Getting old - and angry.

One good thing about getting old... you remember things. But, maybe that is not so good because it also means you are angry most of the time.

This past week it was revealed that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid had said during the 2008 campaign that Barack Obama might be an acceptable candidate because he was not too black and did not sound black when he talked. Disgusting!

This past week also included the birth date of Elvis Presley... January 8, which is also the birth date of my twin daughters. So Elvis was on my mind and Reid's remarks reminded me of a widely held opinion back in 1955. I was a disk jockey at radio station KUDL in Kansas City at the time. One day the head of the record department at a big Kansas City drug store chain called to tell me that a lot of teens were buying records by a guy named Elvis Presley. I had never heard the name and asked her to spell it.

In a big box of new records left at the station for me by promotion people from local record distributors, I found two records by said Elvis Presley. They had a little yellow label that said "Sun", and were titles I had never before seen, "Mystery Train", "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone", "Milk Cow Blues Boogie" and "That's All Right, Mama". I listened to the four songs.

At that time, my program was largely devoted to what we then called "Rhythm & Blues", music noted for a solid beat and often a soulful rendition of earthy, if whimsical, lyrics. Those characteristics made the music very popular with teens. The songs by this Presley guy fit perfectly and I immediately started playing all four songs on the air. All four became immensely popular.

Soon the word got around that Elvis' music was okay with the kids parents, too (at least until they saw his sexy moves on The Ed Sullivan Show), because Elvis was not black! In 1955, very few white parents would approve of their young daughters becoming adoring fans of a black man! Such were the attitudes of some in the mid 1950s.

But, 1955 was a long time ago. Barack Obama was not even born then. Could anyone still hold those views in 2008? Yes. A United States Senator from Nevada named Harry Reid. I was not at all surprised when many prominent people responded angrily to Reid's remarks... his attitude toward blacks: "may be okay if they don't look or sound black".

Now more anger. Reid's defenders immediately jumped on the memory of Trent Lott, the Mississippi Senator who was Senate Majority Leader when the Republicans were the majority. Smoke came out of my ears!

In 2002, at a ceremony celebrating the 100th birthday of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (who had been a candidate for president in 1948 - 54 years earlier) Trent Lott said we may all have been better off if Thurmond had won that election.

Strom Thurmond had been a avid segregationist. But remember, in the 1940s, even the U.S. Military was segregated. I was in the Army in 1946 and 1947, and black soldiers were not even permitted to eat at the same mess hall as white soldiers. Today it is hard to believe that bit of history and, in time, Strom Thurmond, like most of America, came to realize that racism is evil.

But, in 2002, the fact everyone remembered was Thurmond's earlier segregationist views. The fact few remembered was that Thurmond was also a avid supporter of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: State's Rights! Trent Lott was right... we may well have been better off with a president who supported the 10th Amendment. (Our current president certainly does not!)

But, the Democrats, eager to strike at Lott in every possible way, blew his remarks into a racial issue and destroyed his career.

So, what is now to happen to Harry Reid? If he is not replaced as Senate Majority Leader, it will prove to me, once and for all, that the Democrats are a despicable group. As I heard my father say, way back in the 1930s, the Democrats are nothing more than a bunch of crooks and thugs, interested only in their personal power.