By fitsnews – May 11, 2010
By FITSNews || In this our third – and hopefully final – story on last week’s blow-up within the S.C. Democratic Caucus (click here and here for all of the background), one of the drama’s protagonists invited FITS founding editor Will Folks to the S.C. State House on Tuesday to listen to a tape recording of the meeting in question.
S.C. Rep. Boyd Brown – who has been accused by former Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Leon Howard and two other African-American lawmakers of making statements that denigrated the civil rights movement – refused to let us quote from the tape, citing the need to preserve the confidentiality of the executive session portion of Caucus meetings. He did, however, permit us to listen to the tape (which he recorded on his iPhone) and describe what we heard, conditions that we agreed to in advance of listening to his recording.
As for the portion of the controversial exchange that we heard on the tape, Brown did not make any statements impugning the civil rights movement. Nor, in our opinion, did he make any statements that could be reasonably interpreted as impugning the civil rights movement in any way. Brown merely said that he was part of the “New South,” a generation of young Democrats that he added were far more supportive of President Barack Obama at the polls than older Democrats.
The tape did, however, reveal Brown as the instigator of some of the profanity referenced in our previous posts, a point which he acknowledged.
Obviously, Brown’s tape didn’t cover the entire Caucus meeting, so there’s no way of knowing what was said before or after the “record” button was depressed. Based on what we heard on the recording, though, there isn’t any evidence to support the allegations made against him.
In fact, Brown referred to those allegations as “inflammatory” and accused Howard of “making up lies” as a result of prior friction in their personal relationship.
In related news, as a result of seemingly constant drama in both the Republican and Democratic parties, Bravo is no doubt looking to run a show entitled “The Lawmakers Of South Carolina” to go with its popular Housewives series.
Any takers?
