The myth of the flying Oreos

Duck


Steele weighs in on the Oreo incident
Cookies, possibly intended as racial insult, were thrown as he left 2002 debate, he says

Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele offered a revised account yesterday of his experience at a 2002 gubernatorial debate where Oreo cookies were reportedly distributed as a racial insult.

Steele told the Associated Press that cookies were thrown in his general direction as he left the debate at Morgan State University, where he was a member of the audience.

"They fell on the floor; two rolled up next to my shoe," Steele said. "I remember turning to someone and saying, 'Anyone got a glass of milk?'"

The latest version of the story differs significantly from one offered last week by Paul S. Schurick, communications director for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., in response to questions about the veracity of the incident. Various versions have been given over the past three years, but some Democrats question whether cookies were actually tossed.

Schurick said supporters of former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend threw cookies at Steele when he entered the Murphy Fine Arts Building about 15 minutes before the start of the debate. Black on the outside and white inside, Oreos can be viewed as an insult against African-Americans perceived as abandoning their roots and community and aligning themselves with whites.

"It was raining Oreos," Schurick said. "They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there. It was very real. It wasn't subtle."
.........................

Several audience members who attended the debate have told The Sun that they saw no cookies.

"It didn't happen here," said Vander Harris, operations manager of the Morgan fine arts center. "I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal."

Two or a rain of cookies, which is it?

The mystery continues.

Too bad the GOP doesn't get that this doesn't make Steele look good in any way.

The stories make him look weak, and once again, he's attacking black people who deny the story.

Morgan State is an HBCU and they keep a fairly tight reign on that sort of thing. If people openly tossed Oreos at Steele and attended Morgan State, they would have been sanctioned in some way.

But the larger story is the widespread contempt blacks feel for the GOP, especially black Republicans. Steele was greeted with open hostility by a mostly black audience.

posted by Steve @ 12:01:00 AM