One of Jimmy Carter’s buddies gets an ugly moment in the limelight

Jimmy Carter has come in for his share of deserved bashing for the heinous interview he gave in Der Spiegel. Now, one of Jimmy Carter’s employees is in the limelight for a bit of racist talk himself:

Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired to help Wal-Mart Stores Inc. improve its public image, said early Friday he was resigning from his position as head of an outside support group amid criticism for remarks seen as racially offensive.

Young, a former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador, was hired by Working Families for Wal-Mart in February.

“I think I was on the verge of becoming part of the controversy and I didn’t want to become a distraction from the main issues, so I thought I ought to step down,” he told The Associated Press.

Young, once a close associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said his decision followed a report in the Los Angeles Sentinel, which he said was misread and misinterpreted.

In an interview with the weekly newspaper, Young was asked whether he was concerned that Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close.

“Well, I think they should; they ran the ‘mom and pop’ stores out of my neighborhood,” the paper quoted Young as saying. “But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”

What the AP story doesn’t mention is that Jimmy Carter appointed Young as U.N. Ambassador. Apparently these two flocking birds stick together in their dislike of Jews. One could say, though, that Young is at least a purer “hater” than Carter, in that he steps out of mere anti-Semitism (and I do think Carter has revealed himself as a classic anti-Semite) and hates everybody.

By the way, I was surprised to learn from my mother that my father, the former Communist and, so far as I knew, life-long Democrat, recognized just how bad Carter was and voted for Reagan in 1980. You go, Daddy!

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