RIP Nelson Mandela

One man's tyrant is another man's patriot.

 

He took help wherever he could get it.

 

I don't know what this means.

I tried to make the point, and Keller makes the same point, that allying with the Communist Party in the early '60's made practical sense.

But, Mandela's embrace of Castro and Gaddafi lasted well beyond the point where they could provide any "help" to him.

 

On my NBC affiliate I just saw Lester Holt outside of Mandela's house as he was getting ready to do the news. He had NO IDEA he was on the air. He was just chatting it up with someone off camera, then one of the non-talent people on the set with him leans into the camera and they both started raising the roof and generally yucking it up. There was no audio. It went on for a good 20-30 seconds.

Did that just happen on my station or what that network wide?

 

Hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans don't give a shit.

 

Where do you rank Mandela on the list of most influential people of the 20th century?

 

South Africa's treatment of blacks was equivalent and often-times much worse than how we did it here in the U.S. for 200 years.
Thank God for Nelson Mandela, Dr. King and all the other heroes who stood up and were heard as voices and influential agents of change.
Rest in peace, brave one.

 

I was wondering.... could Martin Luther King, Jr. ever been elected president in the US the way Mandela was in South Africa?

 

Not in his time.
He'd have been too old once it became possible here.
Countries on the continent of Africa have such an unbalanced race demographic, compared to the USA, which helped it be possible for Mandela.

 

He would have had a lot of enemies in a lot of high places, and I'm fairly certain there was enough stuff in his background that would have torpedoed any attempt. Not that those negate the things he did accomplish, of course, but in an election environment, no chance.