BEN SMITH OF POLITICO REMINDS US that with the magic of enough money, any problem can be solved. Breathing room, wheee-eewww!!
MEANWHILE FOR THE REST OF US, Jon Stewart comments:
Of course Rick Perry addressed this issue before in his book:
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TBogg on Perry’s latest predicament:
And by go down in flames I, of course, exclude the hard core Republican base who are muttering into th[eir] PBR’s that it is totally not fair that black people can probably call their hunting camps “Niggerhead” and they can’t. Will this white man’s burden never ease up?
Luckily, those ‘bearing’ the white man’s burden have their own 24/7 news network to lament and reflect on the decades and centuries prior to around 1980.
I’M IN FULL DISAGREEMENT with Andrew Sullivan on this one:
I’m sorry to say I can’t see any kind of smoking bigotry in Rick Perry’s heart from the story in the Post yesterday, although the details of the story were really fascinating. Money quote:
The cowboys, when they were gathering cattle, they’d say they’re going to the Matthews or Niggerhead or the Nail” pastures, said Bill Reed, a distributor for Coors beer in nearby Abilene who used to lease a hunting parcel adjacent to the Perrys’. “Those were all names. Nobody thought anything about it…”
You know, Texas is a little different — you go where it’s comfortable,” Reed said. “. . . It would have been one thing if they had named it, but they didn’t. So, it’s basically a figure of speech as far as most people are concerned. No one thought anything about it.”
Not a racist thought in their heads. I’m with TNC on this one:
In all seriousness, I think this says very little about Rick Perry, and a lot more about the country he seeks to govern.
REALLY? WELL, SURE, EXCEPT FOR THOSE RECOLLECTIONS FROM SEVEN PEOPLE in the Washington Post report:
“My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984,” Perry wrote. “This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit.”
“Ever since, any time I ever saw the rock it was painted over,” Perry said.
Perry’s version of events differs in many respects from the recollections of seven people, interviewed by The Washington Post, who spoke in detail of their memories of seeing the rock with the name at various points during the years that Perry was associated with the property through his father, partners or his signature on a lease.
[...] The other local who visited the ranch with Perry during those years recalled the rock standing upright with the name visible. He said it was painted over years later; he was not sure exactly when but recalled remarking about the change with friends.
“We kind of laughed about it,” recalled this person, who said he would probably vote for Perry if he wins the Republican nomination. “My recollection is that it was several years ago. We were laughing because he had it painted. Because it had always been there. You couldn’t miss it, right there at the gate going in. We laughed about, ‘Rick’s covering his tracks.’ ”
Hahahahaa! Another white, male GOP politician is “covering his tracks,” pretending to not be (insert whatever applies here — i.e. racist, perverted, gay, having an affair, on drugs, hypocritical… ).
My God this gets old.
Related:
WOULD IT SURPRISE YOU TO LEARN that Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry used to bring friends and colleagues around to a west Texas hunting camp called “Niggerhead”? No? Yeah, it didn’t surprise us much, either. Gawker »
Washington Post: the camp was renamed “North Camp Pasture” in about 2006, even though it had been in the Perry family since the 1980s.
Presidential! I’m willing to bet that the Teaparty dislikes that he RENAMED the ranch. Or these reports on what the name used to be is how he’ll win back some supporters in the GOP / Teaparty base.
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