I had thought this article was an interesting read. This guy has a much different take on what happened in WV than a majority fo those in the media. Maybe some people sould stop portraying people from WV as inbred racist hicks? perhaps?

Vote for Clinton brings barbs, but not vote for Bush?

By Edward Peeks
West Virginia, with an overwhelming registration of Democrats, voted twice for Republican President George W. Bush and drew few if any catcalls from across the country.

But a vote for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary over frontrunner Barack Obama drew torrents of barbs on talk radio, television and newspapers. The irate called West Virginia everything but children of God, dismissing them as "backward" and "racist."

Truth to tell, exit polls reported that some voters said race was a factor. I say do tell that it was also a factor in states from Iowa to South Carolina as Obama reinforced the prospect of becoming the nation's first black president, dimming the first for a woman.

The late Rev. J.C. Ealy of Charleston, a former black miner in the southern coalfields of the state, used to make a point of a personal incident. He said it reflected the character and attitude generally of whites toward fellow blacks in the Mountain State.

His car was sideswiped by another on a curve in Logan County. The young white driver of the other car began giving him a hard time, but suddenly they looked up in the face of an elderly white man with a shotgun. He had seen the accident from his front porch. "You were at fault," he told the other driver, to Ealy's relief.

On another occasion, a white miner put it this way: "We all are the same color when we come out of the mines after a day's work." He referred to coal dust on the skin.

But he must know that beneath the skin, everything isn't hunky-dory between the races, if only because the wrongs of the past infringe on the rights of the present. Both Clinton and Obama speak of crossing the barrier, but never forgetting it.

It's to be remembered that West Virginia is a breakaway state from Virginia, the flagship of Southern slavery and rebellion. Lincoln put pen to paper in 1863 to seal the break and proclaim, "Mountaineers are always free."

West Virginia, with an overwhelming registration of Democrats, voted twice for Republican President George W. Bush and drew few if any catcalls from across the country.
But a vote for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary over frontrunner Barack Obama drew torrents of barbs on talk radio, television and newspapers. The irate called West Virginia everything but children of God, dismissing them as "backward" and "racist."

Truth to tell, exit polls reported that some voters said race was a factor. I say do tell that it was also a factor in states from Iowa to South Carolina as Obama reinforced the prospect of becoming the nation's first black president, dimming the first for a woman.

The late Rev. J.C. Ealy of Charleston, a former black miner in the southern coalfields of the state, used to make a point of a personal incident. He said it reflected the character and attitude generally of whites toward fellow blacks in the Mountain State.

His car was sideswiped by another on a curve in Logan County. The young white driver of the other car began giving him a hard time, but suddenly they looked up in the face of an elderly white man with a shotgun. He had seen the accident from his front porch. "You were at fault," he told the other driver, to Ealy's relief.

On another occasion, a white miner put it this way: "We all are the same color when we come out of the mines after a day's work." He referred to coal dust on the skin.

But he must know that beneath the skin, everything isn't hunky-dory between the races, if only because the wrongs of the past infringe on the rights of the present. Both Clinton and Obama speak of crossing the barrier, but never forgetting it.

It's to be remembered that West Virginia is a breakaway state from Virginia, the flagship of Southern slavery and rebellion. Lincoln put pen to paper in 1863 to seal the break and proclaim, "Mountaineers are always free."

Folks like Ealy believe in the rule of law and not the rule of men. The witness to the car accident, for instance, came armed for self-protection as a witness for justice and fair play, not to lynch and take the law into his own hands.

To the contrary, the history of lynching in the South tells of taking the law into the hands of the mob and organized groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Significantly, West Virginia passed an anti-lynching law after World War I, but Congress never did - to the disappointment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was organized by an interracial group in the wake of a race riot and lynching in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln's old hometown, in 1909.

For almost 100 years, the NAACP and other civil rights groups worked for the rule of law. At long last, the effort achieved results, not the least of which was the ballot for black citizens in the Deep South including my native Georgia.

The venerable L.T. Anderson used to joke about the difference on the matter of voting between Georgia and my adopted state of West Virginia. "It's not a question here about your right to vote, but whether you're going to vote twice," he said tongue in cheek.

For the record, I voted only once for Hillary Clinton in the primary. After all, my beloved mother was a woman with motherly power akin to that of coal, which fuels generation of half the nation's electric power.

But I never ever voted for Bush or bought the bag of goods he sold under the label of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Peeks is a former Gazette business/labor editor.

but you can't always say the other side is a bunch of dumbasses, rather the other side be HRC or the repugs.

but a few racist dickweeds do not an electorate make. I'm sure that some hillary supporters have good, honest reasons for thinking she is the better candidate. Even if I think they are wrong in thier choice.

Racist vs. stupid? :shrug:

The red states as a whole suffered many barbs. I'm sure everyone remembers this:



And then there was the chart that purported to rank the states by average IQ, with all of the red states clustered at the bottom.