Julian Bond: "When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died

The first applause that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond received during a recent speech at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro came when he compared the repercussions of presidential lying between the one currently occupying the White House and the president that preceded him. I'd rather have the (presidential) election turn on issues of war and peace, rather than issues of race and sex, Bond said. I thought we had 10 commandments. What happened to the ones about lying, stealing and killing? Bill Clinton may have lied about the war between the sexes; George W. Bush lied about the war. When Clinton lied, nobody died.And the audience in the Aycock Auditorium clapped in agreement. Bond, a long-time activist, was the keynote speaker at the school's Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration, which attracted more than 600 people. His speech covered a range of subjects, from his recollections of being a student in one of King's classes at Morehouse College, to his grandfather who was born in slavery but went on to earn a college degree, to sarcastically referring to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as J. Edgar Ashcroft because of what Bond believes are the attorney general's civil liberty abuses since 9/11. Bond said that discrimination is much more of an elusive target today.No more do signs read white and colored, Bond said. The law now requires the voter's booth, the schoolhouse door, to swing open for everyone. No longer are they closed to those whose skins are dark.[more]