Conrad Burns -- racist?

[Ronald Reagan]

According to Bob Herbert of the NYT's.

I am linking a summary of the article, because the NYT's opinion pages are no longer available to us non-paying slobs.

See link for accurate quoting.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/2/113839/7588

I love it when out-of-state ed-op pages like the New York Times take time to discuss a Senate race. There should be no doubt that the stink of corruption from Big Sky Country is making its way across the entire country. Hopefully, Conrad Burns will be next to go.

From today's Bob Herbert column, entitled, "Always Having to Say He's Sorry":



If there were a trapdoor that was somehow rigged to open beneath the U.S. senators we really don't need, Conrad Burns of Montana would surely fall right through it.

We all know how close Jack Abramoff was with Sen. Burns -- after all, he got $150,000 in campaign cash from the lobbyist, the most of any legislator.

But that isn't the worst of it.

Insiders and people who follow politics closely know how much of a racist and sexist Burns is -- and I'd like to think most of Montana does, too -- but Herbert is expertly putting it all out there for the entire country to see.

Burns hates blacks...

Back in 1994, while campaigning for a second term, Senator Burns dropped by a local newspaper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and told an editor an anecdote about one of his constituents, a rancher who wanted to know what life was like in Washington.

Mr. Burns said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those ******s?"

Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was "a hell of a challenge."

The anecdote was published, and Senator Burns apologized. When he was asked why he hadn't expressed any disapproval when the rancher used the word ******, the senator said: "I don't know. I never gave it much thought."

Maybe he didn't express any disapproval because he didn't particularly disapprove.

...and Arabs...


On another occasion Senator Burns had to apologize after giving a speech in Billings about America's dependence on foreign sources of oil. In the speech, he referred to Arabs as "ragheads."

"I regret the use of such an inappropriate term," he said. "I hope I did not overshadow the serious substance of my remarks."

...and thinks women should stay in the kitchen...


Last fall he upset a pair of female flight attendants after one of them, a mother with two children, asked him about outsourcing and the economy. She wondered what she would do if she lost her job. The senator reportedly replied that she could stay home and take care of her children.

A third flight attendant, after hearing the story, wrote an angry letter to Mr. Burns, saying, "Before you sit in judgment and make such ignorant statements, you really should stop and remember that we don't all live in a 'Leave It to Beaver' world."

...and, did I mention, he hates blacks...


Back in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, he invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction.

When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."

The Washington Post quoted one of the lobbyists as saying: "We were floored. We couldn't believe it."

Burns barely eked by in 2000 against a resurgent Brian Schweitzer. And luckily for us, the incumbent doofus filed again -- dispelling rumors that he'd step aside for Rep. Denny Rehberg to jump in.