vidor, only 10 miles or so from where I lived before moving to North Central Texas a few months ago (Beaumont), is infamous for its past history as a so-called “sundown” town and Ku Klux Klan haven. Sundown as in African Americans once were told they should be out of Vidor by sundown, or else.

CNN Reporter Keith Oppenheim visited Vidor and found that townsfolk continued to struggle to live down the city’s racist past. It seemed like a pretty balanced report to me. However, the final person Oppenheim interviewed was every chamber of commerce’s nightmare.

Betty Fruge, sitting in a Vidor cafe, told Oppenheim that blacks would be welcome to her neighborhood although:

” … as far as mingling and eating with them, all that kind of stuff, that’s where I draw the line.”

Many in Vidor feared the report which aired last week on Zahn’s show would cast the city, once again in a negative light. One can certainly understand when you have a city with such a notorious past and still have less than a dozen blacks living in a town of more than 11,000. So Vidorians sat around in their trailer homes (okay, I know that’s a cheap shot, sorry)on the night of the broadcast waiting to see how they were going to be pummeled on national television. Only, most in the Vidor area did not get to see the broadcast because 13 seconds into the show all that could be seen was a blue screen for the next six minutes. By that time the picture returned to normal the segment was over.

Time Warner Cable (Yes, the same Time Warner that owns CNN) said the interruption had been a goof by one of their engineers in their area office in Nederland. The blackout (or blue out) was big news the next day in the Beaumont area, which is the largest city near Vidor. Some told CNN that they thought Time Warner was involved in a conspiracy because they were afraid some customers in Vidor would take offense.

A Time Warner spokesman said an engineer inadvertently unplugged the equipment connected to the CNN feed while trying to fix the QVC shopping channel signal. The timing was all a coincidence.

On the surface, the timing did seem suspect and the reasoning for the blackout somewhat heavy on the flimsy side. But having been a customer of that particular Time Warner system I think things could fly either way because of the combination existing there of ineptness and arrogance. That isn’t to say all Time Warner employees working out of Nederland are like that. It’s just the ones who were responsible for my Roadrunner Internet service to continually crap out. You all know who you are!

A televised town hall meeting is being planned in Beaumont with Zahn and some other notables as the Rev. Jesse Jackson in attendance. That should be a good time for all.