The "thank-goodness-for-Mississippi" defense

Some years ago, a friend of mine who lives in Alabama mentioned what I call the "thank-goodness-for-Mississippi defense" when we were talking in general about politics in our respective states. 

When the Alabama state Legislature does something odd or outrageous, she told me, Alabamians can be reasonably sure that the Mississippi state Legislature will do something even odder or more outrageous.

So this year Iowa seems to have joined the ranks of Alabama and Mississippi as we look to nearby states for examples of legislative acts more outrageous or odder than those perpetrated by Gov. Kim Reynolds and her band of merry Republicans.

Take the Kansas Legislature, for example, which has been flirting with the idea of authorizing school administrators to examine the genitalia of their student charges to make sure they're playing for gender-appropriate teams.

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And then downriver among our friends in Tennessee this week we've had the spectacle of what certainly is the most blatant and racist act of political retaliation in recent memory.

The setting is the state Capitol in Nashville, a city badly shaken last week when an armed invader shot and killed three youngsters and three adults at Covenant Christian School.

That led to marches on and into the Capitol building, mostly by students, in support of gun control --- unlikely in a state, like Iowa, where population increasingly is concentrated in cities but rural areas maintain and are holding onto for dear life legislative advantage.

Rather than debate the issue last week, the GOP leadership in the House cut the microphones of three Democrats, now known as "the Tennessee Three." These guys then moved into the well of the House, found a bullhorn and led demonstrators in the galleries in protest chants --- certainly a breach of decorum and House rules.

But when presented with the option of censuring the three, the infuriated Republican majority decided to expel them instead. The chamber voted 72-25 to oust Rep. Justin Jones (center), a 27-year-old community organizer elected in November to represent part of Nashville, and 69-26 to expel Rep. Justin Pearson (left) of Memphis. Republicans did not have enough votes to remove Rep. Gloria Johnson (right), a former teacher from Knoxville who lost a student to gun violence.

Why spare Ms. Johnson? "It might have something to do with the color of our skin," she responded.

So what the Tennessee GOP lawmakers actually accomplished in a dim-witted sort of way that celebrated their racist roots was to propel into the national spotlight two remarkably bright, articulate and charismatic young men and a powerful woman who now have great potential to lead --- and not just in Tennessee.

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Tennessee is the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the home of the headquarters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans --- a "lost cause" outfit that quite recently provided a home on its grounds for the bones of Klan luminary Nathan Bedford Forrest after Memphis kicked both his remains and a rather large memorial statue out of a public park and into the countryside.

Jones, before his election to the Legislature, was among the activists who led the drive to remove a bust of Forrest from a place of honor in the Capitol building. So you can see why Republicans might be especially annoyed with him.

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Iowa's GOP super-majority has polished up its homophobia this legislative season and focused on disenfranchising the poor, but for the most part has managed to avoid overt racism.

It's been bad enough, but land sakes alive, thank goodness for Tennessee, ready and willing to prove that it could have been worse.