Monday, June 15, 2009

open mic night at the RNC

From NY Daily News:
Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."

Busted by South Carolina political blogger Will Folks on his FITNEWS blog, DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

Then he added, "The comment was hers, not mine," claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.

Yeah, I know, that's really ugly even for southern fried Republicans. And yeah, that's a pretty terrible apology.

Here's what I want to talk about, though: who was it that thought it was a good idea to get every GOP politician and stooge their own Twitter account? Seriously, am I wrong or is this perhaps the worst idea in electoral politics since McCain put Sarah Palin on his ticket?

Racism is a problem for the Republican party. A big problem. Racism is what gives them their stranglehold on the South, but it kills them everywhere else. Because of this, Republican speechwriters and campaign strategists have cooked up all manner of ingenious ways to give dog-whistle signals to the former segregationists and Dixiecrats that make up the party's southern base: "affirmative action," "welfare queens," sexual innuendo, speeches in Philadelphia, Mississippi on states' rights, etc. It's a subtle art, though; if people outside the privileged group catch your underlying meanings, you're in deep doodoo, so you don't want every Confederate cracker with a chip on his shoulder and a hood in his closet taking a turn at the GOP's microphone to do his best Jesse Helms impersonation, and you sure as s**t don't want to give them the opportunity to send unerasable, impromptu, unsupervised messages accessible to anyone with an internet connection!

Unless, apparently, you're the dumbass who thought Twitter would be the secret weapon in the great Republican electoral juggernaut of 2010. Macacas for everyone!

UPDATE: Already another one here.

UPDATE 2: And now an email. Maybe low-level southern Republicans should just stay away from writing.

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