Republican Al Simpson is retired from the U.S. Senate. That gives him some freedom to speak out on issues that, if he were still a senator, would get him into big trouble with his own party.
Simpson (a.k.a. "Big Al") has a tendency to speak his mind. This has bought him some grief over the years. Remember the Clarence Thomas hearings in the early nineties? Simpson was one of The Grand Inquisitors that bullied Anita Hill during her testimony about sexual harassment by Thomas. We remember that band of dour white guys harassing Hill about pubic hair on coke cans and various lurid remarks attributed to Thomas. Thomas claimed his seat on the court and he’s been a right-wing toady ever since.
But Big Al, by nature, is much more open-minded than he showed at the Thomas hearings. He’s pro-choice, which would get him in trouble in this Congress. He supports the arts in a big way, something he did even during The Great NEA Funding Battles of the late eighties and early nineties. He also doesn’t hate gay people, as shown by his recent keynote speech at the Log Cabin Republicans annual convention Friday in Denver. One wonders how this group of gay Republicans can support people like George Bush and San Brownback and Tommy Thompson. But it’s no wonder they brought a guy like Al Simpson to their podium.
In an AP story in today Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Simpson said "he thinks the party is a better place than it was after delving into issues like the Terry Schiavo right-to-life case and gay marriage. ‘We’re shaking some of the goofies and zanies out of the tree,’ Simpson said to laughter." He added that abortion is a "personal decision and should not be on the party platform." A convention attendee asked Simpson about Tommy Thompson’s remark at the Repub presidential debate where we said that employers should be able to fire a gay employee just because he’s gay. Simpson replied that it was "a crazy statement to make in these times." Simpson ended up urging gay Republicans to stay in the party and fight for change.
An uphill battle in these contentious times.
I worked in D.C. when Simpson was still a Wyoming senator. I was assistant director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA had borrowed me from the Wyoming Arts Council, so I worked at the Endowment but still was officially employed by the WAC in Cheyenne. So Simpson was still my senator, as was Craig Thomas, and Barbara Cubin my representative.
I visited with Sen. Simpson several times. We chatted at the National Endowment for the Humanities awards reception. A co-worker, an African-American woman in the NEA dance program, knew I was from WYO and asked me to introduce her to Simpson. She wanted to talk to the senator about his role in the Anita Hill hearings. It didn’t sound as if she envisioned a friendly conversation. So I introduced them and she grilled him about the hearings. Sparks flew in the beginning, but it eventually settled into a somewhat cordial chat about the arts. Simpson, you see, is a big supporter of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody and his daughter owns the town’s largest art gallery. His wife Ann is on the board of the UW Heritage Center and Art Museum. The UW Artmobile is named for her. So, in the end, the black dancer and liberal had something in common with the very white Republican senator from one of the West’s most conservative states.
During my time at the NEA, Simpson spoke to its Council. In his usual straight-forward style, he said that the NEA made it hard for him, an arts supporter, to support the agency to his WYO constituents when it insisted on funding pornographic art by Robert Mapplethorpe, Karen Finley, et.al. That was a bit simplistic, but I knew the validity of his point. Before coming to D.C., I was at the WAC for two years, traveling ths state on behalf of writers and books. I spoke in support of the NEA because that’s where half of our state agency’s budget came from. No NEA, no WAC. Boy, did I get in some heated arguments. People in Wyoming took the "porn funding" issue very personally, as if they had footed the entire bill for Mapplethorpe’s camera and photo supplies. I was still learning that many rural westerners feel that the federal government is out to get them. Nevermind that the feds put more tax money into WYO than it takes out. The state’s rural residents are always steamed that the feds own so much of the real estate and are always trying to save wolves and spotted owls at the expense of people’s jobs. That attitude, of course, is nurtured by the Republican Party, which knows better.
I saw two western senators and one rep speak to the NEA’s National Council. Bill Bennett from Utah was the other senator. He’s also a Republican, a tall drink of water from Utah. He’s not as gregarious as Simpson, but he made the same point. Utah’s much more urban than WYO but it’s probably more conservative than its neighboring big square state due to the Mormon influence.
As I grow older and spend more time in the rural West, I understand the point of view of these elected officials. They are not part of the group of "goofies and crazies" that the Republicans need to shake out of the trees. They are bona fide allies in the fight against the visibly crazy wing of the Republican Party, the one that insists that gays are evil, woman are sub-human, science doesn’t exist, and that we can find peace in our time by bombing the Muslim World back to the Stone Age.
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