Forgive and Forget

Heroes used to be a good television show. Even though it ripped off the X-Men, it was still one of the best things on the tube. That is until the final 15 minutes of season one, when the big bang the show promised to deliver turned out to be nothing more than the silly farting sound of a deflating balloon. And it’s been in a slow agonizing spiral down the commode ever since. Meaningless subplots involving unwanted new characters, unnecessary homages to My Two Dads Meets La Cage aux Folles, and a truly undermining time-trip to the Roger Corman, studio backlot version of medieval Japan. Call it Crouching Tiger, Obvious Hack.

Maybe years from now, we’ll be able to look back at Heroes and forget the second season, much in the same way we can now forget season two of Twin Peaks or the final years of The X-Files. The truth is out there, and it’s far too painful. Too often good TV shows go bad. Let us forget.

Which is apparently what several news outlets did last week when S.C. Republican National Committeeman Buddy Witherspoon announced that he was going to run against fellow GOPer Lindsey Graham for his spot in the Senate. From The State to The Greenville News to The Post & Courier, dailies across South Carolina ran stories on Witherspoon’s candidacy, but they left out perhaps the most important thing folks need to know about our pal Buddy — up until 1999, he was a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), according to press accounts from that time.

What’s so bad about that, you ask? Well, here’s what the CCC has to say about itself over at the group’s website: “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called ‘affirmative action’ and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.”

The Herald-Journal in Spartanburg appeared to be the only major daily to report on Witherspoon’s well reported membership in an organization which apparently wants to re-white American history. However, the paper approached Witherspoon’s past ties with the CCC timidly, treating the connection as if it was a mere rumor put forth by bloggers like Will Folks of FITSNews.com: “Some political websites on Tuesday claimed that Witherspoon had ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens as recently as 1999. The organization has been branded a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League and says in its mission statement that it opposes ‘all efforts to mix the races of mankind.'”

Then the daily let Witherspoon dismiss the, um, allegations: “Those claims are totally absurd,” Witherspoon said. “It’s unfortunate that just because you disagree with an individual and stand up to the plate that this sort of thing happens. I’ve been to one meeting years ago where I introduced a U.S. congressman, and that was it.”

Really? Because here’s what was reported in The State back in 1999: “Witherspoon acknowledged he was a member of the CCC and attended three meetings in 1998, the last in June.”

And in that same article, it was reported that “Witherspoon told party members he doesn’t own a computer and therefore was unaware of the website material [on the CCC site] until someone shared it with him. He said Saturday he found many articles offensive and added they ‘don’t share my opinion.'”

If I was a member of the CCC, well, I’d be pretty sore about all this. First Witherspoon breaks up with you back in 1999, and now he’s treating your group like it was nothing more than a one-night stand. But apparently that doesn’t bother the CCC. The South Carolina chapter recently posted a defense of Witherspoon and an attack on two websites that broke the story that was broken back in 1999.

Evidently, it’s pretty easy to forgive and forget.

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