Just hit the wires:
WASHINGTON, DC - California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, facing a firestorm of criticism for her comments at a recent news conference blaming gay Americans for Tuesday's election debacle, today insisted her words were taken out of context.
She meant to blame African-Americans as well.
"Our party's decline can be traced to our 1968 loss to Richard Nixon," Feinstein said. Speaking of black activists who then sought the right to inter-racial marriage, Feinstein added, "I think they did energize a very conservative vote."
Feinstein said that coming only four years after blacks won the privilege to drink from our fountains and swim in our pools, the sudden push for equal marriage rights invited an inevitable confrontation.
"I think giving Negro men the right to marry our women was too much, too fast, too soon, and people weren't ready for it," Feinstein said. She was quick to add: "I'm not casting a value judgment on miscegenation. I'm just saying I do believe that's what happened."
In an effort to quell the growing controversy over her comments, Feinstein added that inter-racial marriage was of course not the sole cause of the Democrats' defeat in '68.
"Martin Luther King's assassination was very unhelpful," Feinstein said. "I'm not saying it was his fault, but the chaos it caused really set the party back."
Joining in the criticism of Feinstein today was Al From, chairman of the conservative-leaning Democratic Leadership Council.
"Diane Feinstein owes gay and black Democrats an apology for her divisive and insensitive remarks," From said. "Blacks and gays aren't responsible for our party's woes. Women are."
[For anyone who's really clueless, this is a joke. :-)]
