Remember that iconic photo of Bernie Sanders speaking at a CORE rally in Chicago in the 60s? According to Hillary's oppo researchers, that wasn't really Bernie at all. It was only a fellow who looks like Bernie. The real Bernie was probably spooning vanilla Ben and Jerry in a Vermont pot barn somewhere instead of working for civil rights. The Bernie in the photo had to be a character out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You see, say the Clintonoids, Real Bernie was, is, and always will be unashamedly white. He is so white, in fact, that he single-handedly turned Latino-heavy Nevada into a white Sanders planet overnight, forcing Hillary to spend time in another state which her campaign snootily complains is not really a state at all.
She coulda been a contender. She could have been in Palm Beach with Bill this week, schmoozing with the rich and famous at their $32,000-a-plate bribe-fests.
The rumors of Bernie's alien status first gained traction when civil rights icon John Lewis was herded in front of cameras to reveal that he'd never met Sanders in the 60s. Since John Lewis didn't know Sanders, the media concluded, then it obviously follows that Sanders did not and does not care about black people.
And then Time magazine helpfully ran an article flicking the finger bowl water at Bernie, confirming Clintonland's claim that the guy in the photo wasn't Bernie at all, but some sort of Bernie-lookalike pod-person.
But then it turned out that Danny Lyons, the photographer who shot that scene, is still alive, well and absolutely willing to debunk the latest Clintonoid smear tactic. From U.S. Uncut, quoting Lyons:
“In 1962 and the spring of 1963 I was the student photographer at the University of Chicago, making pictures for the yearbook, the Alumni Magazine, and the student paper, The Maroon. By the summer of 1962, I had taken my camera into the deep South and become the first photographer for SNCC.
“That winter at the University of Chicago, there was a sit-in inside the administration building protesting discrimination against blacks in university owned housing,” Lyons said. “I went to it with a CORE activist and friend. The sit in was in a crowded hallway, blocking the entrance to the office of Dr. George Beadle, the chancellor.
“I took the photograph of Bernie Sanders speaking to his fellow CORE members at that sit-in… Time Magazine is now claiming it is not Bernie in the picture but someone else. It is Bernie, and it is proof of his very early dedication to justice for African Americans. The CORE sit-in that Bernie helped lead was the first civil rights sit-in to take place in the North.
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| Young Bernie: The Real Deal |
Time was then forced to retract its original reporting. It made sure to issue its retraction in very tiny little letters that not many people would notice.
Time is pretty much out of mind, including its own. In December, it announced that Bernie Sanders was the overwhelming winner of its Person of the Year readers' poll. And then it summarily banned Bernie from its list of eight semi-finalists for the honor and settled instead on Angela Merkel, beating out such Time-honored contenders as ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
Of course, Time is only acting in the interests of the corporate media-political complex, Democracy is a very complex and pragmatic thing, you know. It is so complex, in fact, that Super Delegates get weighted votes and (so far, anyway) are giving the very unpopular Hillary Clinton an undemocratic advantage over Bernie Sanders. If the Clintonoids have their way, they will turn the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare right on its head. In their twisted version, the "slow and steady wins the race" happy ending of a President Sanders will be transformed into Cheaters Always Win, and Winners Always Cheat.
The real pod-people are the Clintons. They live in their own pluto-pod bubble, in which $675,000 for three Goldman Sachs speeches is considered a public service accomplishment.
Digging through the Sardonicky archives, meanwhile, I discovered this old photo of young President Bill Clinton, announcing that millions of black mothers would be kicked off the welfare rolls and forced to take crappy low-wage jobs with no child care or retraining subsidies whatsoever:
(Oops.That's really Donald Sutherland in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The editors sincerely apologize for the error.)
