AlisonH
My grandmother was a very proper woman whom I never heard speak ill of anyone.
Except once.
Her husband was a Republican Senator who kept for posterity his thank you letter from Martin Luther King Jr. for voting for the Civil Rights Act.
Strom Thurmond, on the other hand… One of my older cousins asked her how he’d done his historic 24 hour filibuster and Gram did a sharp sniff, took a deep breath, and told us kids, “Well! He had a catheter installed under his pants.” The disdain in her voice was something so unexpected coming from her that I’ve never forgotten it.
(I debated saying contempt, but Merriam-Webster says disdain means considering someone as being beneath one’s notice or dignity and that captures it perfectly. Like I say, she was a proper woman.)
Today I watched now and then and then all of the last 45 minutes of Cory Booker’s speech before Congress. Senator Booker, with enough African heritage to know what it is to be a Black man in America today, was determined to best the record of a man who had agitated for segregation and the snatching away of rights of people who looked like him. Booker was speaking up for the rule of law, the sanctity of the courts, and the rights of all of us. For us to reclaim all that is good in us as Americans and in our government.
And he did it. He did it. And he kept going, just for good measure, long enough to get past that 24 hour 18 mark to a solid 25-plus so that his number and Thurmond’s would never be the same. Beat the old bastard once and for all. It was a declaration that the old racist fascist in the White House is going to lose out to the judgments of history, too.
Gram’s reaction was never about the catheter. It was just the closest she could come to saying how p***-poor Thurmond’s ideas had been and what kind of a person would go to so much effort towards damaging the lives of so many others.
Cory Booker stood there, for 25 hours on his feet straight he stood up for every single one of us and I am so proud and so grateful.