As a Palmetto State native, whether I like it or not, it’s my pleasure to once again bestow the Stupid Thing of the Week award to a fellow South Ca’linian. The charming snakepit ambience of that state’s politics has been on display lately in the attempts to torpedo state representative Nikki Haley’s gubernatorial campaign with unsubstantiated claims of her alleged sexual infidelity. That’s pretty slimy stuff, but when Haley’s post-“scandal” poll numbers didn’t drop, I knew there was probably worse slander to come. Sure ‘nuff, as if on cue, a state senator has now injected raw racism into the campaign less than a week before the primary. Lexington state Sen. Jake Knotts went on an Internet talk show last night and called Haley a “raghead,” a racial slur based on her Indian heritage (Haley’s parents are Sikhs who came to the U.S. from India). Wait, it gets even better. Knotts’ exact quote was, “We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need another in the Governor’s Mansion.”
And that, in a nutshell, is the real face of day-to-day politics in that lovely land to our immediate south. It’s that kind of forward-looking optimism and inclusiveness that has kept my home state perennially stuck somewhere between 48th and 50th in lists of states’ education, income, environmental quality, etc., etc.
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2010.
Is Jake merely an obese old white man, or would you say he was more of a morbidly obese old white man?
It would be sad if he was unique, but have you been listening to the Republican members of both houses of Congress, and the right wing echo chamber for the last couple of years?
He fits right in.
The thing that gets me is that these comments are really sidebar issues.
What do these folks stand for? We know SC has a terrible budget deficit, terrible education system, just bad all around government at almost all levels.
The SC people are victims of the own government, just like everywhere else.
The GOP rules the day in SC and it’s virtually one-party rule all over. Yet, do the Democrats present any real alternative? Nope.
Still, third parties are likely virtually locked out of these contests.
It’s not a coincidence we only hear of fights between Dems and Repubs, or infighting in either party.
We rarely hear of those who present a true paradigm-shift and question the true role of government.
Racism and conservatism go hand in hand.