And my first reaction was "Didn't he die years ago?"

I guess not.

Former Agriculture Secretary Earl L. Butz, who was forced from office in 1976 after making a racial joke and was once a dean at Purdue University, died Saturday. He was 98.

Mr. Butz had been in poor health recently and died during a family visit at his sonÂ’s home in Washington, said Randy Woodson, dean of the College of Agriculture at Purdue.

Mr. Butz, a farm economist and free-market advocate, had a relaxed and earthy style that won him acclaim as an after-dinner speaker but caused problems in his public life. Controversy began swirling around him after President Nixon appointed him secretary of agriculture in 1971. He figured in public disputes on issues like foreign grain sales and high meat prices.

Mr. Butz was forced to resign in October 1976 after telling a joke that was derogatory to blacks. The slur was overheard by John W. Dean III, the White House counsel to Nixon who was jailed in the Watergate scandal, and Mr. DeanÂ’s report on it was published in Rolling Stone magazine.

Two years earlier, Mr. Butz apologized to the Vatican after criticizing the Roman Catholic ChurchÂ’s stand on birth control by using a mock Italian accent while referring to the pope.

“Let’s be honest, I’m controversial,” he said at the time. “I don’t hesitate to speak my mind.”

Oddly enough, the responses to the to the two incidents shows the relative level of acceptance of different forms of bigotry in America. The relatively mild racial joke was, and remains, grounds for ending the career of anyone in political life. On the other hand, the same sort of joke and/or statement regarding Catholic moral teachings are now considered to be mainstream, and I've heard the same sentiment that Butz expressed come out of the mouth of left-wing political with no consequence. In other words, anti-black racism has been marginalized, while anti-Catholicism (along with a number of other forms of religious bigotry expressed towards those with traditional religious beliefs) has become an accepted part of political dialogue in this country.

Posted by: Greg at 04:07 AM | Comments (43) | Add Comment
Post contains 359 words, total size 2 kb.