It’s a shame that Maine Governor Paul LePage adopted a black boy. What kind of education is that boy going to get when his father considers the NAACP nothing more than a “special interest” group that can “kiss his butt”? After all, all the NAACP did was invite the new governor to attend some events honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. When the governor declined those invitations the NAACP expressed disappointment.
Paul LePage, a newly elected Republican, is facing criticism from the NAACP for turning down invitations to events marking the MLK holiday on Monday.
“Tell them to kiss my butt,” the governor, who’s been in office two weeks, said in a local TV interview…
“They are a special interest – end of story,” he said. “And I’m not going to be held hostage by any special interests.”
He then appealed to the fact that he has an adoptive black son as proof that he isn’t a racist. Well, I don’t care if he is a racist or not, but his son deserves to know the NAACP’s venerable history.
The NAACP organized opposition to Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the federal government. They successfully fought to have blacks eligible to serve as officers during World War One. They fought for anti-lynching laws that southern Democrats successfully blocked in the years between the two world wars. They fought successfully to get the Supreme Court to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, one of the worst rulings in the history of the Court, by winning the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling that led to the desegregation of our public schools. They helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott. And they continued to be influential in the Civil Rights Movement until Jim Crow was finally dismantled.
The NAACP worked with Republicans and northern Democrats to win civil rights for blacks. If they have ceased to have much use for Republicans over the last forty-five years, the blame doesn’t lie with them, but with the Southern Strategy originally adopted by Richard Nixon. No one can blame an organization dedicated to the advancement of colored people for being “specially interested” in black people, but if there is a criticism that they’re too partisan and too aligned with the Democratic Party, the Republicans should take responsibility for it. It’s their fault.
But I doubt LePage’s son is going to learn any of that at home. And that makes me sad.
He then appealed to the fact that he has an adoptive black son as proof that he isn’t a racist.
A convetional tendency to use our kids as mirrors gets an ugly extra dimension here.
This is the type of ‘proof’ against racism that Lenny Bruce satirized in ‘How To Relax Your Colored Friends At Parties’.
To me, what’s saddest here is the use of his son as a prop.
“That Bojangles. Christ, could he tap dance!”
Right. Just brilliant.
100% in agreement. Boo fuckin’ hoo for those misunderstood repbublicans.
He’ll keep the popcorn commodity market busy. For those keeping a scorecard:
And now I look forward to finding which groups he will decide to meet that deserve the litmus test of “special interest.” Is not the purpose of any self-identified group inherently “special interest” — having a common purpose to meet certain goals?
I wonder if Palin started her governorship like this?
Well Maine isn’t Alaska, so this is going to be interesting.
More like Alaska than you think, at least away from salt water.
I had a rock the size of a cantaloupe put through the back window of my minivan …just after the ’04 election — it had anti-war, union, and pro-Kerry bumper stickers. My kids got Jew-baited off their school bus — I drove them to school the last three years before they got their licenses as a result. Neighbors reported the town plow driver regaling his friends with how many of that f*cking liberal’s mailboxes he could take out in a single winter.
This type of thing isn’t uncommon, west of the turnpike. Portland and the seacoast keep the state from being deep red.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."fascinating. Just adds to LePage’s assholery.
Would love to know the full story on all the crazy tea candidates that ran last year. Did Rove and/ or Koch bros recruit most/ all of them? certainly had to scrape the bottom of the barrel!
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“Their only hot water came from a pot on the wood stove in the kitchen. Their toilet was an outhouse for much of their childhood. Their parents, Teresa and Gerard LePage, slept downstairs on couches while the children slept in the two bedrooms upstairs, four or five to a bed.
But those material hardships, Moe LePage said, were nothing compared to the terror that sprang from their father’s violent temper. A heavy drinker, he once slammed Moe’s head against a table so hard that he was taken to the hospital for stitches.
His father also beat Paul. Moe LePage recalls that when Paul was 11, his father sent him to the hospital with a broken nose. Paul ran away from home and never came back.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I shudder to even think about what’s been happening to that child at the hand of this racist.
LePage is making use of the new thug style of governorship, pioneered by NJ’s Christie. They seem to think it’s a winning style, but so far it isn’t winning support in the home state.