'Tis a Pity She's a Media Whore: Cynthia McKinney for President?

"It's easier to keep quiet and be thought of as a fool rather than open your mouth and expose yourself for who you really are."
- WILT CHAMBERLIN

Here we go again.




Cynthia McKinney, the six-term Atlanta-based Democratic congresswoman cum victicrat noted for her bizarre public behavior and public outbursts -- not to mention her shady ethics and her family's penchant for scapegoating -- is media whoring once again, prophylactic protection or not. This time, the indefeatable Ms. McKinney has re-invented herself -- this time as a presidental candidate on the Green Party ticket.

McKinney's antics were the stuff scandal sheets are made of: On March 29, 2006, she delivered a taking a haymaker swing at a Capitol Hill cop after she evaded security protocols (read: passing through a metal detector). Though she publicly apologized on the House floor for her behavior, the damage has already been done. Then there was her solicitation of $10 million in social contributions from Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, which then-NYC mayor Rudolph Guiliani rejected. And top of all this, her anti-semetic outbursts notwithstanding, she was one of the first high-profile adherents of the official wack-job “9/11 Truth” movement, directly implicating the U.S. government in the staging of the attack on the Twin Towers. She first made the charge on Berkeley’s Pacifica Radio station, and then repeated it during a 2002 speech to the Congressional Black Caucus and even beyond -- ad nauseam and ad infitium.

Chris Suellentrop perhaps has the best take on McKinney's behavior in a 2002 Slate column. As Suellentrop observes, "All of us have voices in our heads, whispering insanities. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's problem is that she lets hers speak. She's the Christopher Walken character in Annie Hall, except when she's tempted to swerve into a car's oncoming headlights, she actually does it." He goes on to add, "Like most conspiracy-mongers, McKinney taps that paranoia to weave facts into a web of fiction....(She) knows that a portion of her constituency is receptive to the allegations she makes, and she deliberately plays on their fears."
Fortunately, there are those who are astute enough to see McKinney for the loose cannon she really is. As Marc Cooper states in his L.A. Weekly column, "Anyone with even vaguely progressive inclinations ought to toss tomatoes at a charlatan like McKinney rather than applaud her. She's an embarrassment and a fraud."

In observing McKinney's 2002 primary defeat, Earl Ofari Hutchinson notes, "Many do exactly that. Many black politicians make little or no effort to inform and involve black voters on vital legislation and political actions that directly impact on black communities. Their all-consuming passion is to elect more black Democrats to office and make sure that those in office stay there. They are accustomed to the unchallenged and unquestioned brandishing of power. They jealously hoard what they view as their sacred right to make all final decisions on proposing laws and supporting public policy they deem important for blacks. But more often than not those laws and policies do not boost the interests of middle and working class blacks."

Hutchinson goes on to add, "The political disconnect of black politicians such as McKinney from black voters has caused their free fall from important state and national offices. In the past two years they have lost mayoral races to whites in the majority or near majority black cities of Baltimore and Oakland. The number of black state legislators has plummeted in the California legislature in the past decade. They have lost dozens of local and municipal offices nationwide. But they haven't learned very much from their slide. When Alabama Democratic Congressman Earl Hilliard lost his primary election bid earlier this year, his backers claimed Jewish groups targeted him because he called for a Palestinian state. Again, it was simply much easier to blame his defeat on outsiders rather than to admit that he failed his constituents, and they wanted change.

The bitter truth is that guilt-tainted racial appeals by black politicians for black solidarity and voter registration caravans and buses into black neighborhoods are not going to make blacks dash to the polls to vote for politicians who wage media-grabbing empty fights over issues that many black voters regard as remote and foreign to their needs and interests. But many will rush to the polls to vote for someone they think can better deliver the goods. The voter turnout in Georgia's 4th Congressional district was the highest of any major race in that state, and many black voters rushed to vote for Majette. To them, she, not McKinney, represented that someone who can best represent them."

It's hard to ignore media whores hogging the spotlight even as they continue to suffer from a form of diahrrea of the mouth mixed with Toulette's syndrome. The only thing left to do is to hit the mute button on the remote control just to shut her up, at least for a little while.

But then, there are some nightmares that never seem to end.