Betty Winston Bayé: "Alvin [The Chipmunk] Greene's In A Boxing Match With No Gloves On." I'm LMAO.

Alvin Greene's in a boxing match with no gloves on
By Betty Winston Bayé

These are strange political times -- times when one may feel certain that the inmates have taken over the asylum. In South Carolina, Alvin Greene, 32, unemployed and unknown, captured 59 percent of the vote statewide in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat after hardly lifting a finger. Lacking yard signs, bumper stickers, campaign workers, telephone banks, advertisement and even a website, Greene was able to defeat party-backed Vic Rawl, a former judge and state legislator.

So how embarrassing is it for Rawl and South Carolina's Democratic Party to have been beaten by his guy?

Meanwhile, Greene has emerged as yet another laughing stock in the state whose sitting governor disappeared a while back, lied about his whereabouts and then resurfaced and confessed that he'd skipped to Argentina to be with his "soul mate," who just so happens not to be his wife.

Anyhow, Alvin Greene is now pitted against Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint, and analysts say that there's more chance of a blizzard in hell than of any Democrat being able to defeat DeMint. That certainly includes Greene, who in addition to his invisible campaign, was slapped with a felony obscenity charge for allegedly showing nasty pictures to a coed. Greene was poor enough to qualify for a public defender. There's also the mystery of Greene saying that he was "honorably, but involuntarily" discharged from the Army about nine months ago.

So how does a guy with no money and with all else that is going on his life scrape together more than $10,000 to get his name on the ballot? Greene says that he saved up the money, and a nationally prominent Democrat, U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, also of South Carolina, has said, in effect, "You lie!" Political hanky-panky is suspected, and there now are calls for an investigation into how Greene got the money to support his candidacy. But what could possibly be the motive(s) for anyone to put Greene up to running? Hmmm. Perhaps to turn the tables on Democrats? Might not Democrats who go after Greene, who is African American, risk, for example, alienating black Democrats and giving Republicans a little something to crow about, since it is the GOP that is most often painted as the party that's a home for racists and race-baiters?

As for Greene, he exhibits some characteristics that white supremacists are fond of seeing played up. For example, he hasn't gone to trial, but he has been accused of a sex-related crime, so he can be burdened with the old stereotype of black men as sexual predators. There's also the matter of how Greene conducts himself in interviews; he comes off as dim-witted, another stereotype that some people hold about black people.

My interest is inspired less by possible political shenanigans, because the political times are so mean, and more by a scenario that is so strange that I was moved by the sympathy and concern that South Carolina state Rep. Todd Rutherford seemed to show for Greene, who certainly has taken his knocks.

Though he believes that there's "a 90 percent chance" that somebody else put up the 10 grand for Greene to run, Rutherford shared in a phone interview his sense that Greene is more likely the victim of a hoax than some cunning, political perpetrator. "I feel like he's being exploited, like there's a joke going around and he doesn't get it," he said. "There are people who are making up T-shirts announcing that they voted for Alvin Greene. But it's not funny if he doesn't get the joke."

After seeing him interviewed, Rutherford and a colleague, state Rep. Bakari Sellers, wanted to personally meet with Greene. In that interview, Rutherford said that, before the sound was turned on, he read Greene's lips and he was muttering, "Can we not do this?" Later, "when I got to talk to him, it took two questions for me to get that feeling that something wasn't right.

"I know all the reporters down here, and when I walked back out, I said, 'Look, guys, we are having fun with this story, but he doesn't get it.' I know reporters like that gotcha moment, and you'll get it every single time with him and that's not fair. It's as if he's in a boxing match without any gloves on."

Rutherford also offered a brief tutorial on South Carolina politics, but especially telling was his comment that, "This is South Carolina, and we don't truly have an organized Democratic Party." As for the snickering that's been heard about black voters likely mistaking Alvin Greene for the Rev. Al Green, the Grammy Award-winning, soul-singing preacher, Rutherford said, "I talked to a white federal judge who told me that his wife and several members of his family also voted for Greene."

Moreover, just as Greene said, he did campaign. "He talked to one of my cousins and asked her to vote for him," Rutherford said. Greene also may have won simply because, Rutherford explained, "it takes a lot of money, probably half a million dollars, to get your name out there in rural South Carolina, and Vic Rawl didn't have that. I'd venture to say that he was saving his money to face DeMint in the fall."

In Greene's favor, though, is that whatever others may think of him, he is better qualified on paper than a lot of people in politics who lie about their military service and their education. Greene earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 2000.

Even so, after seeing Greene's on-camera interviews, a lot of people may suspect that he suffers from some mental impairment. If that's so, it begs the question of whether strange political times have left us addicted to spectacles -- the 15-minute wonders who just won't go away -- and to having a laugh at other people's expense. Potentially, there is far more at stake if some of these oddballs manage to get elected.

Betty Winston Bayé is a Courier-Journal editorial writer and columnist. Her column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum. Read her online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion.