The media was happy to go along with the idea that it is a big deal if a Presidential campaign hires a couple of bloggers to help them with their online communications and then it turns out that those bloggers have written or done things that are offensive to a segment of our population. Okay. It’s a big deal…I get it. A BIG DEAL. It’s worth segments on cable news and articles in the New York Times. People should be forced to resign, people should apologize. I understand. So, all you media people…we want to be consistent here, don’t we? It’s only fair to uphold these standards across the political spectrum, right? And the higher the position in the campaign, the more important it is that people that do offensive things apologize and resign, correct? So, if a blogger did something and that was a major story, it would be much more of a big story is the offenders were a candidate’s South Carolina co-chairman and his South Carolina campaign advisor, right?
Let’s start with Horry County Auditor Lois Eargle, who Duncan Hunter named to be his advisor. Here’s a sample of her offensive language.
The former county GOP chairwoman said an illegal immigrant with three children came to her office this week asking for free legal help for an abused child.
“I told her the best thing for her to do was to get back to Mexico,” Eargle said.
I think that is offensive to any thinking person, but especially to child advocates and…well…any thinking person. It’s just insensitive and appalling.
Let’s move on to Duncan Hunter’s co-chariman, Dr. Henry Jordan. Now, Mr. Jordan is not one of those Enlightenment types. We can see that clearly from the following:
An unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor both in 1996 and last year, Jordan said in May that science does not support Darwin’s theory that man evolved from monkeys. He said students should learn “intelligent design” along with evolution.
“I mean you’ve got to be stupid to believe in evolution, I mean really,” he told The Associated Press then.
Okay, he called me stupid. But that’s not all that offensive. But this is:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (May 16, 1997 12:25 p.m. EDT) — A state Board of Education member, talking Tuesday about displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools, had a ready suggestion for groups who might object to it.
“Screw the Buddhists and kill the Muslims,” Dr. Henry Jordan said during the board’s finance and legislative committee meeting. “And put that in the minutes,” he added.
The remarks made Tuesday were expunged from the written minutes, but were recorded on tape. The (Columbia) State obtained the tape under the Freedom of Information Act.
Jordan, a surgeon who failed in a bid to get the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 1994, said Thursday he thought the meeting was over and members were engaged in private conversation.
Now, I personally was offended when Duncan Hunter tried to explain away torture at Guantanamo Bay by giving the detainee’s menu:
California Congressman Duncan Hunter scoffs at the notion detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay are being abused.
On “Fox News Sunday,” he read from the detainees’ food menu, which included orange glazed chicken, fresh fruit and rice pilaf. He adds sarcastically that he sent for the menu “so that average Americans could understand how we’re brutalizing people in Guantanamo.”
Mr. Hunter tried to convince me it was okay to torture human beings as long as you served them orange glazed chicken and rice pilaf. I was not convinced. But, given that cavalier attitude towards human rights it isn’t all that surprising that he has surrounded his South Carolina campaign with an advocate of an Islamic Final Solution and a woman that show more interest in illegal immigration than protecting an abused child.
I assume the media will promptly ask Hunter to fire these people and demand that he apologize.