LINCOLN DAY SPEAKER STRIVES TO AVENGE `LIES'

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Ken Hamblin fought racial injustice. As the Black Avenger in the 1990s, he fights the contention of some liberals that blacks can't achieve without government help.

"The Black Avenger," Hamblin said, "is an unassuming colored guy who one day woke up to the lies and misinformation that were spewed forth that said, because I am black I can't ever get ahead in America. It is wrong."

His mission as the Black Avenger, he said, is to avenge those lies.

Hamblin, host of a nationally syndicated conservative talk show, will speak at the annual Cape Girardeau County Lincoln Day dinner at A.C. Brase Arena Building Saturday at 6 p.m. More than 1,100 of the 1,200 available tickets to the event have been sold.

Blacks and other minorities, Hamblin said during a telephone interview Tuesday from his studio in Denver, Colo., are manipulated into believing they cannot succeed in American society. That, he said, gives the manipulators power.

Members of the Black Congressional Caucus and many other prominent black politicians, he said, understand this and use the message of victimization to solidify their power base.

"I'm part of the generation that made this a better country," the 55-year-old Hamblin said. "Now what I'm trying to do is take a great-big sledgehammer to break the myth that blacks have to live in Harlem or Compton."

During the Jim Crow era, much distrust between people of different color arose out of a lack of understanding, he said. Segregation precluded the opportunity for people to get to know one another, said Hamblin.

"When we come together at the symbolic water fountain, white boys or girls notice they are not attacked; black boys or girls notice they are not attacked, and myths begin to fall," Hamblin said.

However, without a disaffected class convinced the deck is unfairly stacked against them, liberals can't successfully achieve their goals, he said.

"You can't start a revolution if the peasants have hope when they go to bed at night," Hamblin said. "You can't get people to storm the Bastille under those conditions."

Conservative radio commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North are often branded as racists for making similar comments, and Hamblin is often slammed as a racist.

However, having risen from his roots in a poor area of Brooklyn, N.Y., to become one of the top radio hosts in the nation, Hamblin said he is a messenger who cannot be easily dismissed.

"Mine is a message that America works," he said. "Pick a better country."

Hamblin, a self-described Ditto Head, said he is looking forward to appearing in the hometown of his colleague, Rush Limbaugh.

"We're similar in that we both stand for the principle of holding people accountable for the things they do," he said.

He gives Limbaugh 90 percent of the credit for killing the national health-care-reform package endorsed by Bill and Hilliary Clinton, a package he dubbed socialized medicine.

"He's an expert Clinton-watcher and a politically astute American," Hamblin said of Limbaugh.

Hamblin, who makes only a handful of speaking appearances each year, said his approach in person is slightly different.

"I'm a much nicer guy whenever I'm in food-throwing distance," he said. "Equally passionate, but much nicer."

Hamblin's show airs weekdays on KZIM-960 AM from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.