The Willie Horton Ad Wasn't Racist and Neither Is Floyd Brown
One of my closest friends in the whole world is a guy named Floyd Brown.
We’ve known each other since shortly after he made Willie Horton a household name.
Not the former Detroit Tiger slugger Willie Horton, who should probably have long ago been enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but the bad Willie Horton — a rapist and murderer who was allowed out of prison while serving a term of life without parole on a weekend pass in Massachusetts under former Gov. Mike Dukakis and committed those acts, again.
Floyd made a political TV commercial about that during the 1988 presidential campaign and, because the bad Willie was also black, the left called him a racist.
George H. W. Bush was elected president that year.
The left, 31 years later, still calls Floyd a racist for doing that commercial even though you can find bad Willie serving a life sentence in a Maryland prison.
At Horton’s December 1987 sentencing for the weekend pass crime spree, Prince George’s County, Maryland Judge Vincent J. Femia said that Horton was a man “devoid of conscience” who “should never draw a breath of free air again.”
Horton requested that he be allowed to serve his time in Massachusetts where he ran away from his furlough. Judge Femia denied the request indicting Massachusetts: “With all due respect to the citizens of our sister state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts … I’m not prepared take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released … He [Horton] now belongs to the state of Maryland.”
So, did that make Judge Femia a racist as well? I’m guessing not.
When I met Floyd, he was founding a group called Citizen’s United and wanted to start a radio show. As luck would have it, I owned a bunch of radio stations in conservative Oklahoma. He spent quite a bit of time on my radio stations and we became close friends and, on and off, business associates.
The Floyd Brown I know isn’t a racist or any other kind of “ist” or “ism.”
He’s a caring individual who has great ideas and firmly believes the phrase from Henry David Thoreau, “that government is best which governs least.”
No. Floyd didn’t die last week. This isn’t a eulogy.
However, he WAS the victim of a New York Times hit piece which was factually wrong and written by Nick Confessore, who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting, which means he was in the right place at the right time and a member of the journalism club in good standing — similar to the way Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize by getting elected president.
Many years ago, Floyd called me from Arizona and asked me if he could use that week’s column on his new website, WesternJournalism.com. I said sure, go ahead.
The next day, he called me again and told me to go to a url on my computer. I did and the screen was full of numbers climbing. I asked what that was on the screen. He laughed and said, “that’s your column going viral.”
Floyd had begun to master publishing on the internet.
In time for the 2016 election, he had created Liftable Media which became a top 75 publisher. He had millions of unique visitors to their websites and the operation became so successful that after Donald Trump was elected president, it (and Floyd) became a target of the left.
Facebook and Google began a campaign which can only be described as a conspiracy to restrain the trade (and influence) of Liftable and similar publishers.
And, as the president might put it, the failing New York Times took note.
It took them 10 months to do the piece. And it had the same factual accuracy as many pieces which now dominate that paper — which is to say not much.
I remember the days when getting a job at The Times was an announcement that you had arrived at the pinnacle of your profession.
Now, it’s an announcement that you are a darling of the left.
All the news that’s fit to print indeed.
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