NOW JOHN WAYNE

This condemnation of Americans dead and long gone has to stop. It is tearing at the roots of our country.

What started as an anti-Confederacy thing has deviated to those who came before and after.

People are free to dislike in this country. Constitutionally guaranteed. This condemning everything and everyone will eventually boomerang. Then what?

John Wayne is the most recent popular figure to be condemned. The hero of most Americans from his earliest movies in the 1930’s to his death. More than 30 years of playing the hero. A for real All American. From the Old West to World War II to Vietnam.

Now we are told he was anti-black. His memory must be punished/eradicated.

Wayne’s negative black feelings hurt no one. Most people were not even aware.

The situation has been brought to light by the Democratic Party of Orange County, California.

Orange County has an airport. Its name for years The John Wayne Airport. A statue stands in his honor as well as  other indicia pertaining to him.

The Democrats want the statue and anything else referable to Wayne removed. They claim he was a racist and bigot. He may have been. I do not recall it ever being reflected in his deeds.

The whole argument to rename and get rid of the statue goes back 41 years to a 1979 Playboy interview. Wayne said, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”

Wayne later said in the interview although he didn’t condone slavery, “I don’t feel guilty about the fact that ten or twenty generations ago these people were slaves.”

He also felt no remorse in the subjugation of Native Americans. America needed the land to expand and survive.

He also considered movies such as Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy perverted and used a gay slur to refer to the 2 main characters in Midnight Cowboy.

Ronald Reagan may be next. One of our greatest Presidents.

Reagan is being considered a racist based on an October 1971 taped call between him and Richard Nixon. Reagan was Governor at the time and Nixon President.

Their discussion concerned a recent United Nations vote where the U.S. came out on the losing side. Done in by the African delegates.

Reagan said, “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”

Then there is Harry Truman. Yes, Harry Truman. Another great U.S. President.

Truman is known to have given many hell. The term “he gave ’em hell” survives to this day.

Many consider he “gave ’em racism” also.

Although Truman made civil rights a federal priority for a President for the first time since Reconstruction, he none the less expressed strong racist sentiments before, during and after his Presidency.

In 1911, the year he turned 27, Truman wrote to Bess his wife to be: “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he is decent and honest and not a nigger or a Chinaman…..The Lord made a white man from dust, a nigger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman……I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.”

Truman wrote a letter to his daughter Margaret wherein he described waiters in the White House as “an army of coons.”

In another letter to Margaret in 1941, he wrote of the Civil War: “I feel as your old country grandmother has expressed it – ‘What a pity a white man like Lee had to surrender to old Grant.”‘

Some of Truman’s racist slurs continued after he left office in the 1950’s and 1960’s: The use of racial slurs, opposed the 1960 sit-ins but said they might be Communist inspired, called Northerners who went on freedom rides meddlers, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a troublemaker.

It must be recognized Truman was a proud American as well a son the the Confederacy.

As President, Truman came to “represent” all. He rose above his prejudices. He appointed a committee to study civil rights abuses, supported the committee’s call for anti-lynching and anti-polling tax legislation. He ordered desegregation of the armed forces. He was the first President to campaign in Harlem.

Whatever way you look at things, Harry Truman loved Key West and Key West continues to love Harry Truman.

Tomorrow, Abraham Lincoln.

Now we turn to a different subject. Trump’s relationship with Putin and the recent news that Russia paid a bounty to Afghanistans to shoot Americans and other coalition troops.

First the relationship.

Recall the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Starred Debbie Reynolds.

“He’s My Friend” a song in the movie. The opening stanza went: “He’s my friend / And he’ll stay my friend / Doesn’t matter what the other people say / He’s my friend, to the bitter end / Even though the bitter end’s a million years away.”

Such is the relationship between Trump and Putin as represented by Trump. I doubt Putin feels the same way. He uses Trump, toys with him, takes advantage of him. Trump never realizing it.

The New York Times broke a story of shocking interest the past few days. A could never have happened thing that did.

It was reported that Russia was paying a bounty to Afghanistan for all American soldiers and other coalition troops shot in the Afghanistan War.

Trump’s staff has not denied knowledge of the matter. They said they knew since March, but never brought it to Trump’s attention. They claim the President never knew.

Bullshit!

What could be more important to an American President than the knowledge a foreign power was paying another to kill Americans?

Turns out the information was part of Trump’s Daily Briefing back then. However Trump rarely reads his Daily Briefing.

The bottom line is Trump knew and kept quiet because Putin is his “friend.”

The caronavirus is having a field day in Florida. Thanks to the stupidity of Gov. De Santis who does nothing but blindly follow Trump’s dictates.

Yesterday was Florida’s third day of record high coronavirus cases in a one week period. Yesterday alone broke the one day record. Almost 10,000 new cases.

Wear your masks, practice social distancing, and frequently wash your hands.

Enjoy your Sunday!

20 comments on “NOW JOHN WAYNE

  1. Of Course Trump knew! He was hoping the rest of us didn’t and likely did what he could to keep it that way. Trump is not a friend of this country and neither are those who support him.

    • CBS News is saying that US Intelligence officials, going back through their files, can find no reports of bounties on dead Americans as described by the New York Times. Where did they get that story, and why can’t other news outlets confirm it? NSC officials are saying that any such reports would have certainly been included in the President’s daily briefing.
      Fake news?

      • This administration and Donald Trump have denied just about everything that comes out and almost all of these sort of things reported by the legitimate press have turned out to be true, that’s why.

        Almost all of the people who have come on Lou’s blog to defend Trump’s denials on such things have been wrong and considered foolish trolls who would deny anything they think the fuhrer would want them to, thus making the truth even more bitter.

  2. There is video of Trump’s people going through the seats of the Tulsa rally arena and removing thousands of “social distancing” stickers before the event.

  3. I wonder what will be left when the cleansing of American culture is finally finished? If John Wayne is banished, so are all of his great movies. What movies will be left? Not Gone With the Wind, or Song of the South or The Wizard of Oz. Thousands of others also gone? What music will we hear? Many of the great old tunes from the past will be banned. How about Broadway plays? Not South Pacific or The King and I or The sound of Music. Works of art created in southern states by southern artists? Nope, too many landscapes showing antebellum mansions. What books will we be allowed to read? Will pages be torn out of library books, or will they simply be burned in the street? It’s going to be a great future in “Pure America”. I can hardly wait.

        • …ah what? Yours was an opinion not a statement of fact anyone is attacking. The only way you can be proved wrong is if none of it happens and I don’t see how any of us would be able to accomplish that. You sound paranoid about your statements and opinions. You looking for a do over? Maybe something a little more reasonable and realistic?

          • Yeah. A do-over for the whole country would be good. Maybe it could turn out better next time. It’s too late for me. I’m just exhausted from the political divide, the angry mobs, the sanitizing of our history, the disrespect for each other, and coronavirus containment efforts that are being ignored and are not working anyway. Is there any point to all this? I have a way to quickly be done with it all for myself. The country is not so lucky.

            • Your exhaustion with the political divide is YOUR problem, not ours. If you think it’s all about you, consider Abraham Lincoln’s terminal headache on the same subject.

              This country survived the Civil War and many other mostly self made problems because people tried to push their personal opinions as the ONLY solutions. Those that are tearing down statues have their opinions too, many of whom having been far more harmed by those statues than you have been comforted by them. And I wonder how you’d feel about John Wayne (not even his real name) if he had said the things he said about them about you. Maybe if you had condemned him for saying that sh(t then, we wouldn’t have to listen to anyone wanting to complain about him now. We didn’t so we have to now work through what we’ve ended up with.

              • You seem to believe the country will survive all of this without irreparable harm. I wish I could be as optimistic. It must help to wear your rose-colored gla$$es.

                • You need to work on your comprehension issue. Either that or read the post before you blabber your hostile replies.

    • In the majority of school systems in the United states, including High Schools, sex education discussions are forbidden. Here in Wisconsin, birth control, condoms and venereal diseases cannot be discussed.

      In Texas, and many other places, especially the south, history books are edited with some pretty questionable motives and biased opinions.

      Where were YOU when this kind of suppression was being done and why weren’t YOU clutching your Pearls for that kind of censorship.

      And you want to claim we should NOT even consider editing an abusive and openly bigoted screen actor, like John Wayne? Or tear down a monument celebrating a treasonous rebel general?

      YOU are the problem and we should be discussing why your opinions have gotten us into this dilemma in the first place.

      • I have a friend who’s son attended a private Lutheran Evangelical high school here in Cleveland. He was taught that Thomas Jefferson freed his slaves. Thomas Jefferson never freed his slaves, in fact he actually willed all (600+) but 7 (which he set free), to a friend. This is not to condemn Jefferson, in any way, but rather to condemn how we are sometime taught lies that are wrong and harmful. We need to hear what the BLM movement has to say and not dismiss it with hysteria we invent for our own comforts.

      • Not sure what sex education, movie actors and treasonous generals have in common, but okay. Whatever. It’s true that I never complained about birth control in Wisconsin, so I admit to being part of the problem.

        • All I was trying to say is that we banned a lot of other things, important things, without you getting your panties in a knot and we didn’t hear you upset about banning them.

          Are you only interested in complaining about things getting banned that YOU think shouldn’t be banned?

  4. Oh, NOW you’re against this?

    Too bad. Liberal scum like you is why this is happening.

    Please die soon. You are utterly worthless.

  5. John Wayne was more openly bigoted and publicly racist than Gov George Wallace of Alabama. As a movie star and a person, I think his life should be examined and evaluated based on the love people have for him from the things he was paid to say (movie talk) and those horribly racist and bigoted things he said and did publicly on his own? I’m not sure we should ban his movies, after all – he was just acting in those, they weren’t real life, but I don’t see why we can’t question his public persona, including public statutes of him, and act on that accordingly.

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