As you may have noticed, Missouri’s 8th district is about to have a special election. Jo Ann Emerson is following up being elected to her 9th term by resigning early and taking a new job. The date of her resignation is up in the air (turns out resigning in February might postpone a special election for way too long) and thus the date of the special election is up in the air, with the hope that the election will be held in April.
So with an impending election, the candidates are popping up. Wendall Bailey emerged from wherever he’s been to run for office on a “I will not seek re-election and allow for a hilarious primary” platform. Speaking of hilarious primaries, Sarah Steelman is also running!.
But there’s one man who stands above the rest. A man not afraid to tweet his mind (at least until he got some people to tell him to stop retweeting embarrassing things). That man is Missouri’s Lt. Governor, Peter Kinder and he is running reports Eli Yokley.
Peter Kinder held a few jobs before beginning his career in elective office in 1993. He was a campaign manager for Bill Emerson. He even worked in Washington DC. But years after coming home from DC, Peter Kinder was an editorial writer for the Southeast Missourian.
For the younger readers who may not remember newspapers or editorial pages. It’s where people would kind of blog. Only without links and within a set amount of space. Some of them even had editors too.
Since the search powers of Google’s newspaper archive are a bit limited (Sadly, Google has deemphasized their newspaper archive in recent years). I feel it would be informative to bring you a look into the Peter Kinder Southeast Missourian files.
It was 1988. Rust Communications had just bought the Southeast Missourian two years earlier* and the Southeast Missourian editorial page was diverse. The editorial page displayed a split between conservative and really conservative. A place where you could peacefully read Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, or George Will while grousing over the changes in the times.
(* – Rust Communications now owns 15 newspapers in the 8th Congressional District, with newspapers in Advance/Bloomfield, Cape Girardeau, Caruthersville, Chaffee, Dexter, Doniphan, Kennett, Malden/Campbell, Marble Hill, Poplar Bluff, Portageville, Puxico, Sikeston, Steele, and Thayer)
On right wing editorial pages, 1988 was a year with an extraordinary interest in Jesse Jackson, fading into the fall as they focused on Michael Dukakis’ ACLU army of darkness matching over the countryside. The Peter Kinder column covered those general topics. But he also hit on his notes of importance. Such as editorializing against 8th district Congressional candidate Wayne Cryts (a habit he kept alive for several years after the final Cryts campaign in 1988).
Referring to Cryts’ support by Congressman Lane Evans of Illinois, Kinder declared Evans to be “easily one of the two-dozen most ultra liberal members of Congress”, “as close as you can get in American politics to being an out-and-out socialist without declaring himself as such” and “a male version of Harriett Woods”.
After thwarting Michael Dukakis’ and Lane Evans’ plans to implement the socialist state, Peter the editorializer got to spread his wings and display all the right-wing bombast you could fit into an assigned portion of the Southeast Missourian from Sunday to Friday (never on Saturdays, the Southeast Missourian takes their Saturdays off). It was a time for Peter Kinder to go at all foes in his vicinity. Sure, he would devote a random paragraph to local events from time to time, but in the Kinder column, it was no holds barred.
So now, the very quotable Editorial Kinder (all emphasis’ added):
On Feminists (and anybody he’d categorize as such):
“All the dreadful gasbags who lead the militant Feminist movement were in DC on Sunday, leading 300,000 marchers down Constitution Avenue to try and frighten and intimidate the United States Supreme Court. There was Betty Friedan and Eleanor Smeal; the twin Glorias, Steinem and Allred; Phil Donahue and Jane Fonda, countless other movie stars, and of course the ever-truculent and depressingly masculine Molly (“I am outraged!) Yard, the current president of the National Organization for Women (NOW)”
On the rise in Gender-discrimination based abortions:
“There is growing evidence across the country that couples are increasingly choosing abortion when the gender of the fetus is determined to be female. That’s right: couples are choosing to abort entirely healthy girl babies in order to try again to conceive a male baby”
“Feminists bring a sad hardness to our lives“ (actual column title!)
“The billboard advertises a florist’s business and features a very fine looking pair of women’s legs covered at the top by a mini-skirt. The caption on the board next to the Town and Country Florist’s logo says, “We Have the Best Stems in Town!”
Such a delightfully effective manner of communicating is an unspeakable outrage for some people. It simply cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. Sure enough, the Feminist Thought Police have strapped on their jackboots; that tramp-tramp-tramp you hear is their battalions marching in to express their fury. To the barricades!”
“The bad news is that they’re bringing into St. Louis this weekend the perfectly dreadful Molly Yard, national president of NOW. (Ms. Yard has of course distinguished herself as one of the leading Harpies of our time)”
“The Goddess of Militant Feminist Equality is a harridan, a sterile creature. She is an ugly, shrill and jealous deity, before which the spirit of our age commands us to bow down. She is as crabbed, as dreadfully serious and as narrow as the leveling spirit that animates her desire to control literally every institution in our society. Even ones that do no harm and which don’t need changing.”
“George Patton, meet Congresswoman Pat Schroeder. Stonewall Jackson, meet Bella Abzug. George Marshall, meet Molly Yard and her storm troopers at the National Organization for Women. It’s enough to drive a man to drink“
On Joe Biden, activities of:
Actual column title: Plantation beckons: Who is next for Joe Biden to lynch?
“The Liberal Plantation is headquartered in the Big House up on Capitol Hill. From there the plantation masters – Senators such as Massa Kennedy, Massa Biden and Massa Metzenbaum – control their subjects”
“The slavery that existed under force of law during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was America’s shame, to be sure. Its legacy still hurts, and hurts badly. Still, that tragic legacy could hardly be more degrading than the state of dependency foisted on Black America during this country through the Liberal Plantation, by their Massas in the Big House up on the Hill”
“For Massas Biden, Kennedy, and Metzenbaum, [Clarence] Thomas is sufficiently uppity that he cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. Because, you see, he could rip away the veil that hides the Plantation, the Massas, and all their overseers, thereby exposing their massive fraud for the scam that it is”
On visions of Clarence Thomas’ Judiciary Committee hearings (a year before his nomination):
“It would be sweet to see Senators Biden, Kennedy and Metzenbaum squirm as a self-confident black man turned the tables on their pious bombast, riveting the nation with an explanation of these senators’ betrayal of true civil rights.”
On the campaign to stop Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork:
“The Goebbels-like attack by liberals against Bork featured intentional distortions, shrill personal attacks, blatant intellectual dishonesty, witness intimidation, demagoguery, and lies”
On Judges, activities to engage them in:
After describing two amendments he supported to limit the powers of judges: “I say it’s time for a little public horsewhipping of a few judges. Mr. Justice Brennan for example.“
On Methodists:
“I was raised in the Methodist church. Lengthy, hand-wringing thought-pieces in its church publications about massive membership decline have long been commonplace. But the next time somebody wants to convene a conference to discuss these massive losses (now approaching their fourth straight decade) of mainline Protestant denominations, I would send them instead to the encyclopedia. Look under “Protestant Churches, Mainline Denominations”, sub-heading, “Continuing Membership losses… Cause(s):… Smug Political, Social, and Economic Sermonizing Dressed Up As Christianity… (Liberals preferred, moderates tolerated, conservatives need never apply).“”
On Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day and related issues:
“No doubt there are more of your tax dollars at work here, folks. But after all, what are hardworking taxpayers for? What, indeed, if not: to have our money confiscated; our society trashed; our moral and ethical values trampled; our religions blasphemed; our sensible outrage sneered at; our families threatened and yes, our children and other innocents among us placed at deadly risk? And all it accompanied and enabled by compulsory, tax-paid subsidies, complete with cries of Nazi! and censorship! for anybody with the temerity to express disgust.”
On the Spread of AIDS (column on page 14 of page, displayed sideways):
“The euology [evology? ecology? – RBH] of this horrible affliction is one that continues to confound medical researchers the world over. But there can be no doubt that it was spread here by fantastically, almost unimaginably promiscuous male homosexuals”
On activities which take no skin off of Peter Kinder’s nose (same source):
“I repeat, no argument is advanced here for gay-bashing, My own attitude can be summarized:
If two guys and a chicken want to rent a room somewhere and have a go at each other, it’s no skin off my nose, and I suppose it’s none of the government’s business, as long as they’re consenting adults. (Recruitment and pedophilia are other, highly troubling issues). Whether in doing so our two guys display sufficient sensitivity to the rights of the chicken is another matter indeed. This must surely be the subject of the next Awareness Day, supervised by the Animal Rights people, Poultry Division. I’m sure there are student funds available.”
Reading the Southeast Missourian columns of Peter Kinder make the Tweets seem drab and predictable by comparison. But the years 1988 through 1991 were one heck of a time to be alive, especially on the editorial pages. Don’t let the militant feminists in Peter Kinder’s nightmares tell you any differently. It was a time to go after the boogeyman of the day, or in the case of writers like Kinder, a time to gradually get more and more disappointed with the first President Bush after his 1990 tax hike.
But Peter Kinder’s public life escaped the editorial pages when State Senator John Dennis chose not to seek re-election in 1992, Peter Kinder moved to run for the State Senate. He defeated former First Lady/former State Representative Betty Hearnes by a 55-45 margin, and the rest was history.
Now he’s eying a way to Washington DC. So let’s reflect on his thoughts on Washington DC from a simpler time (column titled: “D.C. A parasite that threatens your health“):
“Make no mistake, Washington is a lovely city, especially in the spring. It is one of the world’s most beautiful cities, full of interesting educational opportunities and stimulating adventures.
For me, however, it will always be Alien Territory”
Well, we’ll see which Republican gets a chance to invade that Alien Territory in a few months, won’t we?
