I've stayed away from posting about the controversy over Virginia governor Ralph Northam's free-fall due to pictures surfacing of him in blackface or a KKK robe in a med school yearbook. The picture is despicable, and a med student is old enough to know better. To make matters worse, lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax has been accused of sexual assault by two women. The attorney general of the state also claimed to have worn blackface to imitate hip-hop legend Kurtis Blow. Predictably, this has led to mainstream media outlets pushing a narrative about (warning, Chris Cillizza post )the collapse of the Democratic Party in Virginia. For the record, Republican state senate majority leader Tommy Norment was editor of a VMI yearbook which contained racist content. Of course, VMI played a large role in the Confederate Army. Yonkers Boy James Comey, has indicated that the various racist scandals haunting Virginia are just the tip of the iceberg. Virginia has a long, sordid past as a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade, the CSA capital region, and a hotbed of segregation and Jim Crow laws. It is only recently that immigrants and Northern transplants such as my mother have turned the state purple.
With all that taken into consideration, the picture of Northam was revealed by a GOP ratfucking organization, the sort of outfit run by people who don't think Breitbart is nuts enough. While the picture is offensive, the whole sordid affair strikes me as a decapitation strike aimed at the state Democratic Party and an attempt to put an Republican in charge of the state. Northam's scandal wouldn't even cause a raised eyebrow if the man were a Republican. Republicans are only outraged about Northam because a Democratic politician didn't live up to the current standards of the Democratic Party. I'm of the opinion that the allegations against Fairfax are a lot worse than those against Northam, as they involve sexual violence. Currently, I'm of the opinion that Northam should tell those calling for him to resign to fuck off. In the meantime, the party needs to nominate more women and young people as candidates- the country really doesn't need more entitled aging 'bros' in positions of power.
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2 comments:
IKR? I put some money into the VA contests last year so my head's exploding. I was so encouraged that Dems were getting some traction.
Obviously there's a concerted opposition campaign going on here but still, truth is truth and we have to live with it.
Let's face it: Northam owes his election to the African-American voters of Virginia and they have every right to feel betrayed--I know I do and I'm white.
The question now is what's the best (or least bad) way forward and I just don't know what that is. I was willing to weigh in when it was just a binary choice between Northam & Gillespie but this is too complicated and nuanced for an outsider across the river.
As long as Virginia chooses to be represented in the US Capitol by a statue of a seditious, slave-owning general, it seems trivial to be outraged over a 35-year-old photo. Ralph Northam is a clueless numty about history, but he's on the right side of voter rights and a woman's right to choose, and in the imperfect world of politics, you take the best you can find.
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