Sticks and stones

may break my bones, but words can never harm me.

Oh, yeah? Tell that to Mitt Romney, Todd Akin, or any one of numerous other political candidates whose words were twisted against them.

And, pity the guy who incoherently stumbled his thoughts aloud when a microphone was jammed in his face.

Such was the case with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Bundy obviously grew up on that ranch in Nevada. Also obvious is his complete lack of knowledge of the conditions of slavery in America. His mental pictures are those of slaves in humble but happy conditions, widely dispersed by slave owners.

Literate, thinking Americans today shutter at the thought of one person owning another. And, perhaps, we have a mental vision of a slave being whipped, or otherwise punished by a brutal owner.

Surely those conditions were more rare than were idyllic scenes of family happiness among slaves. And who would believe this more readily than a rancher who showers care on his horses, recognizing that he could expect more work from a healthy, well-treated animal. (Again, we shudder at the concept of any human being compared to a well-treated animal. A concept which was surely a reality.)

Now rancher Bundy sees black families trained to be dependent on the largesse of government. He hears of the chilling per cent of black babies being aborted. He hears of the disproportionate number of young black men in prison. He mentally compares these facts with his imagined view of well-treated slave families. Stack all those thoughts into the head of a somewhat inarticulate man who likes to talk. Give him a microphone to a national audience and you have a recipe for disaster.

At no time did Cliven Bundy express hatred of black or Hispanic Americans. At no time did he demonstrate a feeling of superiority over any minority Americans. To the contrary, he demonstrated disapproval of the way these Americans are treated.

Cliven Bundy is not the racist he has been portrayed to be. He is a simple man, ignorant of the kind of language deemed acceptable in modern America. No sticks or stones in play here. But this inarticulate, well meanng, man has been badly beaten with a misinterpretation of his own words.