Politics at Funerals? Or Only Approved Politics?

Nearly everyone with a sense of taste and propriety was offended at the political insults directed at President Bush as he attended the funeral of Coretta Scott King.

President Carter took this classless dig at President Bush: "Both husband and wife violated as they became the targets of secret government wiretapping and other surveillance." No one can be in any doubt as to why he chose to bring up that subject, considering the controversy of the NSA program to monitor terrorist communications.

One of Mike's America liberal apologists insisted that "it is appropriate to talk about politics at a politcal funeral."

Well what then would be the reaction, both in the hall and in all of the "mainstream" media if President Bush had used the occasion to say something like the following:

"Martin Luther King's telephone was bugged by the FBI with the approval of the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, the brother of then President John F. Kennedy. We live in a very different world today, where additional safeguards are in place to assure that no American needs to fear such unwarranted intrusion of their civil liberties."

Chalk this episode up as yet another example of the very real differences in both style and tone between the two political parties. Just as with demonstrated differences of conduct and ethics; don't let the relativists try and sell that sour milk "both parties are just as bad" anymore.

One more example before we leave this subject.

Readers will recall the outrage that drove Senate Majority Leader from his leadership position after he made a flattering remark to Senator Strom Thurmond, on the occasion of his 100th birtday.

And yet Hillary Clinton, who stood center stage this week at the King funeral was among those in November honoring Senator Robert Byrd, former Exalted Cyclops and Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan (read "A Senator's Shame" in the Washington Post for more). Honoring a former Klansmen is one thing, but to do so in the historic home of Frederick Douglas, a former slave is quite another.

Democrats: No class. No sense of propriety. And no rules apply to their conduct.