The Neo-Confederate Storm: Rand Paul, Jack Hunter, And All Those “Bigoted Southern Rebels”

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The decepticon establishment — you know them as neocons; I call them decepticons.  This is just one of many things that’s going to be done in an effort to try and stop the rise of Senator Paul, because Paul poses an imminent threat.  That’s how I view it, Andrew.  You may not view it like that.  You may view it as the good citizens of the Washington Beacon doing their due diligence and sparing all the rest of us from the horrors of the writings of the Southern Avenger.  I view this as a hit against Rand.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We had a very active day yesterday.  There were lots of little back-and-forths between correspondents after this story was published by the Washington Free Beacon.  For those of you that may not recall, we actually did a Washington Free Beacon story, and it was not a positive one, back during the run-up to the confirmation of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.  I knew when I saw the storyline yesterday something was bugging me.  I knew I’d seen it somewhere before, the Washington Free Beacon.  It’s one of these papers just a clarion out there, trumpeting out the truth to the faithful masses.  Well, that’s the advertisement anyways.

They run this story about my buddy Jack Hunter, aka the Southern Avenger.  In the story, apparently the reporter has gone back and found every solitary piece of work that Jack has published in the last ten or twelve years, especially those that may have people cast a second look, and not in a favorable manner, and published those comments, some of them taken totally out of context.  Some of them I’m not really sure of the context, but I am sure of a couple things.  One is that I know Jack and I know the way Jack is today.  Number two is that as of right now — I don’t know, maybe AG some update on this.  Has Rand whacked Jack yet?

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AG:  He has not but I would say it’s coming.

Mike:  You say it’s coming because Jake Tapper and Joan what’s her name, the editor of Salon who somehow got into a Twitter stream with me yesterday.  Who else was on the Twitter yesterday?  Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Compost saying the things she read from Jack were horrifying, absolutely mortifying.  Huffington Post, there’s a post there yesterday.  So you think the confluence of mainstream reporters piling on the story is going to force Rand’s hand?

AG:  Literally every single newspaper, even the Daily Caller has somewhat of a not flattering, advantageous discussion on this by Matt Lewis.  The only one that has anything defending him is AmCon.  There is, I would say, zero chance in 2015 that Jack is working for the Paul campaign in any official capacity.

Mike:  You say 2015.  So you think then that he survives until it becomes time to start campaigning and then no one can point to Rand and say, [mocking] “You see who he’s got on his payroll?”

AG:  Having him as the social media director for your campaign or for your senate office is a pretty important position nowadays.  For him to have to be answering questions about the racial and writings and all that stuff is not something that Rand wants to be doing, I would imagine.  They have somewhat distanced themselves already with the statement.  We’ll see…

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Mike:  The statement wasn’t that dismissive.  It was just: We, of course, don’t support any of the things that Mr. Hunter is alleged to have said about Latinos.  Here it is, the statement from Rand.  If you follow the story I posted in today’s Pile of Prep, “Rand Paul’s Pick For Social Media Director Was A Terrible Idea.”  I’d say there are two different ways you can look at this.  You can look at it through the prism that anyone that has any history at all that gets into politics, your history is going to come to the fore.  If you said anything that can be construed as being boneheaded, as being mildly not complimentary of another race to which you do not belong — unless you belong to one race and then you can say anything you want about all the other races — if you do any of that sort of stuff, then you’re out.  Your career is over.  You can’t work.  You may be able to work.  You’ll have to change your name and you won’t be able to work publicly.  You can go wash dishes at a restaurant, but we’re not going to let you deliver any news media to us, buddy.  You said some things back in the day.  As I was pointing out to someone yesterday who was yelling at me about that, [mocking] “The term Mexican is derogatory.”  Really?  You may want to send a note over to Comedy Central and Nickelodeon and tell them that George Lopez is therefore insensitive.  I know, Lopez is a comedian.  He’s an entertainer and Jack isn’t.

Folks, this piety, this is dangerous, dangerous territory that we are now in.  When we have the social media and technological ability now to transport ourselves back into time because we can research things on the internet that were impossible to do before.  So much stuff has been digitized that was not available before but it is available today.  When we can hop into the wayback machine and go back 30 years into somebody’s life and say, [mocking] You see what you said 30 years ago?  We’re cutting our ties to you.”  Speaking about the demise of Paula Dean who, last time I counted, had lost 13 business relationships over what she admitted to having said some 30 years ago.

There is something to be said about conducting yourself in a virtuous manner in public, conducting your affairs in as complimentary a manner, being polite and considering other people’s feelings and situations in life.  These are things that you do out of a — it’s a general respect for man and womankind.  You’re taught this from the time you’re a child.  Respect your elders.  Here in the South and possibly in other parts of the country, some of us teach our children to say “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am.”  These are just formalities here.  They all have the same objective.  The objective is to provide a comfortable space in which you can have conversations and discussions with other people, so people’s apprehensions are disarmed and they’re not always on guard that you’re going to be viciously and savagely yelling at them and attacking them like certain radio hosts do.  This is just part of being polite.  I don’t think I’m breaking any news here, and I’m not trying to break any news here.  That is to be expected.  To me, that is one of the first lessons and constant lessons of life that we all should practice and preach.  I think for the most part, people do practice and preach it.

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To throw something that someone says abstractly, especially if you’re saying it in the arena of entertainment — politics today, I’m sorry, is for the most part entertaining, especially when you’re talking about television, print, and radio.  There’s more entertainment value than there is value to the human species as it applies to our political discussions and political futures.  In other words, much of it is done in an entertainment vein.  If you say something abstractly and you say it because you think it’s satirical or in front of the audience you’re with you may get a laugh out of it, if you’re not saying it to defame or to hurt or to cause other people pain, and then ten years later somebody picks up on it and quotes it and frames it in the context and tries to make it appear as though you said it to hurt, defame, cause someone else pain, now we have a problem.  Now we’ve violated the first rule.  [mocking] “You don’t have good, polite manners, Mr. Hunter.”  I suspect that most of us, that are in this business anyways, anyone can go back and find tapes of any of us, of things we’ve said, take them out of context, print them, and bammo, your career is over.  I just have to ask the question: For what purpose?

The reason I brought up the fact that the story came out in the Washington Free Beacon is because, as Daniel McCarthy points out, the Free Beacon is populated by decepticons.  These are people that fundamentally disagree with a person or senator like Rand Paul and his noninterventionist stance on foreign policy.  Jack Hunter is a big part of that, regardless of what the Paul campaign said.  I really should shut up about that.  I’m fairly confident that Jack and Rand have had conversations about foreign policy.  My view of this is that this was a political hit piece.  This was the first of many.

The decepticon establishment — you know them as neocons; I call them decepticons.  This is just one of many things that’s going to be done in an effort to try and stop the rise of Senator Paul, because Paul poses an imminent threat.  That’s how I view it, Andrew.  You may not view it like that.  You may view it as the good citizens of the Washington Beacon doing their due diligence and sparing all the rest of us from the horrors of the writings of the Southern Avenger.  I view this as a hit against Rand.  It’s Rand that they’re going after.  They don’t care about Jack Hunter.  They don’t care about any stupid joke or mask that Jack Hunter, the Southern Avenger, wore.  What they care about is defending the empire and defending the decepticon experiment that they have been able through policy to force all of us to participate in.  That’s the American exceptionalism experiment.  That is the non-stop, never-ending foreign intervention into other people’s affairs.  These people are wedded to this.  They are committed to it.  As I keep telling you, there are trillions of dollars at stake here.  They’re not just going to let it go away.

To me, this is an effort to defame Rand Paul.  I don’t think it’s an effort to necessarily defame Jack.  Jack just happens to be the vehicle.  I think McCarthy kind of alludes to that, although he didn’t get into it in great detail, Daniel McCarthy at the American Conservative magazine last night.  This is, as I said, the first of many little darts that are going to be thrown at the dart board that is becoming apparent as the soon-to-be candidacy for the Republican nomination for Senator Paul.  Where am I wrong?

AG:  I think it actually has zero to do with Jack.  He’s just inevitably who it’s about.  I think Kathleen Parker wrote the two questions for Rand coming out of this are, A, do you support this man’s beliefs?  B, if the answer to A is no, then what kind of amateur-hour vetting process do you have going on there?

Mike:  Is that in today’s Washington Post?

AG:  It was on her blog.  I’ll get the exact quote for you.

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Mike:  Folks, now that we’ve gotten the politics of this out, this is all about Rand.  If you didn’t read it yesterday, I posted it on my Twitter feed.  I posted it on my Facebook page and it’s in today’s Pile of Prep.  You can read it for yourself.  We got the politics part of it out of the way.  There is another part of this, though.  There is another part of this that bothers me personally.  [mocking] “Mike, you’re in talk radio.  You’re not supposed to take these things seriously.  As a matter of fact, you need to shut up and stop whining about everything.  We’re tired of hearing you whine.”  That’s a complaint I got yesterday.  Really, on this show we whine, seriously?  I actually try to bring some of the beauty of the world to the airwaves on a daily basis.

Just sticking with the thing that bothered me as I read this and the Huffington Post and Jennifer Rubin’s comments — I tweeted Jennifer Rubin directly twice, two I think fair questions.  I got no response.  I wasn’t expecting to get a response.  The thing that was bothering me about this was this current that runs through the story that the Beacon put out and the story the Huffington Post put out.  I’ve actually issued the challenge directly to Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post.  The question that is in today’s Pile of Prep is: Mr. Linkins, I would like for you to explain to me, and be very precise and exact, exactly what is a “neo-Confederate” and exactly then why is a neo-Confederate a threat to all of humanity?  I’d like to know.

I’m going to come out of the closet here and announce to the planet that I could be considered a neo-Confederate.  Mark Levin on these very radio airwaves has called me one on several occasions.  I’d like to know exactly what is it about this term that is so demonstrable?  In other words, the grandson of Patrick Henry, the only children that were born that were in the lineage of Thomas Jefferson were born to one of his daughters, his daughter then married a Randolph and from that marriage six children were produced.  Of those children, a grandson of Jefferson’s also would have been a Confederate.  The great Richard Henry Lee whose Lee Resolution is in the Declaration of Independence had descendants, perhaps you’ve heard of some of them — I got a piece of hate mail from someone one time, [mocking] “You don’t know what you’re talking about.  Robert E. Lee was descended from Light Horse Harry Lee, you imbecile.”  Richard Henry Lee and Light Horse Harry Lee were brothers.

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In any event, you can go founding father to founding father to signer of the Constitution south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’re going to find the heirs of the 56 men who signed their lives, fortunes and sacred  honor, you’re going to find them having grandsons or great grandsons or grandnephews or very elderly nephews that were enlisted in and did serve in the CSA, Confederate States of America.  Whether they were diplomats, whether they were in the army, the war department, whether they were in the militia of their individual state, whatever the case may be, you’re going to find this.  Are we to say that all of them as well are a part of the ignominious history that is attached to everything Confederate?  Some of this stuff is fantastical.  It didn’t happen.  It’s only happened in the modern era that certain things have been said about, and it’s just a blanket statement.

Isn’t it wonderfully and deliciously ironic that the same group that tells us we’re not allowed to stereotype minorities because that’s being inhumane and insensitive will take the broadest paintbrush that Sherwin Williams makes and will broad brush anything or anyone that has been, could be, or ever was related to anyone that was in the Confederacy?  In other words, if you’re a neo-Confederate, I suppose it means that you pine away for the days of the peculiar institution to be restored, that being the institution of slavery.  Of course, if you talk to any of these people, this is probably a thought they actually have.  [mocking] “I know what you want.  You just want the restoration of your little South.”  You know what I want, sir?  You know what I actually desire?  I desire separation from people like you.  That’s what I desire.  You are my color.  I don’t want to be in political cahoots with you.  What do you think about that?

The implication that all things Southern and anything that can be attached to having any — and I would say a very proud lineage — to things Confederate or of the Confederacy is insulting.  That is offensive and it ought to be offensive to people.  What, we’re just supposed to go to Genealogy.com and find our family trees?  If we find someone that is buried in some Confederate graveyard somewhere that we’re related to, we’re supposed to get some White-Out or a pair of scissors and just cut the document up [mocking] “That didn’t happen.  I have no knowledge of that”?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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