Word: duking
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...Duke looks too young, at 40, to have founded so many racist organizations and journals and to have run for so many offices -- twice for the state senate (as a Klan member), twice for the presidency (as a Democrat and then as a Populist), once for the vice presidency (in New Hampshire), once for the state legislature (as a Republican) and now for the Senate (as a Republican without the party's endorsement). Even as a Klan member, he won 33% of the vote in his 1975 Senate race. As an overnight Republican, he won 51% in his runoff victory...
Even Georgia fans are accepting Duke's stickers and labels, as he tactfully claims: "It will be all right, whether Georgia or L.S.U. wins -- we're all Southerners." But he does not sound like a Southerner. When he entered grade school in New Orleans, he was teased for having a Dutch accent. (His engineer father had taken the family to the Netherlands in the 1950s.) A bookish loner in school, Duke sought out extremist mentors who treated him as a brilliant young disciple. With contemporaries he was condescending or defiant, moving to a deeper rhythm of history than they could...
...dentist from Lafayette describes the support for Duke at a hospital where he works. He thinks it is dirty campaigning for Duke's foes to keep bringing up his past: "The Times-Picayune does not bring up Chappaquiddick every time it mentions Teddy Kennedy." "They bring up my past," Duke tells the dentist, "because they do not want to talk about my issues." His issues -- he owns them around here -- are opposition to affirmative action, minority set-asides and welfare without drug testing. "I'm for equal rights, even for white people" is the briefest statement of his program...
...people who are "getting everything" are nowhere to be seen among the picnickers. The only blacks visible wear the Day-Glo blazers of parking attendants. In fact, the prosperity of Duke's supporters is a point of pride to the campaign aide who asks me, "Do these people look like piney-woods rednecks...
...this audience, the welfare chiseler is an icon of moral theft rather than a real challenge to the pocketbook. (Welfare in Louisiana is stingy; aid for dependent children takes only 2% of the state budget.) Duke's people are affronted by the thought that large bodies of blacks are getting something for nothing, or actually being rewarded for irresponsibility (or crime). Ronald Reagan got great mileage from a mythical "welfare queen." Duke has a true story he tells to even greater effect, developing it to apocalyptic dimensions. He gave me one of its shorter versions...