http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200610030001<snip>As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Tancredo attended a September 9 fundraiser in Columbia, South Carolina, for the conservative Americans Have Had Enough Coalition. Describing the fundraiser, the Rocky Mountain News reported September 13 that "Tancredo gave his standard immigration stump speech" and that "{t}here were Confederate flags in the room, and he {Tancredo} joined audience members in singing the Southern anthem Dixie." Similarly, The Denver Post reported September 13, "The Southern Poverty Law Center {SPLC} went to Saturday's museum event and reported details on its website, saying Tancredo 'addressed the standing-room audience of 200 to 250 from behind a podium draped in a Confederate battle flag.' "
A September 14 Post article reported, "About 25 members of the South Carolina League of the South, which advocates an 'independent Southern republic,' attended Tancredo's speech Saturday in Columbia, S.C., said league board member Lourie Salley." Further, the News reported September 13 that Salley said the South Carolina League of the South "encourage{d} its members to turn out for it {Tancredo's September 9 speech at the South Carolina state museum}."
On the September 13 broadcast of The Peter Boyles Show, Boyles declared the League of the South was a "racist" organization, and the Post reported September 13 that the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League "consider the organization {the League of the South} a white-supremacist hate group." The Post reported that the League of the South's South Carolina chapter is a "neo-confederate group" and that "its website advocates 'a free and independent Southern republic' and eschews racial equality."
Further, a September 21 Westword article by Westword editor and Colorado Inside Out panelist Patricia Calhoun put the question of whether Tancredo actually sang "Dixie" at the event to a Tancredo spokesman:
And then, as he {Tancredo} exited the room, some members of the audience started singing "Dixie." So did Colorado's controversial congressman really join in?
"Yes and no," says Carlos Espinosa, Tancredo's recently returned spokesman. "It was kind of in between. He was singing it as he was waving." And not so much singing as faking the chorus, since the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy isn't exactly a pick hit for second-generation Italians growing up in northwest Denver.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
