South Carolina’s 2009 Gift to the Media
For members of the news media, South Carolina was the gift that kept on giving this year.The home state of Gov. Mark Sanford produced a ton of dirty laundry and more tortured characters than a Pat Conroy novel.
The New York Times gave South Carolina a special shout-out, as did Jon Stewart in a “Daily Show” segment entitled “Thank You, South Carolina!”
“We here at the show can’t help but notice that South Carolina has taken its rightful place amongst the states that make our lives here at the show easy,” Stewart said.
The year’s headliner was Gov. Sanford, married father of four whose moony confessions about his Argentine soul mate gave new meaning to the term, fool in love.
There was also Rep. Joe Wilson’s spectacular “You lie!” outburst during President Obama’s address to Congress, its impact lessened only by Wilson’s failure to stomp his feet and hold his breath until he turned blue.
In the fall, South Carolina was home to some of the country’s most rancorous town hall meetings, where a health care reform opponent came up with this pearl: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
And who can forget when GOP activist Rusty DePass said an escaped zoo gorilla was an ancestor of Michelle Obama, perhaps the dimmest comment in South Carolina since 2000, when George W. Bush pointed out: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
This Sunday, the Times’ Robbie Brown wrote: “Measured in political scandals and sustained media scrutiny, 2009 was the Year of South Carolina. Yes, in 2009 Nevada had Senator John Ensign’s scandal and Alaska had Gov. Sarah Palin’s unexpected resignation. But it is anyone’s guess the last time South Carolina stole the national spotlight so frequently — and for such a range of political outbursts and controversies.”
“I don’t know . . . Secession?” Joel Sawyer, a public relations consultant, suggested to the Times.
Indeed, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860.
It wasn’t the first time South Carolina threatened to leave. In 1832, South Carolina lawmakers declared their state was gone for good if the federal government tried to collect tariffs there.
South Carolina politicians, too, have been a cantankerous lot, from James C. Calhoun, who led the fight to nullify federal powers in 1828, to segregationist Strom Thurmond.
But perhaps the most cantankerous of them all was Preston Brooks, a South Carolina congressman who caned a senator, nearly to death, on the floor or the U.S. Senate in 1856.
Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an ardent foe of slavery, and days earlier, he made a speech mocking South Carolina and in particular, S.C. Sen. Andrew Butler, for his pro-slavery views.
“The senator from South Carolina . . . has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows and who, although ugly to others, is always lovely to him; although polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight — I mean the harlot, Slavery.”
Brooks felt duty-bound to answer the insult.
On May 22, Brooks “entered the Senate chamber and without warning began pummeling (Sumner) on the head with a cane made out of gutta-percha, which has the density of lead,” writes John Stauffer in “Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.”
“Sumner was trapped at his desk which was bolted to the floor, and in a heroic effort to rise and defend himself, he ripped the bolts from the floor and then collapsed.”
A handful of senators witnessed the attack, but none came to Sumner’s aid, an indication of the level of hostility between the Northern and Southern states over slavery, Stauffer writes. “As Sumner’s blood began to pool on the carpeting, Robert Toombs of Georgia looked on approvingly, Stephen Douglas of Illinois casually sat down, and John Crittenden of Kentucky told Brooks, ‘Don’t kill him.'”
Two days later, abolition leader John Brown murdered five people in the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie Creek, Kans.
Brooks’ attack on Sumner made headlines across the nation. Northern newspapers condemned Brooks, but in the South, Brooks was a hero. People sent him new canes and commemorative plaques. “I wore my cane out completely but saved the head, which is gold,” Brooks bragged. “Fragments of the cane are begged for as sacred relics.”
It took three years for Sumner to recover.
For his crime, Brooks was fined $300 and faced censure by the House; he survived a vote for expulsion.
Likewise, this September, Joe Wilson was censured by the House for his verbal assault on the president. In the South, many hailed him as a hero. Supporters sent him sent $1.8 million in the week after the outburst. By October, he’d collected $2.65 million, compared to $1.6 million raised by his opponent, Rob Miller.
Whether Wilson’s rebelliousness helps or hurts him at the polls in 2010 is anyone’s guess.
But if history is a guide, he’ll be fine. Back in 1856, Preston Brooks easily won re-election.
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