Publicly, as in nationally-syndicated TV. Specifically the Morton Downey, Jr. Show back in 1989. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the story, which had remained in the recesses of my brain until I read this article today. and it had a mind-meld mash-up with Black Lives Matter. A brief excerpt will suffice:
But in the decades before, it was an anchor to bind people – most often Black people –to be lashed across their bare backs for sometimes petty criminal offenses in the last state to reject the cruelty of such punishment.
On Wednesday, workers took a jackhammer to the eight-foot concrete post – considered, by some, a monument for government-sanctioned brutality – plucking it from its spot in the town’s celebrated center to be tucked away in a state warehouse.
Delaware was the last state to outlaw the whipping post–in 1972. Then-Gov. Russell Peterson had consigned the three whipping posts (one at each county prison) to mothballs in 1969. In 1972, the General Assembly passed a sweeping reform of the criminal justice code, thus officially outlawing the use of the whipping post.
Now for the story. The year was 1989. I was one of the Administrative Assistants for the Delaware State Senate Majority Caucus. The most racist members of the General Assembly and the Attorney General’s office got together to promote truly draconian expansions of Delaware’s drug penalties. The Senate Created the ‘Senate Committee To Combat Drug Abuse’, and put the most conservative members (and staff) on it. One of the ringleaders, Sen. Majority Leader Tom Sharp, pushed for, I’m not making this up, the reintroduction of the whipping post in Delaware. It’s right here in this article. Check out this quote from Sharp, and remember, this was 1989:
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Sharp, D-Pinecrest, said the public humiliation of a whipping would be a deterrent to drug crimes.
‘It’s too serious of a crime not to consider some kind of corporal punishment,’ said Sharp. Asked if a whipping would be in addition to a prison sentence, he said, ‘Hell yes. Put them in prison and whip them, too.’
That got the attention of the producers for the Morton Downey Jr. Show. Downey was a particularly noxious right-wing asshole who was the logical descendant of early UHF nutjobs Joe Pyne (Wilmington’s own!) and Alan Burke.
As for Downey:
Downey headed to Secaucus, New Jersey, where his highly controversial television program The Morton Downey Jr. Show was taped. Starting as a local program on New York-New Jersey superstation WWOR-TV in October 1987, it expanded into national syndication in early 1988. The program featured screaming matches among Downey, his guests, and audience members. Using a large silver bowl for an ashtray, he would chainsmoke during the show and blow smoke in his guests’ faces. Downey’s fans became known as “Loudmouths,” patterned after the studio lecterns decorated with gaping cartoon mouths, from which Downey’s guests would go head-to-head against each other on their respective issues.
Downey’s signature phrases “pablum puking liberal” (in reference to left-liberals) and “zip it!” briefly enjoyed some popularity in the contemporary vernacular. He particularly enjoyed making his guests angry with each other, which on a few occasions resulted in physical confrontations.
Tom Sharp wanted no part of this. He had no time for circuses. And little time for public speaking. But, he had a guy, a self-promoting guy who was all too willing to make Tom Sharp’s case for the whipping post on the Morton Downey Jr. Show, which was then being taped at superstation WWOR in Secaucus, NJ. That guy was Sen. Dave McBride, and he indeed went on the show and made the case for bringing back the whipping post. I know. I made all the travel and logistical arrangements (including dinner reservations), and, as dictated by Sen. McBride, I wrote a ‘thank-you’ letter to the producer, emphasizing McBride’s willingness to wax rhapsodic on any topic of the producer’s choosing. It was perhaps the most fawning and obsequious correspondence I had ever written on behalf of one of my bosses. In other words, it was really funny. It was too late for Dave’s return, though. By June of 1989, Downey’s 15 minutes of fame were over and the show was cancelled.
Since I started writing this post, my sleuth daughter discovered that McBride indeed appeared on a 1989 episode entitled “DUI And Unusual Punishment”, with McBride as the proponent for the whipping post, the ‘unusual punishment’. And a press release, probably written by me, previewed his appearance, and was picked up in the local media. If you have a subscription to newspapers.com, you can read all the stories in 1989 about McBride’s celebration of the whipping post and appearance on the show.
McBride didn’t only publicly support the whipping post bill (SB 60, 136th General Assembly), but he was the prime sponsor that same year of a draconian drug bill that established minimum mandatory prison time for second offenders. He consistently supported the entire package that led to the incarceration of a disproportionate number of minorities under the canard of ‘combating drug abuse’.
The whipping post wasn’t funny then, only 17 years after the state had finally outlawed it, and it’s not funny now. I am well aware that this post could be politically incendiary.
However, I would not have written this if I didn’t believe that every word is/was true. I wrote it because, in 2020, I believe that constituents in SD 13 deserve to know that their State Senator once made a public spectacle of himself on behalf of the restoration of public whipping. The public whipping of predominantly Black people.