Billy Graham's Final Sermon: 'I've Wept' For America

[RainDog]

30. ...

http://bothwellsblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/

Considering Nixon’s reputation for meanness and paranoia, the public impression was that Graham, a polite and agreeable sort, had been pulled into a bit of unpleasantness with a close friend—something that can happen to anyone. Do we automatically knock down a buddy who tells a dumb blonde joke, a Polish joke, an immigrant tale? We should, but do we? Not always. Graham is human too. And, after all, this wasn’t just any old friend. He was the President of the United States of America.

But I was curious. As an investigative reporter with, then, fifteen years of experience under my belt, I was well aware that news stories rarely contain all the facts, if for no other reason than the limitations of space. I wondered about the context of the conversation, where it began and where it ended. So I obtained the transcript.

I learned that the conversation had lasted an hour and a half, had rarely strayed from denunciation of Jews and had been led by Graham. That astonished me. Moreover, twenty minutes of conversation had been redacted before release. What, I wondered, had been suppressed?

...Graham worked the corridors of Congress as well as the private rooms of the White House, sometimes overtly, sometimes quietly, in secret letters and private phone calls. And, quite contrary to Time’s assertion, it seems that Graham did more to abet segregation than to end it, actively opposing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s use of civil disobedience while endorsing aggressive police tactics and punitive laws.

He was vaudeville for racist rural folk.