Racism! And 2012

It’s like I’m writing for the Onion.  Apparently, Republicans are in a tizzy over Harry Reid being a racist.  I’ll explain:  A book that’s hitting the shelves today called Game Change quotes Harry Reid as saying in 2008 that Obama could have won the election because he was “light-skinned,” and spoke with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Which is iffy.  Granted, there’s a certain amount of realistic commentary to this point, as, like it or not, Obama probably would not have been as palatable to the white American mainstream if he’d spoken in more ebonics, or whatever the racially sensitive term is for African-American speech patterns is, but there’s no doubt that his choice of words was just awful.  It’s like the older white men in Congress don’t really get how to speak when they’re in a political position.  Or maybe scrutiny has just stepped up a lot more.

Point being, it was a stupid thing to say, and it will cost him some political capital.  He apologized to Obama, Obama accepted it, ta-da.

So the fuss that the Republicans are making right now has to do with Trent Lott, who in 2002 was the Senate Minority Leader, and said that he was proud of having voted for Strom Thurmond, and that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had won.  Thurmond based his platform off of a largely segregationist viewpoint.

Short Story:  Big uproar, Lott resigned his post as minority leader in the Senate.  Which I think is equally ridiculous.  First of all, the comments that Lott made were at Strom Thurmond’s 100th Birthday.  So they should’ve been written off as Lott kissing Thurmond’s wrinkly white ass.

The thing is, stupid comments are constantly made by congresspeople, and, depending on the severity of the comment, it’s usually not the best idea for them to resign based off of it.  Lyndon B. Johnson famously said that Gerald Ford couldn’t “fart and chew gum at the same time,” Obama dropped the F-bomb a few times on the campaign trail and called Kanye West a “jackass,” Cheney told God knows how many people to go F themselves, and so on.  Then there’s the stupid comments they make on a daily basis.

It’s usually not a reason for them to resign.  It wasn’t a reason for Trent Lott to resign (it would’ve been a reason for him not to get elected again, sure, but that’s up to the voters) from the Minority leader, and Reid making a stupid but true comment is not a reason for him to quit as the Senate Majority Leader.

Regardless, it’s an incredibly hypocritical move by the Republican Party, who have been beating Democrats over the heads with allegations of exploiting race.  It’s stupid, it’s politicking, and it’s irrelevant to the issues at all.  Ad hominem is the tool of the day, and it really doesn’t serve any of us.  At all.