"What do I do to make you want me What have I gotta do to be heard
What do I say when it's all over
Sorry seems to be the hardest word"
Sorry Elton, but sorry isn't such a hard word to say anymore. In fact, it has become quite easy.
The latest member of the I Am Sorry Club is GOP lawmaker (of course),Frank Ruff.
Unfortunately Frank thought that it was cool to drop the "tar baby" reference when talking about the Affordable Care Act.
"State Senator Frank Ruff (R-VA) has apologized for comparing the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program to a “tar baby” at a breakfast held by the Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce this week. In an interview with the Virginia Pilot, which first reported the comments, Ruff said he “meant nothing racial” by what he said.
While Ruff said he understood the term “tar baby” to mean a “sticky situation” and nothing more, it also has a negative racial connotation that derives from the Uncle Remus stories of the late 19th century in which Br’er Rabbit is trapped by a doll made of tar. In 2006, Mitt Romney had to apologize for using the term in reference to the fatal tunnel collapse in Boston.
Ruff told the Pilot he also called Danville’s African-American Mayor Sherman Saunders, who was present when he made the remark, to apologize."
Serious question: Who goes around using the term "tar baby"? And let's forget about the racial implications for a minute. A poster over at Mediaite made a comment that nailed the absurdity of using the term.
"Matt Stone> BillBuckley •14 hours ago
Just yesterday I was at the grocery store and I got suckered in by a coupon that had expired and I was all like 'WELL DON'T I FEEL LIKE A TAR BABY' and me and the cashier just laughed and laughed."
The sooner these good ole boys join the rest of us in the 21st Century, the better off their party will be.
Speaking of the 21st Century, apparently if you are a white conservative you are very afraid of what the future might bring. You fear that you are losing your country and the power that comes from being the dominant race running it.
You never believed all those banal declarations about equality and freedom. It was just something to keep those minorities in line. Just more platitudes to make you feel better about yourself. You could run things if you are in the majority. But can they?
This racial dilemma for republican conservatives, as observed brilliantly by Francis Wilkinson, is now manifesting itself when it comes to immigration reform.
Immigration and race are inexorably linked in American political culture and always have been. As John Higham wrote in his history of American nativism, "Strangers in the Land," American white Protestants considered themselves heirs of "the supreme Anglo-Saxon virtue, a gift for political freedom," which included a "unique capacity for self-government." By muddying the racial composition of the nation, immigration not only jeopardizes white privilege, it risks undermining the foundations of freedom itself.
Racial animosity is only one among several threads of opposition to immigration, of course, including economic rationales rooted in concern for the working class. But race has an especially visceral power. The declining white share of the population already has many conservatives rattled. If it declines more rapidly due to mass legalization of undocumented immigrants, many conservatives figure it can only be bad for them and their vision of the good life.
Republicans cannot continue to thrive as a nearly all-white party. Party strategists know they need to pass immigration reform -- with a legalization (though not necessarily citizenship) component -- to eliminate the first of multiple obstacles to winning Hispanic votes. Yet the House has managed to pass only punitive legislation in this Congress, alienating Republicans further from the voters they desperately need to win.
From outside the conservative bubble, the Republicans' Caucasian march into a multiracial century looks like political malpractice -- terminal short-sightedness or possibly the onset of madness. But resistance is deeply rooted in conservatism. It's clear from House Speaker John Boehner's repeated efforts to bring up immigration reform that he desperately wants to clear the party's path to the future. Trouble is, that future is the stuff of conservative nightmares." [Source]
Yes, tar babies everywhere.
