Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is saying that he will stay on as Governor despite calls from across the Dem party for him to step down over the racist photo in his medical school yearbook and admission that he used blackface to imitate Michael Jackson 35 years ago. A poll released Saturday indicated that Virginians are evenly split 47% to 47% over whether or not he should resign, with African-Americans showing greater support for him than the general public by a 21 point margin, 58% to 37%. Northam's public statements promised to address African-American economic, housing and voting rights issues as his top priority as part of a "racial reconciliation tour."
Then Ralph had to go on CBS' "Face The Nation" and refer to African slaves as "indentured servants." He had to be corrected by interviewer Gayle King that these were slaves he was referring to. Later, Northam ridiculously claimed that a "historian" had told him the term "indentured servant" was more accurate. Such (white) servants were given their freedom after a certain amount of time working off their debt to their employer and were certainly not slaves, whose descendants were kept in slavery generation after generation. This man is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and his continued bungling will only increase legitimate calls for him to step down.
In his interview with King, Northam said in part, “I don’t have any excuses for what I did in my early life. But I can just tell you that I have learned. I have a lot more to learn." Lesson number one for him is you're not learning when you're talking.
(photo: Wife Pam Northam looks on nervously as Gov. Northam digs a deeper hole using mouth. Reuters)
2 comments:
I hate this crap. I hate politics these days, and I am fed up with everyone. It seems like a fifty-fifty split among his constituents to whether he should go or stay. If anything, he's not good on his feet. But he has to go. He just keeps saying terrible things and he lacks any skill at speaking off the cuff or answering pop questions. To me that says he diesn't know what he believes and he can't articulate the smart stuff.
He's a privileged white Southern man who can't peel the blinders off. Not a good man for the job.
donnah -- he's fortunate that he's got the distracting scandals of his Lt. Gov and to a much lesser degree his AG. It's looking more and more that he's going to try to ride this out and hope the focus shifts elsewhere. And, yes, he would help himself by shutting his yap and reading some books.
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