A Bunch of Hooey: Pat Toomey and the Politics of Hate & Fear

Pat Toomey (R-PA) is one of those arch-conservative U.S. Senators, like Rick Santorum, that Pennsylvania periodically elects when Democrats can’t get their act together. Six years ago he proudly wore the Tea Party label. Today, perhaps not so much. Then again, in the new Donald Trump Republican Party, what is the Tea Party? 

That being said, Toomey has proven a reliable vote for today’s Republicanism. In his only modest act of political courage, he partnered with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin in 2013 to require universal background checks for gun sales. This bill failed to pass the Senate in 2013 and again in 2015.

Right now Toomey seems to have placed his support for this legislation on hold. The cynic in me says he hopes to keep the goodwill of Pennsylvanians, who generally support background checks, and gave him an atta-boy for trying. At the same time, he wants to fly under the NRA radar, which organization typically punishes at election time any apostate from the 2^nd amendment orthodoxy.

Other than this brief flirtation with the political wild side, Toomey hasn’t ventured off the conservative straight & narrow. If he’s conceived an original idea about how to make these United States a better place to live, he’s kept it on the down-low.

Which brings me to the real reason for writing this post: Toomey’s recent TV ad, called “Support,” pisses me off, and I want you to know why. You can see the ad at /http://www.pagop.org/2016/03/watch-pat-toomeys-new-tv-ad-strong-support-law-enforcement/. It’s a 30-second ad. I suspect it plays in central Pennsylvania and other “safe” conservative markets.

An attractive woman introduces herself as the wife of a police officer. As such, she expresses her support for Pat Toomey, whom she describes as, “the voice of hard-working law enforcement families in Washington.” Then a stern male voice begins speaking over apocalyptic images of police in riot gear and buildings burning against a night sky, “When rioters destroyed American cities, Pat Toomey stood strong with police…and denounced the riots when others wouldn’t.” Then back again to the policeman’s wife, who explains that Pat Toomey is, “making a huge difference in keeping our community safe.”

Now, if this ad had only included the policeman’s wife and her earnest support for the Senator, I would judge it pretty harmless stuff. Personally I don’t think the Senator plays a large role in keeping my Pennsylvania community safe, however, he thinks saying so will win him votes in November. But there’s a dark side to this ad. Toomey carefully avoids naming or showing “the rioters,” most of whom, we know, so we fill in this blank ourselves, were African Americans. We know this because the well-publicized urban riots of the past two years took place in the poor African American communities of Ferguson, Missouri and West Baltimore, Maryland. Neither community, by the way, lies within the boundaries of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  

The ad’s message is simple: us versus them, good cops versus bad (black) rioters. And if we listen to the police officer’s wife carefully, there’s the subtle hint that without Toomey’s stalwart support these rioters would soon be at our doorstep. 

But context is everything. In both cases the riots grew out of community-wide protests against earlier actions of the police, which had caused the deaths of two young black men. 

While the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson was exonerated, the U.S. Justice Department found the Ferguson police and local courts had systematically violated the civil rights of its black residents through unconstitutional stops, searches, and seizures, the use of unreasonable force, and the use of law enforcement to generate income for city coffers.

In West Baltimore the police arrested Freddie Gray for no apparent reason other than running away from them, and he later died in the back of a police van. His death was determined to be a homicide and six police officers are charged with 2^nd degree murder.

But Senator Toomey’s cynical ad ignores all this and plays to our basest fears. In this he shares a lot with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who paint pictures of fanatical Muslims in our midst and depraved Mexicans crossing the southern border.

As my wife says, it’s all a bunch of hooey. 

In both cities we had examples of lousy policing. It’s not an either/or thing, where the cops are good, and the rioters are bad, or vice versa, it’s bad policing. Bad policing that caused or contributed to the death of two young black men. Bad policing that soured the relationship between police and the community, so that when something goes badly—such as the shooting of Michael Brown—the community doesn’t give the police the benefit of the doubt.

If we vote for politicians who preach hate and fear—even in Toomey’s gentrified form—it’s pretty much guaranteed we’ll end up hating and fearing each other. That’s not how we build a better America.

I'll Stand With You: the Black Power Salute at the '68 Summer Olympics.

The Black Power salute at the 200-meter medals ceremony

The 1968 Summer Olympics was held in Mexico City: 7,350 feet above sea level, the highest ever. Bob Beamon broke the world record in the long jump by an astounding—no really, astounding—21¾ inches. Dick Fosbury, employing a unique jumping style, thence and forever called the “the Fosbury Flop,” won gold and set an Olympic record in the high jump. Going forward most world-class high jumpers would adopt the Flop. But, for most Americans, and I include myself, the iconic moment of the Games was the Black Power salute by 200-meter sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medals podium.

Curiously the opening ceremony that year was October 12^th, making the Summer Games of 1968, in a literal sense, the “Autumn Games.” 1968 had been a tumultuous and terrible year. Although no one knew it at the time, it was the high-water point of the Vietnam War. Troop levels crested at 536,100. Battlefield deaths peaked commensurately at 16,899. In late January the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces eventually repulsed the Vietcong, inflicted massive casualties, and correctly announced a tactical victory. Yet, for many Americans, Tet was further proof that their government was feeding them a steady diet of bullshit regarding progress in this faraway war. 

In Tet’s aftermath, unbeknownst to the American public until the following year, a platoon of American troops under the command of 2^nd Lieutenant William Calley massacred hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai. For a public already weary and questioning, this event was seen as proof-positive that the Vietnam War had corrupted the soul of America.

On April 4^th, James Earl Ray, already a fugitive, shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. Massive race rioting broke out in cities across the country. 

Two months later a Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan assassinated presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in LA. At the brokered Democratic Convention, held in Chicago that August, there were fights in the convention hall and rioting in the streets.

After a season of such discontent, many Americans hoped the Olympics would provide a respite from the ugliness of Vietnam and politics—a chance to feel good about America. As things turned out, the discontent of ’68 would sweep through the Olympic village. 

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, along with 400-meter Olympian Lee Evans, were teammates at San Jose State. They were there because of Coach Bud Winter, arguably the best sprint coach of the era (maybe any era). The team's nickname was "Speed City."

Tommie Smith was born into rural poverty in Texas, a middle child in a family of twelve. His father’s occupation, such as it was, included picking crops, hunting, and fishing to keep food on the table. Like the Okies of Steinbeck’s fiction, he up and moved the family to the small city of Lemoore, CA., where Tommie became a star athlete in high school, and caught the eye of Bud Winter. 

John Carlos grew up in Harlem, where, as a teenager in the early 60s, he recalls going to the mosque on 116th St to hear Malcolm X speak.  He excelled at track & field and won a scholarship to East Texas State University. A year later he transferred to San Jose State. 

The two men were a yin-yang pairing. Tommie was frequently described as quiet and private, a classic introvert; John Carlos his opposite, gregarious, a bit in-your-face, and a tendency, at least later in life, towards self-aggrandizement. 

At San Jose State, Carlos and Smith came under the influence of Harry Edwards, a black sociology professor. “Black” and “professor” was a rare combination in 1968. Edwards was a boldly public black activist, and his activism, then and throughout his career, focused on the plight of the black athlete and hypocrisy of the white-dominated sports power structure. In 1967 he co-founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). Among its early members were the San Jose sprinters Tommie Smith, Lee Evans, and John Carlos, as well as UCLA basketball star Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul Jabbar), the best-known college athlete in the country. 

As Lee Evans later recounted, San Jose’s black athletes were virtually the only black men on the campus. Life was filled with the usual racial indignities. But perhaps the thing that most frustrated the black athletes was the inability to rent affordable housing anywhere close to the campus. While it had nothing to do with the Olympics, it was much on their minds as they took the first steps to create the OPHR.

The OPHR advocated a boycott of the ’68 Olympics unless certain demands were met, including the removal of Avery Brundage as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and banishment of South Africa and Rhodesia from the games. These issues were tied together as Brundage favored allowing these nations to participate in the ’68 games. The boycott idea never got much traction. Brundage’s position as IOC president was never seriously challenged. Rhodesia and South Africa were not invited to the ’68 games, although the OPHR had little to do with this decision. Still, the organization did empower many black college athletes of the day to challenge the status quo. By 1968 they were speaking out. 

In the run-up to the Olympics, Tommie Smith was the acknowledged world’s-best at 200-meters. At the Olympic trials John Carlos leapfrogged him with a world record 19.92-second race, later disallowed because he wore an unapproved type of spikes. The two men were heavily favored to come in one-two at the Olympics. Knowing this the they conceived a protest gesture for the awards ceremony. The details remain murky. We know they gave it enough forethought to purchase the black gloves that would famously cover their clenched fists.

In the preliminary 200-meter heats a little-known white Australian by the name of Peter Norman crossed the line in a new Olympic record of 20:17. John Carlos reclaimed the Olympic record with a 20:12 in the semi-finals. Tommie Smith finished 0.02 seconds behind him. The 200-meter final set up as a three-man race.

 

200-meter finish, from left to right: Peter Norman,
Larry Questad (non-medalist), John Carlos, and Tommie Smith

At 6’3” and rangy, Tommie Smith was typically slow out of the blocks. John Carlos led as the racers entered the straightaway before Smith kicked into high gear and cruised past Carlos to win comfortably in a world record 19:83. Coming off the curve Peter Norman lagged the leaders by several yards. With a remarkable burst, he closed the gap between him and Carlos, taking the Silver medal in a photo finish. At the final instant Carlos looked to his right towards Norman, perhaps recognizing too late the threat from that direction.

Peter Norman came from a devoutly Christian family in a working-class neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. At one point he was even an apprentice butcher. After the race final Smith and Carlos probed Norman’s sympathies. Did he believe in human rights? Did he believe in God? Somehow they got around to telling him their plan. To which Norman responded, “I’ll stand with you.”

Two practical issues presented. John Carlos had forgotten his pair of black gloves at the Olympic village. Peter Norman suggested that each man wear one glove. This seemed a satisfactory solution. Norman wished to demonstrate solidarity with his co-medalists. Did they have another OPHR badge that he could wear on his track suit? No, but serendipitously Paul Hoffman, an American rower who had sat with Carlos’s and Smith’s wives during the race, volunteered his OPHR badge.

 

Paul Hoffman (center) and the 1968 Harvard 8-boat crew

In 1968 the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) still selected the best club or university 8-man boat to represent the U.S.A. in rowing’s premier event. That year it was Harvard’s 8-boat. (In later years it would cherry pick each member of the 8-boat.) Paul Hoffman was the coxswain. Weighing in at about 110 pounds, Hoffman was aptly and probably often described as a pugnacious little shit or variations thereof. 

After the Olympic trials in Long Beach, Paul Hoffman and fellow 8-boater Cleve Livingston had traveled to San Jose State. to meet with Harry Edwards. In turn Edwards flew to Cambridge to speak with the Harvard crew team about the OPHR. The upshot was that the Harvard crew team—all white, all with, shall-we-say, good prospects after graduation—came out publicly in support of black Olympians and circulated a letter therewith to other members of the Olympic team:

“We—as individuals—have been concerned about the place of the black man in American society in their struggle for equal rights. As members of the US Olympic team, each of us has come to feel a moral commitment to support our black teammates in their efforts to dramatize the injustices and inequities which permeate our society.”

Members of the USOC were upset, with at least one recommending the Harvard crew be sent home from the Olympic training site in Gunnison, Colorado. In the end nothing happened. 

Thus it came about that the three 200-meter medalists each wore the OPHR badge on the podium, a symbol of protest and unity. The two Americans stood shoeless in black socks. Smith wore a black scarf, Carlos a bead necklace. As they later explained, the shoeless feet represented black poverty, the necklace memorialized the victims of lynching, and the scarf was black pride. Few Americans noticed these details. All they saw on TV was the black-gloved fists raised in the air during the Star-Spangled Banner.

While I have no polling data, it’s safe to assume that for a large part of white America the reaction was some combination of anger, resentment, fear, and loathing. Seen purely as political protest, it was brilliant, a loud shot across the bow of America’s consciousness.

Several accounts of the medals ceremony claim that the stadium grew silent, or that the medalists were booed. None of that seems true. The NY Times from May 18^th states that the black power salute “passed without much general notice in the packed Olympic Stadium.”

At first it seemed the USOC would let the incident pass with the proverbial slap on the wrist. Once Avery Brundage—by the way an American—got wind of the incident, all this changed. Brundage threatened to expel the entire U.S. Track & Field team if the athletes weren’t properly punished. In the end there wasn’t much push-back from the U.S. team. It rolled over like an old dog in the sun. Carlos and Smith were duly suspended from the team and sent home.  

The mainstream media hyperventilated in its rush to demonize the two sprinters. The LA Times called their gesture a “Nazi-like salute.” The Chicago Tribune wrote it was an “act contemptuous of the United States.” Time Magazine called it “a public display of petulance.” A young Brent Musburger, writing for the Chicago American, called the sprinters “a pair of black-skinned Stormtroopers” and criticized them for “airing one’s dirty clothing before the entire world.” (But wasn’t that the point?) 

Within the confines of my WASPish family, black America was often counseled that it needed patience in its quest for equal civil rights. The Olympics was considered too sacrosanct to be sullied by the muck of racial politics. By 1968 black America had heard “patience” and “play nice” too often. Its collective response was “fuck that,” which Carlos’s and Smith’s gesture nicely captured. Needless to say, most of the African American community warmly praised the two men.

In the aftermath the national Olympic Committees conducted a witch hunt. 

The Australian Olympic Committee blacklisted Peter Norman. He would easily qualify for the 100- and 200-meter races at the 1972 Olympics. But the Australian Olympic Committee, in a decision of inspired assholishness, would not send a male sprint team that year.

When Sydney hosted the Summer Games in 2000, Australian officialdom ignored Norman. By this time the USOC had changed its stance on the ’68 Black Power salute.  It picked up the tab for Norman to join the Olympic festivities. Still, his native country would not accord him the ceremonial lap around the Olympic stadium. 

Paul Hoffman had proselytized for the OPHR since meeting Harry Edwards after the Olympic trials. The Olympic boxing team manager had even slammed Hoffman up against a wall and threatened to “knock his head off” for daring to speak to “his” boxers on the subject. Apparently the OPHR badge he gave Peter Norman was one badge too many, and prima facie evidence of his having offended the enduring spirit of the Olympics. Hoffman was dragged before the USOC on the day before the 8-boat rowing finals. During this inquisition Hoffman remained on his best yes, sir—no, sir behavior, recognizing that his Harvard teammates would refuse to race the next day if he was sent home. In the end, he was given a stern talking to, and, upon pledging not to join any more protests for the duration of the Olympics, released on his own recognizance. Harvard crew finished 6^th the next day.

 

Lee Evans and co-medalists at
the 400-meter medal ceremony

Modest protests followed, likely tempered by the example made of Smith and Carlos. Lee Evans, gold medalist in the 400-meter race, along with co-medalists Larry James and Ron Freeman, wore the dashing black berets made infamous by the Black Panthers. Long jumper Bob Beamon accepted his gold in black socks with his pant-legs rolled up, a demonstration both impromptu and, seen through the lens of history, somewhat half-assed. Nothing caused the ruckus of Carlos’s and Smith’s Black Power salute.

The notion that politics shouldn’t play any role in the Olympics, while perhaps a nice aspirational goal, had almost no place in reality. Since the modern Olympics’ inception in 1896, political discord was something the IOC was constantly trying to stuff back in the box.

Two months before the Summer Games, the Soviet Union had inconveniently invaded Czechoslovakia, ending the brief period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring. Subsequently the Olympics Village needed to provide separate eating facilities for the Soviet and Czechoslovakian teams. After tying a Soviet gymnast for gold in the floor exercise event, Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská turned her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem. The IOC ignored her gesture of disrespect. Returning home, the now overtly Soviet-friendly Czechoslovakian government would ban her from traveling and competing in future gymnastic events, thus ending her fantastic athletic career. Given the heated Soviet-U.S. rivalry of the time, most Americans almost certainly saw Čáslavská’s actions as brave and noble compared to Smith’s and Carlos’s “display of petulance” (to re-quote Time magazine). 

The following year Coach Bud Winter’s San Jose State Track & Field team with John Carlos and Lee Evans won the NCAA Championship. (Tommie Smith had graduated.) John Carlos would tie the world record of 9.1 seconds in the 100-yard sprint. Both men would go on to short careers in the NFL. This was before the era of the well-paid professional track & field athletes. 

 

Tommie Smith (L) and John Carlos (R) carrying the casket
of Peter Norman in 2006

In 2006 Peter Norman died of heart attack. He had kept in touch with John Carlos and Tommie Smith. Both men flew to Australia to serve as his pallbearers. Nearly 50 years later, Peter Norman still holds the Australian 200-meter record.

Note: The full story behind the Black Power salute still remains largely unknown. I pulled the details mostly from secondary sources. I tried to compare enough versions of the story to weed out the untruths.