This is just appalling.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kempter was the keynote speaker at an American Legion-sponsored Memorial Day event in northeast Ohio.
Video of the event from public access channel Hudson Community Television shows the microphone cutting out, Kemter tapping the microphone and then asking someone to address the sound problem. Kemter can be seen continuing on with his speech without the microphone.
"I assumed it was a technical glitch," Kemter told the Washington Post.
That’s certainly within the realm of possibilities. Technical difficulties happen all the time. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times mic issues have come up in events that I’ve been to. It’s no big deal, right? No, it’s actually a BFD.
The speech was at Markillie Cemetery in Hudson, nearly 15 miles northeast of Akron, Ohio. According to the American Legion of Ohio release, the event organizers asked Kemter to change parts of his speech before the event."Mr. Kemter did not adjust his speech and showed the speech to a Hudson public official, who advised Mr. Kemter to leave the speech intact," the [news] release said. "These events culminated in Mr. Kemter's microphone being shut off by an unknown person during the portion of the speech event organizers requested be changed beforehand."
Yep, they just said the quiet part out loud. They fully admit that they asked him to take out references to the historical impact that black Americans had on Memorial Day. Nothing ambiguous there. Full on white power.
"This is not the same country I fought for," Kemter added.
You can say that again. And you’ll probably have to.