Peterson Exploits Biddle For Political Gain

Mayor Bart Peterson staged a demonstration with African-American community leaders this morning to exploit a racially-charged incident earlier this week involving conservative Star editorial writer RiShawn Biddle. Forget the fact that Star editor Dennis Ryerson had already issued a public apology for the incident yesterday and fired Biddle, Peterson and the Marion Co. Democrats are more interested in polarizing black voters to come out and vote a straight Democratic ticket in next Tuesday's municipal election. The Star's Brendan O'Shaughnessy writes of Peterson's pathetic publicity stunt:

Peterson said he stood on the same site eight years ago and called for a new dialogue about race in the city.

"It seems that today the Internet has become the rallying place for today's haters, for racists," Peterson said. "The impact of racism can be devastating."

The criticism of the newspaper stemmed from an editorial columnist's online discussion board posting, known as a blog, that criticized City-County Council President Monroe Gray.

The blog referred to Gray and other city Democrats using language that both the Star's editor and elected officials called offensive and unacceptable.

Dennis Ryerson, editor of the Star, said he ordered the posting removed as soon as he became aware of it and apologized on behalf of the paper.

He said the employee who posted the comments is no longer employed by the paper and that the comments did not follow the paper's standards.

"I want the Star to be, like the mayor said of the city, a model of civility," Ryerson said. "The Internet should be a center of electronic dialogue, not diatribe."

I talked about it in last year's congressional race between Rep. Julia Carson (D) and Eric Dickerson (R). Any African-American who dares to step out of line and support anything other than the cause of blindly voting and supporting Democrats for office will be dealt with swiftly and harshly by these folks who claim to speak for all blacks. Marion Co. Democrats use the black churches and Amos Brown every election to polarize black voters against Republicans. The only way this shameless practice will end is if white voters say enough and vote Republican just to spite the Democrats for playing the politics of race.

Democrats figure they only need to win a respectable share of the white vote because they consistently garner 90% of the black vote every election. Republican candidates need close to 65% of the white vote to counter this racial polarization among black voters to win. It would be even better if black voters figured out that only a handful of African-American leaders are being helped by the policies of this administration. Most predominantly, African-American neighborhoods in the county have fallen further into decline and have seen an increase in crime under the leadership of Mayor Bart Peterson and the Democrats. This stunt by Peterson and African-American leaders will do absolutely nothing to bridge the racial divide in this county. But then again, that wasn't the purpose of it. Peterson and the Democrats want to maintain that divide because their political survival depends upon it.

And Peterson's got a lot of nerve blaming blogs for today's racism. He's obviously getting his latest political advice from the city's second biggest race-baiter behind Amos Brown, Wilson Allen. Let's not forget that the offending person who prompted today's publicity stunt, RiShawn Biddle, is African-American. Try looking at the man in the mirror next time, Bart.