THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 16, 1995 TAG: 9503160400
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Firing off controversial remarks Tuesday to the Hampton Roads Urban League, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder said, ``It's not good to get up here and say these things, but I don't give a damn.''
When did he ever? It's part of his charm. Other pols put you to sleep. Wilder gives verbal hotfoots.
He criticized the Urban League in Washington for having honored U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.
Thurmond had been nominated by a black former aide, now a talk-show host.
Wilder condemned the talk-show host, the Urban League or anybody else condoning the segregated past.
He read from Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam: Not only was Thurmond ``known as the most vocal obstructionist on civil rights in the 1960s and the 1970s, but he has opposed nearly every civil rights bill since to pass through the Senate Judiciary Committee.''
The audience gave Wilder two standing ovations.
The evening was not all grim. Wilder drew laughs as he joked about his set-to with a security guard at Raleigh-Durham Airport on March 7.
In the scuffle, Wilder apparently was throttled as he tried to check the guard's identity badge, according to news reports.
Wilder said he was attempting to explain that his trouser suspenders had set off a metal detector alarm.
``This time I took precautions,'' he said of his flight to Norfolk on Tuesday.
``I don't have on any suspenders,'' he said. ``I don't think I'll ever put them on again, or I'll walk wherever I go.''
My sympathy goes out to our former governor. It's exactly the sort of mishap in which I would become entrammeled - only worse.
Wilder is a handsome, distinguished, silver-haired personage along the order of a statesman.
Can you imagine what would have occurred had this wretched columnist become a suspect?
In an attempt to placate the law, I would have unhitched my suspenders with the idea of handing them to the guard so he could examine the brass snaps that set off the whole incident.
``See!'' I'd say, holding out the suspenders.
Whereupon my pants would fall down around my ankles.
A sea of blue uniforms would engulf me and bear me to the Raleigh or Durham jug ``to cool off,'' as they say when they've jailed somebody without due process.
Next morning on the newspapers' front page there'd be a picture of the wretch behind bars, headlined: COLUMNIST JAILED FOR DISROBING IN PUBLIC.
I'd put in a collect call to Norfolk Del. William P. Robinson and ask him to appeal to Gov. George F. Allen to intervene.
``Let him rot!'' the governor would say, not without justification. ILLUSTRATION: Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder drew laughs as he joked about his
set-to with a security guard at Raleigh-Durham airport on March 7.
by CNB