Welcome to the Missouri Wall of Shame, the online home for Missouri's South-Hating Culture Bigots. In order to make it on "The Wall" you have to be a major player in Missouri's national or state politics having played a part in Missouri's removal of the Confederate Flags at Higginsville Confederate Cemetery or Fort Davidson at Pilot Knob Missouri. Other members have earned their place on "The Wall" by either endorsing Former Governor Bob Holden and Former U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt's actions concerning Missouri's Southern Heritage. Or in the case of Paul Sander, openly display disdain for Missouri's Confederate veterans in general. You will find both Republicans and Democrats alike on this wall, there is no party bias.

The 1'st South -Hater to earn a place on The Wall is Former Representative Richard "Dick" Gephardt. 

#1 Dick Gephardt: Former U.S. Congressman from Missouri DUMPED!

It really was a toss-up between Gephardt and Bob Holden. Really it is like the age old question of "What came first; the chicken or the egg". I decided it was the egg. After all it was Gephardt's comments that hatched the idea of removing Missouri's Confederate flags. While unofficially launching his 2004 Presidential bid in South Carolina Gephardt called the Confederate Flag.

On January 14,2003 in a Fox News online article found by clicking on this link, Gephardt was quoted as saying, "My own personal feeling is that the Confederate flag no longer has a place flying any time, anywhere in our great nation."

This lead to a snow-ball like chain of events that soon brought down Missouri's Confederate Flags. The same January 14, 2003, Fox News article pretty much summed up the whole situation in a nutshell:

"Mary Still, spokeswoman for Gov. Bob Holden, said she called Natural Resources Director Steve Mahfood after reading an Associated Press story about Gephardt's statement.

"I told Steve it seemed to me it wouldn't be appropriate to have it flying on a flagpole, but that I didn't know all of their considerations and I left it in his lap," Still said. She said the governor, a former Gephardt aide, didn't know about the conversation."

But Holden did know and ultimately it was under his direction that the flags stayed down.

But an article entitled "Confederate Flag in Higginsville Sparks Controversy" found in the Thursday June 9th, 2005 edition of the Marshall Democrat-News stated that: "The flag had flown daily at the site until January 2003 when former Gov. Bob Holden placed an administrative order which removed it from Higginsville and the Fort Davidson State Historic Site in Pilot Knob." For this reason Former Governor "Back-Door" Bob Holden is the #2 man on Missouri's Wall of Shame.

#2 "Back Door" Bob Holden: Former Missouri Governor DUMPED!

But Holden could not have brought down the flags without some help from his friends and subordinates.

As the Fox News article stated it was Marry Still Former Spokesperson for Former Governor Bob Holden called Former Missouri Director of Natural resources Steve Mahfood  and told him about the Confederate Flags flying in Missouri.

Therefore , Marry Still and Steve Mahfood became the third and fourth members of the Missouri Wall of Shame.

 

#3 Marry Still Former Spokesperson for Former Governor Bob Holden DUMPED!

(sorry no picture available)

"I told Steve it seemed to me it wouldn't be appropriate to have it flying on a flagpole"-Marry Still

 

#4 Steve Mahfood Former Director of Missouri Department of Natural Resources DUMPED !

"Confederate flags were removed from Missouri’s two Civil War historic sites in January 2003 when Missouri Department of Natural Resources Director Steve Mahfood ordered them taken down."

- Vox Magazine

 

 

#5 Catherine Hanaway Former Speaker of the House, State of Missouri DUMPED!

Catherine Hanaway killed the first attempt at  legislation that would have restored the Confederate Flags at Higginsville and Pilot Knob. Rumor has it, that she considered restoring the honor to our ancestors' grave sites as a "Third Rail". 

She ran for Secretary of State in Missouri in 2004 and lost.  Why did Hanaway block the Missouri Legislature's first attempt to restore Missouri's Confederate Flags?

The answer can be found in a December 16, 2003 Missouri Digital News article, in which Hanaway was quoted as saying that she had been "eyeing the secretary of state position for over a decade" Perhaps she thought that doing what was right would hurt her election chances, instead she got "dumped with all of the other South-Haters in 2004.

 

#6 Paul Sander DUMPED!

In February ,2005, Sanders had a choice to make. He could have either went with his initial instinct and help honor Missouri Confederate William Jeffers, or he could "play it safe" and be bullied by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU. No doubt running for Cape Girardeau, Missouri County Clerk was already on his mind when he sided with the "South Haters"

I guess it can best be summed up in this Letter to the Editor which appeared in the Southeast Missourian on August 13, 2006 entitled: "A Theory about Sander's Defeat".

 

# 7 Former U.S. Senator "Chicken" Jim Talent DUMPED!

As a newly elected Senator in 2003, Jim Talent had his whole career ahead of him. Yet when Governor Bob Holden removed Missouri's two Confederate flags in Jan. ,2003  Senator Talent chose to side with him and Richard Gephardt. The Jan. 26, 2003 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published Jim Talent's  views on Governor Holden's decision:

" His personal belief is that flags flying over official government property should be symbols of unity, not symbols of division."

Talent went even further. "I think it's appropriate to take them down," he said in an interview Friday.

"The flag is intertwined in people's minds with what was the greatest injustice in the history of our country," Talent explained. "You can put up some other memorial to the courage of the people who fought for that cause. But the flag is, to many people, a symbol of injustice. That war is associated with slavery. When you have a substantial number of people feeling that way, it should come down."

In effect, Talent is siding with Holden and the state's presidency-seeking congressman, Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-St. Louis County. Gephardt touched off the controversy when he'd declared that the Confederate flag had no business flying anywhere."

On the eve of the 2006 mid-term elections South Carolina's "The State Newspaper" reported on Friday, November 03, 2006 that:

" Missouri Senate battle likely to rest on southern, rural turnout"

"The State" went on to say that:

" SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Most people pronounce it Mizzou-ree, but the hard-fought Missouri U.S. Senate race is likely to be won where they say Mizzour-rah -- the southern and rural parts of the state."

On November 7th, 2006 despite having a heavy financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Claire McCaskill, and despite launching a very negative campaign against her, Jim Talent's short lived Senate career was over. As it turns out, "The State" newspaper's prediction was exactly on target.

On Wed. November 8th, 2006 , just one day after the election, Time.Com reported that:

"Going "Behind Enemy Lines" Was the Key to McCaskill's Missouri Senate Win:

It wasn't enough to carry Democratic strongholds, so the Democrat ran hard in conservative areas to trim Jim Talent's advantage"

Time continued by reporting that:

"When the political pros saw the numbers coming in from the rural counties, they pretty much knew McCaskill was going to win," said Jake Zimmerman, a longtime Democratic Party activist who won a seat in the Missouri Senate Tuesday.

And exit polls suggest that the Bush Administration and its handling of the Iraq war also weighed heavily on voters' minds. "What brought Talent down wasn't Talent," said pollster and Saint Louis University political science professor Ken Warren. "There's no question about it, this was a referendum on the Bush Administration."

There can be no doubt that the unpopularity of the Bush administration and the Iraq War had played key factors in Talent's defeat, however; with the race resting on the rural and Southern areas of voters, the argument can be made that in a race in which 1% determined who would be Missouri's next U.S. Senator, many of the votes that went to McCaskill were the same votes that crossed party lines in 2004 to vote for Claire McCaskill in that year's Democratic primary and "Dump" Governor Holden. Those same voters no doubt remembered  Jim Talent's betrayal of Conservative and Southern values in 2003. Time.Com was correct, what defeated Talent, was Talent.

Click Here to Visit Show Me South!

 

#8 Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton

 The Missouri Wall of Shame welcomes House Speaker Jetton as its newest member.  If you think he looks guilty of something in the picture on the left, it is because he is!

The tragic fact of the matter is that House Speaker Jetton used to be considered a friend to the Southern voter and to Southern heritage, having promised me in early 2003 that our flags at Higginsville and Pilot Knob would soon be restored after "Back Door Bob" Holden removed them.

I took him at his word, but after a couple of years, started to question his sincerity. The Republicans always seem to manage to get the bill on the House floor at the last day of the session every year. The liberals from St. Louis scream racism, the Republicans back down and table it for the following year having never risked any "political capital" yet going back home to their constituents and telling them that they supported the flag restoration.

I wanted to place House Speaker Jetton here a couple of years ago, but was reluctant because a lobbyist kept asking me not to because Jetton was "a friend". (Which brings me to my next point; Why should it take a lobbyist to get an elected official to do what's morally right?)

I don't think anyone on this list has worked harder to get to the Missouri Wall of Shame than Rod Jetton has.

On Tuesday, Feb. 16. , 2007 the Southeast Missourian newspaper published an article that I had written defending Rod Jetton’s actions toward State Rep. Scott Lipke ( R ) –Jackson. 

Jetton had been getting a lot of “heat” for stripping Scott Lipke of all leadership positions. Even though I supported Jetton’s opponent, Michael Winder last November, I thought Jetton did the right thing by stripping Lipke of his leadership positions, because I felt Lipke had attempted to deceive the public when he removed language from Missouri Law that lifted the ban on homosexual acts in Missouri. 

It now appears to me that House Speaker Jetton has also been deceiving the public as well. For instance did you know that House Speaker Jetton has co-sponsored legislation that would require Missouri to apologize for its role in slavery? Neither did I until a friend emailed me the information. 

The bill is HCR-26, introduced by Representative Talibibdin El-Amin , a St. Louis Democrat.  HCR-26 was offered on February 8^th of this year and referred to committee on February 27^th. 

HCR-26 , among other things calls for Missouri to: 

“Whereas, the perpetual pain, distrust, and bitterness of many African Americans could be assuaged and the principles espoused by the Founding Fathers would be affirmed, and great strides toward unifying all Missourians and inspiring the nation to acquiesce might be accomplished if the State of Missouri acknowledged and atoned for its role in the slavery of Africans: 

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-fourth General Assembly, First Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby formally apologize for the State of Missouri's role in slavery.” 

The same friend that informed me about House Speaker Jetton’s latest folly also noted that there might be a reason for the language used in this bill. According to my friend: 

“Atone per Mr. Webster is defined as 'Reparation for an offense or injury" 

Perhaps the real motive for Rep. El-Amin’s bill is reparations. Personally some wrong directions took me right through the heart of El-Amin’s St. Louis district last summer and it is a down-trodden, economically deprived area. I don’t think an apology is going to change that. 

Four years ago House Speaker Jetton promised me he would get our Confederate flags restored in Higginsville and Pilot Knob. It never happened. When asked what the problem was, he would tell me that St. Louis liberals were responsible for blocking the legislation. 

If St. Louis liberals are our political enemy, what does that make Jetton, given the fact that he has now politically allied himself with one? Where do the apologies stop? 

Will Missouri apologize for the way Southerners were treated during the war and Reconstruction? After all historian Albert Castel once called General Ewing’s Order #11: 

“the most drastic and repressive military measure directed against civilians by the Union Army during the Civil War. In fact, with the exception of the hysteria-motivated herding of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during World War II, it stands as the harshest treatment ever imposed on United States citizens under the plea of military necessity in our nation's history." 

Will Missouri apologize for its treatment of the Mormons in the 1830’s? 

Will Missouri apologize for its treatment of the Indians? 

It is doubtful; there is no political capital in these acts. It is also doubtful that you will see House Speaker Jetton ever petition the federal government to apologize for its treatment of the American Indian, the invasion of Missouri and the subsequent occupation / Reconstruction of its citizens. 

Rumor has it that House Speaker Jetton has his eyes on the Governor’s mansion, which might explain his new alliance with Representative El-Amin. If you are as mad as I am about Jetton’s attempted deception of Missouri’s citizens than call his office at:

573.751.5912

and let him know he  should apologize to us !