Taking the McKinney Thing a Tad Too Far

Saturday, I posted about the whole Cynthia McKinney brouhaha where the Capitol police went after her because they said she did not show proper ID, and McKinney, a Congresswoman who recently won re-election after being unseated in Georgia, says she was accosted by one of the officers.

Notably, I mentioned how the right-wing really goes after her, using words they would never allow to be used for a Tom DeLay or a Denny Hastert or a similar type of squirrel meat. Joe Scarborough on his MSNBC program tonight called her "crazy Cynthia McKinney", for example. There have also been numerous extremely rude and clearly ethnic references to her hair. One guy the other day seemed to be struggling very hard to find a word that meant the unfortunate "jigaboo" without getting slimed for actually saying jigaboo.

Tonight? TPM Muckraker provides this:

The Capitol Police have requested an arrest warrant for Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), on unspecified charges. Abramoff-chaser U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein, on his way out to become Assistant Attorney General for National Security, is "reviewing the merits" of the case, his spokesperson says.

As I wrote the other day and have said before, I am not a big McKinney fan. I certainly would not call her crazy, but I do find her to be a bit more conspiracy oriented on issues that I think probably warrant more attention than sheer speculation.

But I find a lot of what is happening with McKinney since last week patently offensive. It's clear the extreme right wants to be sure everyone dismisses her out of hand, and they're not being very subtle in coming right to the edge and even stepping over a few boundries to make it obvious they feel she has even less credibility because she's a) black b) a woman c) doesn't love Bush. The hairdo comments, for example, make serious play on the fact that she's wearing her hair as an African American woman is more likely to do, and a Rita Cosby and such have no problem with making that sound silly and wrong.

I can see good reasons to, at times, seriously disagree with McKinney. But her hairdo, her skin color, and her gender don't enter into it.

I also don't take issue with Joe Scarborough because of his hairdo, his skin color, or his gender. I do question how a woman turned up dead in his office right after he "suddenly" announced he would not run again for office like there might be something hanging in Joe's closet. But that's just me. (Cough).