Mississippi headline: Wife says klansman will not appear at fair

[Bluebear]

A reputed Ku Klux Klansman under investigation for the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi has no intention of joining a white supremacist group at next week's state fair, his wife said today.

Betty Jo Killen, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Union, said her 79-year-old husband never told Nationalist Movement leader Richard Barrett that he would attend the fair.

"He has nothing to do with the booth," she told The AP. "That is Richard Barrett's doing. Richard Barrett wanted publicity and he got plenty."

Mrs. Killen said Barrett did tell her husband about the Nationalist Movement's plans at the fair, which opens a 12-day run next Wednesday, but "my husband made no commitment to go."

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041001/NEWS01/41001014

Well isn't that special?

[Rowdyboy]

1. Richard Barrett is a nutcase, born in New York, raised in New Jersey

who moved to Mississippi after college. He's a vile, vicious, evil little man. I had a telephone conversation with him once and felt slimy after hanging up on him.

[Bluebear]

2. Imagine, a KKK "booth"--how festive!

[Rowdyboy]

3. And in a city with a 65% black majority....

The idiot is literally ASKING to be killed. He made a career out of getting publicity for crude, racial hatred but, according to the state attorney general, he can't be legally stopped. We're going opening night just to see if he's really nuts enough to show up.

[Bandit]

4. I'll bet they will be giving out Bush*/Cheney signs

:shrug:

[Rowdyboy]

5. I'll carry a camera, just in case they are....

That would make a GREAT shot

[SalParadise]

6. This has sparked some "funny" conversations around here

I live in MS & there's nuts like this guy all over the place - they're just not so, oh...political about the whole thing.

Since it started being widely reported that this guy was going to be at the fair this month, there's been a rash of LTTE's to the Clarion Ledger, the main paper in the state condemning him. The other day, four of the neo-con's (AKA - Christian Conservatives) I work with stood around talking about this with great indignation & it occurred to me that it's not this guy's opinions they have a problem with, it's the fact that he's being so vocal about it & making the state "look bad".

These are the same guys who have made numerous racial jokes around the office, they refer to African-Americans as "Democrats" & think the whole thing is real funny. It's really pretty sick.

Make no mistake about it - all the outrage around here, (while some of it genuine), is not directed towards the guy's politics, it's directed at the publicity this kind of guy brings to a state full of closet racists who think just because they're not as vocal as this guy with these beliefs, they're somehow different than he is.

They're not.