On Northam and the blackface photo: is there no statute of limitations?
I’m going to assume most of you are aware of the brouhah around a photo that appeared on Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page in 1984 that showed two young men, one in blackface and one in a KKK hood. Northam apologized deeply for the photo, which he originally claimed was of him, although he also said he didn’t know which one of the two he was. After near-universal calls for his resignation, today he’s changed his story to this:
…[Northam] will not resign…his spokeswoman said, despite mounting pressure to do so, and the embattled governor has told a top Virginia Democrat that he now believes it is not him in a racist yearbook photo…
Northam told the top Virginia Democrat he was in touch with some of his former Eastern Virginia Medical School colleagues since issuing the apology. Those former classmates said they believed many of the pictures in the yearbook were mixed up.
Northam did not recall the picture being taken, he told the source, and said he was not involved in the production of the yearbook.
I may be alone in thinking this explanation is actually a possibility. Northam sounds remarkably befuddled and unusually unable to come up with a coherent story to defend himself—maybe he should be resigning for that. But that’s not the point of this post.
Nor is the point of this post what you think about Northam otherwise; you may strongly detest him, because he is also the person who spoke in defense of a bill that was being considered in Virginia that might have made abortion legal right up to the point of birth.
Democrats are eager to get rid of Northam at this point, because he’s become a huge liability and there’s a far more politically correct replacement waiting in the wings, 39-year old lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, who is black. That way the Democrats get to turn an embarrasment—Northam—into a way to show how noble they are, and to put it all behind them (and to distance themselves from their earlier support of people such as Robert Byrd, for example). It’s all very practical; if they needed Northam to stay for some reason, I assume they’d get behind him no matter what he’s done. But they don’t need him.
However, I want to pursue a larger question, one that transcends party politics (or should, anyway), and goes beyond Northam himself and what you think of him: why care about someone’s racist prank at 24 when he’s now 59 and has a track record in all those intervening years, a record we can study and one that tells us who that person has been for most of his adult life?
Why go back to an obscure and relatively minor detail of a person’s young life and dig it up, and then punish that person for it while ignoring everything the person is now and what the person’s done since that silly insensitive and youthful move back when thoughtcrime wasn’t forever?
And I would say the same no matter what the party.
If Northam’s been a racist in recent years, discuss that instead. Or if there are other things about a person’s more recent record for which you think a person should resign—and in Northam’s case, there may indeed be—then stick to those.
And let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Northam (or any other person) actually had been a racist in his youth. And let’s say that decades ago he or she changed, and became a champion of racial equality. In other words, let’s say a person has a change of mind and heart—about that, or about any other topic. Wouldn’t that make that person okay, as long as the change is sincere and not faked? And couldn’t sincerity be proven by acts, by human interactions, and by the length of time all that good stuff has been going on since the time of the youthful unacceptable point of view?
Apparently not. Are we now at the point where it’s “one racist act, even if symbolic (a costume)—no matter how long ago and no matter how young you were—and you’re a racist forever, to be exiled from the world of public service or even polite society”?
How far back can we go with this? What if Northam had been 16? Would he be off the hook? I doubt it. What about if he’d been in that get-up at 10? At 5? What if his parents dressed him up that way as a baby? Where are the accusers willing to draw the line?
Writing this post made me think of someone I haven’t thought about in quite a while, George Wallace of Alabama. Remember him?:
With his coffin draped in the red and white flag of the state he dominated for three decades, former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was eulogized Wednesday as a passionate, talented man who later in life was not afraid to admit to the errors of his segregationist past.
“He knew both victory and defeat; he displayed courage; he endured pain. He experienced the roar of men’s applause and the shattering gun blast of despair,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, in his eulogy.
“He accepted God’s forgiveness when he confessed and repented of his sins. The result was that he was changed and became a man redeemed,” Graham said. “He received forgiveness from communities that once saw him as their enemy. The result was that he became a trusted friend.”…
Nearly 1,000 people crowded into Wallace’s funeral service at the First United Methodist Church…
Wallace’s open casket had lain in state since Tuesday in the Capitol’s rotunda. About 25,000 people filed past to pay their respects.
Many blacks were among those mourning a man who, at his first inauguration in 1963, had vowed “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” and later stood in a doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent two black students from enrolling.
In the years after he was shot in 1972, Wallace renounced his segregationist views, began reaching out to black voters and appointed African Americans to state positions.
At Wednesday’s funeral, a black pastor read Psalm 23. Two black National Guardsmen folded the flag on the coffin and presented it to James, who then presented it to the Wallace family.
“We have to learn to forgive and forget,” said Reedie Russell, a black worker at Maxwell Air Force Base who also came to the rotunda. “This was history being laid to rest.”
The olden days, 1998.
Of course you’re right but it’s past that point unfortunately because the left will NEVER live by these rules so if the right does then they are perpetually on the defensive.
It’s kind of like Ace’s ‘muhprinciples’ shot at all these high minded ‘conservative’ NeverTrumpers.
I wish we lived in that world (though I suspect we never did) but it’s no longer possible as long as the left goes after every little thing some Republican ever did.
How does he not remember his costume? They are pretty elaborate and he was an adult – in medical school.
Griffin:
I’m not even talking about politics, really. I agree with you that in politics, it would only make sense if both parties played by the same rules.
And unfortunately we are indeed way beyond what I talked about in this post. Can’t and won’t happen.
Apparently not. Are we now at the point where it’s “one racist act, even if symbolic (a costume)—no matter how long ago and no matter how young you were—and you’re a racist forever, to be exiled from the world of public service or even polite society”?
I had a (store-bought) devil costume for Halloween in 1968. Am I therefore from a family of Satanists?
Neo,
I definitely think in private life there should be a statute of limitations. But again this goes to the social media sickness because some thing is found out and then a bunch of anonymous twitter people come along and then some often random unknown person is fired and ruined.
For an elected office though I think it’s a little more complicated and what happens as an adult is arguably fair game.
What is perhaps most striking about this non-story is that it has engendered more hysteria within the Democratic Party and in the MSM than the obvious corruption of Senator Menendez, the truly scandalous behavior of Imran Awan, and the credible allegations of domestic abuse against Keith Ellison, to mention only the most egregious examples of misbehavior recently among Democrats.
And now he says he’s not resigning. I say good now he can be brought up every time the left invents some outrage.
What is perhaps most striking about this non-story is that it has engendered more hysteria within the Democratic Party and in the MSM than …
Perhaps that’s the aim?
Well the Dems are polishing their “holier than though” halos so that no one they oppose can have any perceived infraction of the “rules of oppression” and remain in society or in politics. The govenor? Had to burn the village to save it.
“Why go back to an obscure and relatively minor detail of a person’s young life and dig it up, and then punish that person for it while ignoring everything the person is now and what the person’s done since that silly insensitive and youthful move back when thoughtcrime wasn’t forever?”
Political opportunism. Who benefits from a Northam resignation? The folks making the most noise about it, Democrat leadership and office holders, in general, and the attractive Lt. Gov that checks all the right boxes.
Yes, is there no statute of limitations? We are all flawed human beings. Who among us has not done stupid/thoughtless things as young people? Things that at the time may not be considered racist or outrageous or wrong. There is no tolerance, no sense of proportion, no recognition that we are all sinners who need forgiveness and redemption. And what about the presumption of innocence? An old photo of costumes for a gag or a theme party 34 years ago becomes instant evidence of unrepentant racism? I’m sick of it. These vigilantes of destruction who try to destroy a person for something that happened 30 or more years ago are worse than vultures preying on helpless victims.
It should also be pointed out that he used the Race Card against his Republican opponent in a vile way. So, get the Petard out.
Plus 25 and just about to graduate from Med school means he was a fully functional adult. A lot of us by that age had been in the military and were adults.
I suspect that if the LT governor was not an ‘AA’ the left would close ranks and defend Northam. After all they defended Byrd for decades and he was an actual KKK member for many years.
Yesterday he was reported as acknowledging that he was one of the two people in the picture–just not saying which one was him. Later yesterday, it was reported that he thought that he wasn’t the one in blackface, so that he would have had to have been the one wearing the KKK costume.
Today, he says things from way back then are hazy (remember, he was a young 25 year old physician in training then), that he can’t remember the details of the picture–which he now claims to have seen for the first time just yesterday–being taken and, anyway, he is neither one of the people in the picture.
In addition, reports say that his nickname in Medical school was “Coonman,” which he also tried to incoherently explain away at a press conference today, as having been a nickname he didn’t choose, but was placed on him by others.
Said he, because his voice shifted higher when he talked, the original nickname people gave him was “Goose” but, for some unknown reason, his nickname was changed to “Coonman.”
He also admitted to using blackface when he participated in a “Michael Jackson” themed dance contest.
(Pray tell, why would someone choose this particular nickname for him?)
Unless, say, he was an avid hunter whose favorite game was Raccoon, his explanation ain’t gonna fly.
There was a Jeeves and Wooster episode in which the plot hinged on Bertie Wooster and his friends from the Drones Club performing as minstrels in black face.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0614731/plotsummary
Hugh Laurie played Bertie and still has a decent career as an actor. I suppose that could change.
Talk about ticking all the “progressive” boxes: In 2017, when he was running for the position of lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax referred to himself as “a proud feminist and the vice-chair of Planned Parenthood Metropolitan Washington Action Fund.”
So we’re supposed to be offended by someone dressing up decades ago as part of a – albeit tasteless – prank, joke or event.
Make no mistake. This is designed to take our attention off the Governor’s infanticide comments – which we are not to be offended by. Our Democratic/media betters understand that the majority of us out here in flyover country are disgusted by this ‘enlightened’ view, and the sooner they bury this story the better.
Fascinating to watch the left furiously pushing all these new individual state abortion rights/laws. Should Roe ever come before the Supreme Court, their argument will be ‘states rights’, yet Roe was passed holding the opposite viewpoint, that the federal government is all powerful in this regard. If not for double standards…
He’s in favor of infanticide when the mother desires it and he’s lying about the picture. No way upon graduation he didn’t look at his yearbook entry. If that wasn’t him he’d have raised a stink and would remember it clearly.
Hopefully, he continues to refuse to resign and becomes a useful tool against the Left. His current character is about as low as a politician can get.
No, this isn’t the world we want but it’s what we have. It would be a grave mistake not to hold the Left up to the same standard they impose upon the right. Let them first abandon it before we too return to a sane standard. Otherwise we play the patsy. They’ve ‘called the tune and must now pay the piper’.
I think the best two arguments in favor of his persecution are
– He called his opponent racist when running for governor. Karma.
– The Democrats are doing most of the dirty work here. Karma.
Successive leaders of the KGB presided over the trial and execution of their predecessors. It’s like that, dog eat dog.
While Neo makes generally goods points, in this specific case I’m with Lynn Hargrove. Gov. Northam chose to make vicious and bogus accusations of racism against his Republican political opponent only several months ago.
Who is behind the blackface/KKK attack and why? We don’t know, but two obvious choices would be some irate anti-abortion person or group on the one hand and the Virginia Lt. Gov. &/or a Dem group on the other. I lean towards the second one, because this late term abortion thing has mushroomed into a direct confrontation with existing anti partial birth abortion law, and believe it or not, literal infanticide.
In Delaware an abortion law was being debated and it became clear that they were attempting to legalize partial birth abortion. The very same thing that was federally outlawed in 2003 and later upheld by the SCOTUS. This was bad enough that the Dem. co-sponsor, Dawn Adams, of the Delaware law withdrew her support, laughably explaining that she hadn’t read it.
But the crowning insult was Gov. Dr. Northam explaining, in violation of all existing law including the proposed Del. law to which he referred, that
Notice how clever he is in not using the word kill or terminate in reference to an infant and U.S. citizen. A discussion would ensue. Please watch the whole video clip here.
In defense of Neo, her mischaracterization,
“because he is also the person who spoke in defense of a bill that was being considered in Virginia that might have made abortion legal right up to the point of birth.”
is the same one that’s all over the internet.
Concerning the actual proposed Delaware law, I suppose there is some question about exactly how the fetus/infant is killed in the moments before birth. If the fetus/infant is in the birth canal and a scissors is jammed into it’s brain, it’s a federally illegal partial birth abortion. If there is some other way to kill it in the uterus, maybe it’s not a PBA.
Not clear on what TommyJay means about Delaware. There may be a similar law being discussed or passed in Delaware, but Northam and Dawn Adams are Democrats in Virginia, where the law was proposed and then tabled.
Big League Politics first broke the blackface/Klan photo. Did they just go look at the medical school yearbook hoping to find dirt, or was it fed to them by someone? Why wasn’t this dragged out during the election campaign last fall, when Northam was calling Ed Gillespie a racist? Or didn’t anyone think of doing something like this before the Dems hauled out Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook and tried to pretend jokes about flatulence and beer were really about gang rape?
In general, a stupid stunt photo from 35 years ago should be forgiven if there is an apology. But Northam tarred Gillespie with the racist dirt, undeservedly, just last fall.
For clarity’s sake he was elected in November 2017.
But, yes I’ve got to believe somebody had this in their pocket and played it right now for some reason. After Kavanaugh and now this the school yearbook is going to be a go to item for the oppo research team.
Oh, thanks, Griffin. Time flies.
Sorry, I was confusing Del. (delegate) with Delaware. Very stupid.
To paraphrase a famous saying, What’s good for Justice Kavanaugh is good for the USA.
Too bad Northam, and please don’t go, we need you to wave in the face of the Dems.
The left will never stop pushing the envelope even though their usefulness in being the catalyst for change in society has long expired and the happy medium where society was the most harmonious and optimal with happiness, justice and prosperity being at peak has long passed. The left has to constantly manufacture fake issues in society to remedy to justify their existence.
Once they get late term abortion, next they will push for post birth abortion. When the insatiable left gets their wishes they will just keep finding new frontiers to conquer in their never ending quest to cure all ills in society, there will be no end to it.
You ask how far back can we go with this?
Since we’re starting to resemble the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution, maybe we can look to that period of hyper-political correctness for an answer. And the answer is – there is no statute of limitations. You paid for the sins of your fathers.
The left will only tire of destroying people for ancient indescretions when enough of their own have been consumed for similar sins. Until then, I say cram it down their throats.
Can anyone give me a real world situation where late late term abortion could be helpful in persevering life of the mother due to health issues. If babies could survive outside the womb after seven months, in the event that a mother due to health issues can no longer carry the baby to full term, why not just have a early delivery c-section to preserve both lives? Is c section a more risky procedure than abortion?
Once they achieve post birth abortion, it will be on to euthanasia to solve the social security and medicare funding problem.
Anybody remember Ezekiel Emanuel’s suggestion that 76 years of age was long enough to live?
Logan’s Run anybody? Maybe making the cutoff at 30 would be even more “efficient”.
These people are ghouls…straight up & straight from hell itself.
Their problem is going to come hard & fast when the lot falls to them to step up & take the bullet for the good of society…or whatever it’s called. When they reach that magic birthday or circumstance when they are deemed expendable…
And at this point…Northam is expendable. His party has told him so.
I personally hope he hangs in there…campaign ads write themselves.
I’m reminded of Javert and Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”. The world now seems to be overrun with Javerts. However, in the novel Javert has enough humanity to gain an insight which destroys him. The modern day Javerts are lacking.
“And let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Northam (or any other person) actually had been a racist in his youth. And let’s say that decades ago he or she changed, and became a champion of racial equality. In other words, let’s say a person has a change of mind and heart—about that, or about any other topic. Wouldn’t that make that person okay, as long as the change is sincere and not faked? And couldn’t sincerity be proven by acts, by human interactions, and by the length of time all that good stuff has been going on since the time of the youthful unacceptable point of view?” — Neo
I agree with the general proposition (believing that repentance is real and change can indeed happen — see above on Gov. Wallace).
But that invites the question: has Northam proven he has undergone a change, and that is sincere, by his acts and behavior? I don’t have an answer, because I never heard of him before last week, but there don’t seem to be a lot of people coming out to defend him.
I also wonder if his “racism” went any deeper than a stunt photo, but there isn’t anything coming out on that either. It’s as if the photo is the sum and substance of his entire life, because any complexity will blur the Narrative.
However, I’m with the Treehouse commenter on this one:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/02/01/photos-surface-of-virginia-democrat-governor-ralph-northam-wearing-blackface-or-kkk-outfit/
independentalien says:
February 1, 2019 at 11:42 pm
…When going on record supporting infanticide is only the 2nd worst thing to happen to you politically you’re having a bad week.
Alinsky: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Screw him. Let him rot. I don’t care. Because if he had been a Republican, he’d’ve been so skewered by this, beyond redemption.
In the normal course of events, I wouldn’t hold someone’s stupid college acts of thirty odd years against them. But we’ve come to this now, where every conversative is blasted over summer idiotic thing they may have done in passing when they were twelve: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” ad nauseum while they crawl on their knees miles over sharp rocks, dressed in a hair shirt.
Let someone on the left do it now.
Emmanuel was quite a ghoul.
It was he who was behind the ideas made concrete in the now eliminated “death panels,” that were part of Obamacare, which were supposed to determine what kinds of treatments the government would pay for, depending on your age and your contributions/value to society i.e. how many taxes you were paying.
Young people who were working were to have no limits on their care, the older and retired–not paying anywhere near the taxes they used to when they were working–were regarded as just “eaters”–burdens that did not pay for themselves–and would only be entitled to limited care, which would be reduced even more as they got older.
MWilliams on February 2, 2019 at 8:00 pm at 8:00 pm said:
You ask how far back can we go with this?
Since we’re starting to resemble the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution, maybe we can look to that period of hyper-political correctness for an answer. And the answer is – there is no statute of limitations. You paid for the sins of your fathers.
* * *
And so we pull down statues to Confederate army veterans.
But hey, the Muslims are still fighting each other over the Succession to Mohammed, and the West over their loss at the Gates of Vienna.
And don’t forget the 30- and 100-year-wars in Europe.
Personally, I think all feuds should be called off as soon as everyone who participated in the original “offense” (and it was only offensive to one side, remember) is dead. Now, if the descendants actively carry it on, the clock still runs until that particular play is over. But you aren’t allowed to use what somebody’s grandads did to your grandads to justify starting a new operation.
j e on February 2, 2019 at 3:55 pm at 3:55 pm said:
What is perhaps most striking about this non-story is that it has engendered more hysteria within the Democratic Party and in the MSM than the obvious corruption of Senator Menendez, the truly scandalous behavior of Imran Awan, and the credible allegations of domestic abuse against Keith Ellison, to mention only the most egregious examples of misbehavior recently among Democrats.
* * *
The corruption doesn’t exist so long as the perp is useful for some purpose (even if we really can’t fathom what that purpose might be).
The Left only dumps people whose liability outways their use. Franken, for instance, was sacrificed to #MeToo because they had another Dem on queue for his spot; same with Northam: they are interchangeable widgets, not real people.
This is the same psychological flaw that lets them attack people like Kavanaugh and others for “crimes” they never committed, and pay no heed to the personal havoc they wreak.
Which leads to the logical conclusion that they don’t consider any of the ethical, moral, and legal lapses of their team to be meaningful at all; which therefore indicates that they only decry Republican lapses (real or imagined) in a thoroughly cynical way.
Or, to extend the analysis, Dems aren’t at all disturbed by Northam championing infanticide – that’s a party plank that’s out in the open now – but they are disturbed that the right has drawn too much attention to his remarks, which the MSM failed to sufficiently hide. But, again, they can’t ditch him for the plank they all support, so they had to have some other excuse.
Hence the surfacing NOW of what had to have been well-known photos (I mean, didn’t anyone else in his SCHOOL that year have a copy?) because they give them a pretext that also panders to their hard-left wing (or is it fuselage now?) without tanking their abortion agenda.
The most disheartening observation: why doesn’t the GOP have anyone who can do opposition research of this most basic kind? Maybe in the past, they knew things like this and were too “civil” to use them (FDR, JFK); but having been kicked in the teeth by the Left for decades now, they ought to get over it.*
For instance, I was outraged that McCain threw away some of his strongest points against Obama: “Nobody cares about some old washed up terrorist.”
Well, I cared, a lot, because Ayers wasn’t washed up, he was a major Democratic figure and an “esteemed” educator — Obama should have been chained to him and both drowned in the waters of public indignation.
*Unless, of course, the perp has sincerely repented.
Which most of the entrenched partisan pols probably have not (Wallace had unique circumstances pushing his change.)
Aesop,
You never disappoint.
1. “…that invites the question….” [ Bless you!!! :>))) ]
2. “For instance, I was outraged that McCain threw away some of his strongest points against Obama: “Nobody cares about some old washed up terrorist.”
“Well, I cared, a lot, because Ayers wasn’t washed up, he was a major Democratic figure and an “esteemed” educator — Obama should have been chained to him and both drowned in the waters of public indignation.”
.
As for Dr. Zeke, what is this “ethics” upon which you presume to lecture your actual ethical superiors?
.
It seems to me that both the Emanuel brothers are severely ethically challenged.
“The most disheartening observation: why doesn’t the GOP have anyone who can do opposition research of this most basic kind? Maybe in the past, they knew things like this and were too “civil” to use them (FDR, JFK); but having been kicked in the teeth by the Left for decades now, they ought to get over it.*” — Me
Because Paul of PowerLine agrees!
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/virginias-inconvenient-governor.php
“It would also be interesting to know why Northam’s Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race, “Easy” Ed Gillespie and his campaign team failed to discover Northam’s med school yearbook. Probably because Gillespie is above searching for this kind of largely irrelevant (to the fair-minded) ancient dirt.
If Gillespie had uncovered the yearbook, he would probably be Virginia’s governor today. Republicans will have to learn to play by Democratic rules.”
However, I suspect that if Gillespie had been the one to publish the photo, the rules would have immediately been reversed, and high-school (oh, sorry — Med School –) hi-jinks would be totally not indicative of the candidate’s much higher current ethical standing, and far too old to be worth talking about. Kavanaugh who?
Where is Manju in this discussion? crickets, crickets
The left gets mileage out of claiming the right is racist and the right gets mileage calling out the left on their hypocrisy. The left keeps expanding the definition of racist (and sexist and homophobia etc etc) so there are more and more opportunities to call them out on their hypocrisy.
om,
Manju is busy trying to figure out how all this ties into Russian collusion and what Mueller is going to do about it.
Aesop: Right again. Re Gillespie, GOP, “dirt,” and Kavanaugh (but That’s Different!).
. . .
All: RFI for a cure to my ignorance as to why the ubiquitous references to “crickets.” I think of pleasant trilling sounds on balmy summer nights (I know they’re serious pests in some areas, but I’ve been lucky enough to have never experienced pestilential invasions). Thurber says they “look like a wrecked Buick.” And of course, Jiminy. Other than that, I’m flummoxed.
Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Julie,
I think the theory is you only hear crickets when there is silence.
Manju will show up in no time, when the evil media empire strikes back the millionth time with their next round of nonstop made up outcries against trump to distract the public attention away from all these recent bad publicity for the democrats (infantcide and the picture of a young future democrat paying tribute to the legacy of the party he would eventually join)
Watch mueller plays white knight saving the democrats again. Who’s going to be the next target of the neverending witch-hunt, don jr perhaps.
I am about the same age as the governor. I can tell you, without any shame, that I harbored at age 24 some ideas and attitudes that are politically incorrect today. Times change. We change with the times. To apply today’s standards to the behavior of stupid young people nearly forty years ago is not only absurd, it is wrong.
Are there any among us that did not do a few things in their youth that they would rather not have held against them today? And if there were such a saint, is that the person that you really want governing you and judging you? I don’t think so.
“I say cram it down their throats.”
Amen, Sven
Griffin, thanks for the intelligence. Couldn’t make heads nor tails of it myself.
I hate to say it, but we have to play by the ‘new’ rules or we may as well give up now. There’s no winning by playing the older way, no turning back. This is a fight for our Republic.
Like Rambo said, they drew first blood.
FWIW, I’m a believer in redemption, but the SJW/Twitter mob cares little for that.
To have to reach back 35 years to a dopey yearbook photo in order to prove someone’s racism suggests old-fashioned racism itself is gone from our society, for all practical purposes, or it would be in plainer sight. And, similarly, that as a political strategy, this accusation is at the end of its useful life, having reached such a desperate extreme.
So that is good news, I think. The corollary is that the newer in-plain-sight hatreds of Ilhan Omar and her ilk will soon get more serious attention. (I hope this corollary proves out soon! It does seem to be starting.)
An observation that relates to what I just posted. Two weeks ago, on the Sunday immediately preceding Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I attended services in a local church in Philadelphia where MLK was not mentioned once in 2 1/2 hours of service — except for a brief mention during announcements at the very end that gave a time for MLK Day of Service the following day.
A few years back when I attended a different church, Martin Luther King was discussed ad nauseam during that same Sunday (as well as quite a few other Sundays).
The difference is, the first church contained 400 black people and two white people. The second church contained 200 white people and two black people.
The other difference is that 2 1/2 hours of gospel service is shorter than 55 minutes of Episcopalian service…. : )
Another point about this “racism” issue is that the left has propagated the idea that somewhere about 1965 all the racists, who were previously Democrats, suddenly became Republicans. A few high-profile segregationists did make that switch, but by and large Democrats remained Democrats, racist feelings and all. That remains as true as it was then, hence all of this virtue-signaling.
If this guy was an R the left would have been all over this press conference and would already have dug up witnesses (real or fake, no matter which) to put the lie to the governor’s awkward explanations. Has the right done this? Gone out trolling for witnesses? I haven’t seen that. Fresh witnesses seem to be key to keeping a story alive. (See, e.g., Kavanagh.). But that’s not what the media and the left (BIRM) want here.
I think the presser was to provide Northam and the Dem Party with some cover before he makes his exit. Then instead of him being the governor who resigned because of racist yearbook photos he’s the governor who resigned despite his innocence so that Virginia can “move forward.” All this to create a CYA talking point. But it must work because they do this coordinated CYA dance all the time.
Long way around to observing that the identity card is going to continue to be dealt by the left, it will never stop because it’s all they’ve got. So expecting the right to not point out the hypocrisy on the left is unreasonable and even counter-productive to the goal of ridding politics of stupid identity hang ups. It should a uncomfortable for the left!
This will haunt Gen X throughout the course of our lives, or at least until the Red Guard phase of American existence burns itself out. I cannot imagine how many millions of us have photos in high school and college yearbooks doing things that seemed stupid and funny in 198x but which, if not today then tomorrow after something new is deemed “offensive” by the left, would ruin a career. Have any of you actually watched any 1980s movies lately? Listened to many 1980s songs? There was stuff that was ordinary life then, that would cause shock now; and stuff that was routine if tacky fodder for laughs would cause mass-fainting today.
In this case, I don’t know the governor, but knowing us, I suspect this was a stupid, innocent gag that no one would have imagined could destroy someone 40 years later. The Democrats won’t stop; we’ve let them have this tool, and let it work for them. If we now convince ourselves that we need to do it too, and clap and cheer when the Democrats skewer their own, this just grows and grows. A lot of people will get hurt.
The party of Eugenics has come full circle.
In case AesopFan hasn’t already referred to this morning’s Powerline
“POSTED ON FEBRUARY 3, 2019 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN ABORTION
OUR CALHOUN MOMENT
The internal logic of the uninhibited abortion regime has resulted in a sacramental and/or positive good view of abortion. Before the revelation of his medical school yearbook photo display embarrassed Democrats, Governor Northam extended the cheery view to infanticide. Democrats want him to disappear and take the inconvenient questions he inadvertently raised with him.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/our-calhoun-moment.php
Except that the progressive may not have a problem with infanticide, after all, a woman must not be a “slave” to …… (biology or morality).
Constantly calling someone else racist doest make your target racist or you not racist. In contrary history tells us the people who would brand others as racist so casually are usually racist themselves. that should be common sense that requires no mention, that is why the left is so eager to destroy common sense by taking over the school system and indoctrinate our children with their nonsense.
Children should know not to take candies from a very nice stranger who keeps saying nice things about you or telling you things you like to hear, he is usually someone with ill intentions who want to lure you near to do you harm.
The internal logic of the uninhibited abortion regime has resulted in a sacramental and/or positive good view of abortion.
They expended two strategic shots to obfuscate the seminal pro-life (i.e. life deemed worthy) assembly and message. Their first shot failed to abort or otherwise maim their target, who was resuscitated through their own incompetence, their target’s good character, and the people standing with him. Their second shot was critical to avoid a persistent label that would associate their “wicked solution” (i.e. Pro-Choice or selective/recycled-child) with one-child and other “final solutions.” So, now they are left without their primary diversity “cannon” and their secondary human rights “scalpel” to paint their competing interests. This is a critical time for people who oppose color judgments (e.g. racism), summary sentences and baby trials, and cruel and unusual punishments of wholly innocent human lives (in their early evolution) for social progress, convenience, and other causes.
I live in VA and I find this hilarious. Nothing more fun than watching the democrats get hoist on their own petard. They are always calling people racist and they are having hysterical fits over this. Former VA democrat governors are calling on Northam to resign. I’m now waiting for women to come forward telling how they went to parties and there was Northam in blackface or his KKK robes.
Membership in the outrage mob is about to get expensive.
I note the story out today listing the recipients of the first 50 preservation (of evidence) letters sent out by the seven man legal team working for Covington student Nick Sandman, and there will apparently be more.
Among the recipients–the New York Times, Elizabeth Warren, CNN, Maggie Haberman. Rep. Ilhan Omar, Savannah Guthrie, and many others–see full list in article linked below.
I’d imagine that those served will now have to hire lawyers, start paying high legal fees, and chew up a lot of their time with legal matters.
Good for Sandman. About time someone struck back–I hope “twice as hard.”
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/02/covington-lawyers-send-legal-notices-to-over-50-media-orgs-politicians-and-celebrities/
The bar to prove libel and slander when you are a public figure or celebrity is set so high that few who are slandered even try to sue.
However, as one commenter on another site pointed out, the bar for proving libel and slander will be a great deal lower for someone who is a minor, and who is not a public figure or celebrity.
Snow,
I certainly hope so. (Although I imagine nearly all of them already have closetsful of lawyers on retainer.)
Julie near Chicago–
Yeah, but it looks like many on this list are unknowns (at least to me)–and some of them are probably U-turn adults–keyboard commandos–living in their parent’s basements.
For them, I’d imagine, this is gonna leave a mark.
Neo,
Your idea of a “statute of limitations” on such things suggests that you believe rules ought to be consistently applied.
Now, that’s only to be expected: You, Neo, are morally sane.
But, please, let’s not pretend that leftists are! They aren’t morally sane, and aren’t remotely interested in consistent application of rules.
Indeed, one of the unifying dogmas of leftism is the belief that “Rules only exist as tools for acquiring or exerting power over others. The application or interpretation of any rule, on any occasion, is conditional: It depends solely on whether it helps us acquire or exert power. A rule which reduces our power, or obstructs our ability to exert it against the other, is to be repudiated with prejudice — on that occasion. But on the next occasion, the question of whether to apply that rule, and how it ought to be interpreted, will be re-litigated from scratch, once again using power as the sole criterion.”
Incidentally, definitions of words are a subset of the category “rules” in the leftist mindset. Applying the above system to the defining of words yields the following:
“The definition of any word, used on any particular occasion, is whichever definition helps us acquire or exert power. Any definition which reduces our power is automatically repudiated with prejudice — on that occasion. On the next occasion, the process of defining that word is restarted from scratch using the same criteria under new circumstances. Consequently, the new definition may be the same as the prior one, or utterly different. It might even be the definition which was previously repudiated, if that is what helps us acquire and exert power. Power is the only unchanging criterion.”
I defy anyone to look at the record of SJW moral panics, or Democrats’ litigation of close elections, and not see exactly that pattern at work.
What lesson ought the right to derive from this?
Simply this: One cannot negotiate with leftists as a whole, or with most leftists individually. Much like Islamists, leftists’ ideology requires them to practice taqiyya: They congratulate themselves for lying to any non-leftist, provided that lie gives power and advantage to leftism.
In particular, if a leftist makes any agreement with a non-leftist, he will redefine the terms of that agreement after-the-fact, or disregard it entirely, whichever grants him the most power-advantage. This generalization applies especially to the application or interpretation of the Constitution, the laws of the land, and the process laws intended to guarantee election integrity.
And it also applies to whether, on any given occasion, a public figure’s prior “indiscretions” result in an indulgent chuckle or a Goebbels-esque vituperation.
Why, then, ask how long the “statute of limitations” on “indiscretions” is?
You’ll get no more answer than Josef K. did, when he wanted to know of what crime he was accused. The question is meaningless: No rule really matters, to those only interested in exerting power.
Kate
Another point about this “racism” issue is that the left has propagated the idea that somewhere about 1965 all the racists, who were previously Democrats, suddenly became Republicans. A few high-profile segregationists did make that switch, but by and large Democrats remained Democrats, racist feelings and all.
The narrative is that the South turned Republican as a result of Goldwater’s 1964 vote against the Civil Rights Bill. The facts inform that the big switch towards Republicans in the South occurred in the 1952 United States presidential election, when Eisenhower got 48% of the vote in the South. In addition, Goldwater got a lower percentage of the Southern vote in 1964 than Eisenhower did in 1956. So much for the “Southern Strategy” narrative.
Regarding segregationists turning Republican, consider the case of Strom Thurmond who ran as a Dixiecrat for President in 1948 and did become Republican. It turns out that his behavior and policy towards blacks was better as a Republican than when he was a Democrat.
In late 1970/early 1971. Strom hired Thomas Moss to his staff. As Thomas Moss was black, this made news. Strom Thurmond was the only white Senator from the Deep South to hire a black staffer, at a time when only 11 other Senators had black staffers. Of those 11 other Senators, one was black – Edward Brooke- and one had a Native American wife- Fred Harris.Jet Magazine: March 18,1971
Note that the only Senator from a former Confederate state who had hired a black staffer previous to Strom Thurmond was Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. As Lloyd Bentson was from the Rio Grande Valley and was the grandson of Danish immigrants, he didn’t come from the same segregationist background that Stom Thurmond did. In addition, Bentsen, newly elected to the Senate in November 1970, hired a black staffer a month or two before Thurmond did.
As Strom Thurmond was at the time the only white Senator from the Deep South to hire a black staffer, he was probably also the first white Senator from the Deep South to do so, as it is rather unlikely that a white Senator from the Deep South hired a black for his staff before the end of Jim Crow era in 1964.
Recommended:
The Myth of the Racist Republicans.
Southern Whites’ Shift to the GOP Predates the ’60s
Right, Gringo. And here in North Carolina, even Jesse Helms, who definitely started in politics as a segregationist, had, by the end of his tenure in the Senate, black staffers and a good record of courteous and helpful service for black constituents.
I didn’t think Al Franken should resign – and I dislike him.
I don’t think Northam should resign for the yearbook picture or his dance contest makeup. He and the murderous Virginia legislators who would allow infanticide should resign for their stance on that issue
The Dems have so many Rep “scalps”, and have done so much attacking, that it would be foolish for Reps to want to ignore early history of currently famous Dems.
The Dem media, and Dem academia “make the (cultural) rules”, and Dem deep state are (selectively) applying the actual laws.
The USA needs more conservative Reps to get elected, get law enforcement to be the same for both sides, and get more Reps hired as professors at tax-exempt colleges.
The double standards in culture comes from the open secret discrimination against Republicans and pro-life folk at colleges. Such places don’t deserve tax exemptions.
Very nice tribute to Gov. Wallace. He was also the last “third party” candidate for Pres. to get electoral college votes. He helped Nixon get elected in 1968 by siphoning off white racist votes against Dems in the South.
Most Americans have forgotten, if ever they knew, of Wallace’s repentance from racism and that his repentance was sincere enough that blacks forgave him.
I remember picking up a newspaper in a restaurant and noticing a photo of Wallace in a wheelchair receiving an award from a group of blacks. It was a Twilight Zone moment. I wondered what reality I had somehow wandered into.
George Wallace was the real deal when it came to Southern racism. That he changed and healed his relationship with blacks is an astounding, blessed thing. That blacks were capable of forgiving him is also an astounding, blessed thing.
Sadly I don’t think such repentance and forgiveness is possible today, which is the point, I take it, of neo’s post.
“In Northam’s defense he may have just been racist back in medical school when he was learning medical ethics and forming opinions on which children should die.” @JeremyMcLellan
Huxley, both Strom Thurmond and George Wallace have a varied history when it comes to race relations. In their early years in politics, Judge Wallace and Governor Thurmond were not race-baiters.
When he was Judge Wallace, George Wallace had earned a reputation for treating blacks fairly. In 1958, he lost the Demo nomination for governor to Patterson, who was quite the race-baiter. George Wallace swore he wouldn’t be “out-N#$%” again. Wallace became a race-baiter because it would win him votes. When blacks could once again vote, race-baiting became a losing proposition. Say what you will about George Wallace, he was not a stupid politician. I heard him speak once.
Strom Thurmond’s record as Governor of South Carolina in the 1940s is somewhat similar to that of Judge George Wallace.Wiki: Strom Thurmond.
This was the Dixiecrat candidate for President and the filibusterer against Civil Rights Bills!
Similarly, when blacks could vote once again, Strom Thurmond decided he needed to change. Since he wasn’t a hard core racist to begin with- as shown by what he did as Governor- the change wasn’t that difficult.
Here’s an intriguing excerpt from a jam-packed 1976 lecture by Hermann Kahn, which he gave to after-hours group in the Governor’s Council Room during Jerry Brown’s first outing as Governor of California.
Herman Kahn gained fame as the futurist who wrote “Thinking about the Unthinkable” about nuclear war. Stanley Kubrick based his Dr. Strangelove character in part on Kahn in the film of that name.
Kahn: Now let me test your skill as politicians. There’s a certain individual in American political life from roughly 1967 to about 1973 whom something like 80 to 90% of the American people claimed they admired for speaking out on the issues of their lives that bothered them the most. Now 80 – 90% is a pretty high percent, right? So you ought to be able to know this individual. How many people know, with a reasonable degree of confidence, who I’m talking about? Yes?
Voice: George Wallace.
Kahn: I’m going to hate you the rest of your life. Normally, with audiences like this, you can really squeeze them. You can say, “Come on, you must know who 80 to 90% of the American people know.”
This is not necessarily a good thing. Eric Hoffer commented upon it by saying, “There’s something sick about a country in which only a southern racist cracker can deal with the issues.” Now that’s a fair statement. That’s an indication of social malaise, among other things.
–“The New Class,” CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring, 1977.
In hindsight Herman Kahn stands as the best of the sixties/seventies futurists. He was the only one who then predicted a coming long prosperous boom for humanity, while everyone else was predicting mass calamities and death.
Gringo: I would never say George Wallace was a stupid politician. Likewise, Willie Brown per recent discussion here.
As a Southern kid in the sixties and early seventies, I remember Wallace’s racist stands as in his 1963 inaugural address: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
That’s kinda hard to balance against anything else.
Still, thanks for drawing my attention to his earlier history.
You ask “Are we now at the point where it’s “one racist act, even if symbolic (a costume)—no matter how long ago and no matter how young you were—and you’re a racist forever, to be exiled from the world of public service or even polite society”?”
Are you serious? We have been at that point for some time now. Them’s the rules. I don’t particularly like them, for reasons you quite capably enumerate. Despite all my white privilege, I had remarkably little input in making them. The one thing I will do is insist they be applied evenly. Thus, as to Northam, hang him high (metaphorically speaking, of course).
Does anyone here really know the full, legalistic language of the 1965 Civil Rights Act? I do not, and suspect very few do.
I do know that LBJ had George Wallace up to the White House a few days before the Act became law, and told Wallace that with its passage the Democratic Party “would own the niggers” for generations.*
Perhaps there were some constitutional issues in the Act that gave Thurmond pause. Perhaps. He was not a stupid man while in his prime.
——-
* See Stephan Lesher’s thorough biography, “George Wallace: American Populist”, published 1994.
om on February 3, 2019 at 12:25 pm at 12:25 pm said:
In case AesopFan hasn’t already referred to this morning’s Powerline —
* * *
You beat me to that one, although I found it very interesting and think his analysis of the situational analogs may be correct. There are lots of complexities in the run up to the Civil War, and a hardening of extremes was one of them.
So, ICYMI 😉
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/why-democrats-will-oust-gov-northam.php
“Third, and the main point of this post, Democrats are going to make sure Northam steps down. They have to for a simple reason: the Democrats’ main tactic nowadays is to accuse all Republicans of racism. If they give Northam a pass on this, it blunts their favorite attack. They can’t afford to give up this weapon because it is central to their long-term electoral strategy, which is to divide Americans between white and non-white populations, and pit them against each other. What else is the purpose of the whole leftist campaign to demonize “white privilege,” and the growing number of “whiteness studies” courses on campus whose focus is that white people are the focus of evil in the modern world? So Northam is acceptable collateral damage for the long-term interests of the party.
The evidence for this point accumulates steadily.”
Probably old news to lots of you by now, but Northam wasn’t outed by the Democrats, unless someone is feeding things to the “right-wing conservative website Big League Politics” — which isn’t unbelievable, as false-flag operations are endemic in espionage and politics.
A round-up of stories on the history of The Photo:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/man-claiming-to-be-virginia-governors-old-roommate-remembers-northam-wearing-a-different-costume
https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/02/carr-northams-racism-newest-shame-for-sanctimonious-dems/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/northam-yearbook-photo-was-unearthed-by-outlet-associated-with-white-nationalists/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/02/conservative-author-pundit-dan-bongino-i-was-sent-northam-blackface-pics-in-october-2018-video/
Third, and the main point of this post, Democrats are going to make sure Northam steps down. They have to for a simple reason: the Democrats’ main tactic nowadays is to accuse all Republicans of racism. If they give Northam a pass on this, it blunts their favorite attack. –Powerline
I agree with this analysis but if Northam won’t step down voluntarily, who will push him and how?
It looks like Northam has decided to ride things out instead of allowing himself to hounded out like Al Franken.
Tangent: Jussy Smollett has doubled down on his outrage and truthfulness. Meanwhile, his story has become more difficult.
The police have found no more evidence beyond the two dark figures taken from grainy surveillance footage, whom some say show the pair walking away from the attack scene before it occurred.
Smollett will still not allow the police to examine his phone or even his phone records.
Apparently, Smollett managed to hold on to his Subway sandwich and phone while talking to his manager and fighting off two attackers. He also did not have a broken or fractured rib.
What that fight looked like and how his attackers managed to spill bleach on him (still not verified) and hang a noose around his neck in sixty seconds (determined by the time he was out of camera range) is hard to imagine.
So, the story gets iffier, but it’s hard to prove the attack didn’t happen as Smollett claims. Without some fuller video emerging, as with the Covington boys, it seems Smollett can stick to his story and he will be believed by those who wish to believe America and MAGA hat wearers hate gays and blacks and will attack them with physical violence.
Well Northam could always go to work as the Chief Pediatrician for Planned Parenthood if he does step down. /s
For the PC perpetually aggrieved SJW’s there are no time limits depending upon which side of the spectrum one is on.
A 2017 article on the blog “This Ain’t Hell” **quotes Northam as saying, “I witnessed the damage these guns (assault weapons) can do firsthand as an Army doctor during the First Gulf War.”
It is now being reported that anti-gun Governor Northam also lied about assault weapons, and his experience with the casualties they caused during Desert Storm. ***
Not directly, but by using very weasely phraseology to give the impression that he had first hand experience with the damage, when he treated victims of “assault weapons” from Desert Storm.
Only problem?
Northam was a pediatric neurologist, stationed in Germany at the Army’s Lundstuhl Hospital.
During Desert Storm though, according to the article linked below, it was the Army’s 97th General Hospital at Frankfort that was the primary hospital treating the casualties from Desert Storm.
What are the chances—as a pediatric neurologist—and at Lundstuhl, that Northam would have been called on to treat adult servicemen, who might have been injured by “assault weapons” during Desert Storm?
** See https://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=73065
*** See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/02/more-lies-democrat-gov-northam-fabricated-his-desert-storm-war-experiences-in-2017-campaign/
Given their past performance, I assume that members of the MSM were quite well aware of all sorts of Northam “baggage,” but didn’t publish anything about any of it, in order to make sure that Northam had the best possible chance of winning the governorship in Virginia.
Neo- you are too soft on Northam. There is video evidence that he still is racist — he refused to shake hands with a black opponent in a campaign debate. Not sure of the date.
But it doesn’t even matter, the Dems attacked Kavanaugh on an alleged event when he was 16-17, and Nick Sandman from Covington Catholic also 17. Since conservatives are finally learning Alinsky’s Rule #4 — the Dems now have to suck it up when their own rules are applied to them.
Delilah:
I am in agreement that the Democrats should play by their own rules. Of course, they don’t. And the MSM doesn’t make them, nor do the voters.
However, I doubt very much that the reason Northam refused to shake the hand of his black opponent had anything to do with racism. It’s not even logical to say that it does, except as a tactical jab and cheap shot.
Do you really think that every failure to shake the hand of a person belonging to a minority is racism? And what if Northam is shaking the hands of plenty of black people? Do you really think Northam would have been elected governor if he was going around Virginia refusing to shake the hands of black people? Do you think that behavior would have escaped everyone’s notice till now?
Want to see plenty of shots of Northam in fairly close contact with Fairfax, his lieutenant governor? Just as examples, see this and this.
And then there’s also this and this.
Snow on Pine:
Is it possible that some Iraqi children who were victims (collateral damage) were brought to the hospital where Northam was stationed?
Well well well. I followed Neo’s link to the gallery of photos resulting from her Google search (penultimate “this” link at 6:11 pm).
Some of these have captions that positively shriek “Northam wayyycisss!”
One such is a set of side-by-side photos of Northam and one E. W. Jackson, who apparently has some Negro ancestry, and who (per the Canada Free Press in 2013) accused Northam of racism. The caption reads, “Alveda King Calls Out Ralph Northam on…” and links to charismanews.com, which takes us to another 2013 story on the Jackson complaint.
Since Miss King has given every indication that she’s not on the Racism bandwagon, I wondered what that caption referred to. Glad I did. I searched on the string (with quotes) “Alveda King” “Ralph Northam” and turned up various results beginning with the caption above. One is from PJ Media today, “Alveda King Calls on Ralph Northam to Drop ‘Ku Klux Klanish’ Abortion Laws,” at
https://pjmedia.com/video/alveda-king-calls-on-ralph-northam-to-reverse-ku-klux-klanish-abortion-laws/ .
(This is a straight text posting, with the option of hearing rather than reading it.)
The first few paragraphs:
. . .
Speaking of which. At the bottom, there’s a link to another PJ Media story from last June:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-tried-to-shut-down-a-pro-life-roe-v-wade-film-with-martin-luther-king-jr-s-niece/
which begins:
Neo—Given Democrat’s treatment of Republicans–across the board, their refusal to give any Republican the benefit of the doubt and, particularly, the campaign that Northam ran against his Republican opponent Gillespie, accusing him of being a racist, Which featured one of the most vicious, diabolical political ads–quite a piece of agitprop **I’ve seen in a long time, I see no reason to give Northem the benefit of the doubt on this issue.
** See https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=35&v=KUC0e1Bm1r0