Yesterday was John Wayne Day in Newport Beach, Calif. It would have been John Wayne Day across the entire Golden State, except the state assembly in late April voted down a resolution proposing it because--drum roll--the actor made some remarks 45 years ago that some legislators called "disturbing" and "racist."
Context is critical, but not when it comes to fringe radicals with special-interest agendas. Maybe this whole silly episode (John Wayne's fame hardly requires the California Assembly's blessing) will backfire.
It's relatively easy to assassinate the character of, say, Andrew Jackson in order to boot him off the $20 bill; few Americans know anything about the nation's seventh president. Likewise with tumbling the statues of confederate officers.
Targeting John Wayne's character for assassination is another matter.
It's hard to imagine a more potent force in motion-picture history. His 46-year career included starring roles in 142 movies, 83 of which were westerns, which galvanized his cowboy image. For three decades he was a top box-office draw. As a capital-C celebrity, he had money and fame and everything that goes with it.
Assembly member Matthew Harper's resolution thoroughly outlined the Duke's contributions and legacy to the film industry, the armed forces, cancer research, his local community and the nation at large.
No one in acting had a higher national profile than John Wayne in his long-standing prime. And no one in government has a lower national profile than the 35 Democrats who voted "no" to Harper's resolution. There's not a name in the bunch that could carry John Wayne's saddle bags in a popularity contest.
It's laughable irony that their fleeting 15 minutes of fame is anonymous. But the principles and tactics behind their silliness warrants scrutiny.
Everybody knew John Wayne. So how did he hide being racist?
He didn't because he wasn't. But by today's shifting-sand standards involving racial sensitivity, just about everybody in John Wayne's generation (including a great many blacks) were "racist." This particular episode is doubly duplicitous because it pulls Wayne's quotes from a 1971 interview out of context regarding both the times and the discussion topic.
Generations prior to baby boomers have no idea what racial issues were going on when John Wayne sat down with the Playboy magazine interviewer.
In April of that year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forced busing to achieve desegregation was constitutional. The practice was already prevalent in some areas, and the Supreme Court blessing made it legal--but still ineffective--everywhere. It neither improved academic performance among minorities nor achieved integration.
Indeed, one study of public schools in the northeast showed that when busing began there in 1968, the percentage of black children who attended predominantly black schools was 67 percent. After a dozen years of busing, it had increased to 80 percent.
Busing was a policy darling of white Democratic leaders (almost all of whom sent their own children to private schools), but universally unpopular among parents of both races. In an early 1970s Gallup Poll, 91 percent of blacks opposed busing out of local neighborhood schools, as did 96 percent of whites.
Also in 1971, the Black Panthers Party, which had been formed in 1966, had just passed its apex of 68 offices and more than 10,000 members nationwide--but even by then many BPP supporters were figuring out that its activities and interests were more criminal than political. Party leaders were convicted of rape, assault and murder. They embezzled to fund drug addictions. They perished in shootouts with other rival militant black organizations and police. They were paranoid, and tortured and killed perceived informants and traitors. In hindsight, the BPP is recognized as the atrociously irresponsible hate group that it was, but in 1971 liberals were still vainly trying to defend its indefensible legitimacy (by 1980 the organization could claim a mere 27 members).
Many 63-year-old white men at the time, if asked about black leadership in 1971, would have given less than laudatory responses.
But the interviewer didn't even ask John Wayne a general question about race--though Wayne's remarks are always presented as general in nature. Wayne was actually answering a specific question about communism and young people, in which he mentioned Communist Party USA leader and radical black feminist Angela Davis.
Davis, also a former UCLA professor, was known for playing her race card quickly and constantly, denouncing all criticism of her politics or misbehaviors as racially discriminatory.
So when John Wayne said, "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people," he was responding directly to a follow-up question about Davis.
He even prefaced that oft-repeated quote with this never-quoted sentence: "With a lot of blacks, there's quite a bit of resentment along with their dissent, and possibly rightfully so."
It was an 11,000-word interview story. The Duke's detractors single out fewer than 50 words to "prove" their racism accusation.
Par for the disgraceful PC course. Although in this case it was a fitting finale: The California Assembly doesn't deserve a John Wayne Day.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 05/27/2016