Rev. LaSimba Gray: Racist and Anti-Semite

I missed this one. Jackson Baker at the Memphis Flyer reports on odious statements made by the Rev. LaSimba Gray:

The Rev. LaSimba Gray, a principal organizer of a multi-candidate forum held on Sunday night at First Baptist Church on Broad Street, made no bones about it in his introduction of the aspirants:

The forum was "to make some sense of the confusion that is taking place," Rev. Gray said. "All that we have fought for all of these years ... we could end up losing it this year." He went on: "Tonight's forum is to see if we can come to some sense of for whom we should vote. It may well be that, for the first time in 32 years, African Americans will be without representation in the U.S. Congress from West Tennessee."

"I've always represented African Americans," Cohen said in a passionate opening statement, which concluded thusly: "I ask you to vote for the content of my character and not the color of my skin, and you'll never ever regret it!" In answer to several questions and in his closing remarks, Cohen made similar statements, to general applause.

After the event, several of the other candidates expressed regrets, both to Cohen and to this reporter, that the racial issue had been brought up. In defending his approach, Gray acknowledged that Cohen had fairly represented blacks in the state Senate but insisted that his preference for an African-American candidate would be paralleled by Cohen in an election featuring a Jewish candidate: "If Steve Cohen voted, he'd vote for the Jew."

Yeah, the Rev's got that whole Christian thing down pat, I'd say.