President wannabe sorry he said "tar baby"
That’s how this story showed up in CNN’s RSS feed today. When I first saw it, I thought it said “President sorry he said ‘tar baby’” and was prepared to do some serious WTFing — this would be a new low for him even after the crap he pulled at G8 — but relax, Dubya is still holding steady at “pervy Chancellor-grabber”, he hasn’t descended to total overt bigotry quite yet. And actually, the aforementioned “wannabe” hasn’t descended to total overt bigotry either… he’s just got a touch of the old “foot-in-mouth disease”.
“The best thing politically would be to stay as far away from that tar baby as I can,” [Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney] told a crowd of about 100 supporters in Ames, Iowa.
Unfortunately, an even better thing for him to do politically would have been to stay as far away from the phrase “tar baby” as he can. Some black politicians are pissed:
“Tar baby is a totally inappropriate phrase in the 21st century,” said Larry Jones, a black Republican and civil rights activist.
As far as I’m concerned, this is worse than David Howard’s “niggardly” incident, which was only an “incident” because people misheard what he actually said. Unlike Howard, Romney can’t claim total innocence because “tar baby” actually is a racial slur, and it is what he actually said. I wonder how the court of public opinion will rule.
