GOP activist likens Michelle Obama to a gorilla
I wish I was shocked by this.
A prominent South Carolina Republican killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla.Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."
When taken to task for the racist comment - and after killing his Facebook page - DePass said, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."
Yeah - ha fucking ha.
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I'd never heard of this person before, but nothing I ever hear from him as of today will ever have any credibility...unless, of course, it's some sort of a memoir on being a racist.
LMAO and agreed!
Yyyeah...and this guy also tried to pin the remark on Michelle: i.e. because she supposedly made some remark about how people are descended from apes, so that apparently justified his own remark.
Yyyyeaaahhhh....Bull****
every one of these shitheads words their "apologies" for their overtly racist remarks in the same backhanded, silencing manner and it's more maddening each time i hear it.
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um, huh? How is that relevant?
It amazes me that people continue to be this dumb.
disgusting.
king kong IS a racist image!!!
you don't have to mean to be racist, in order to be a racist. when you spew racist ideology, you are a racist. end of story.
I, for one, am tired of the "I'm sorry, but [the offended party] said X, and I was just kidding" claims.
My eyes narrow whenever someone says "I'm sorry, BUT..." or "I was just kidding (I, a member of a highly privileged group, was kidding using discriminatory language about an often repressed group)". Both sound much more like defensive statements than actual reasons, particularly the latter. Privilege does blind people, so it IS possible that someone who was kidding didn't realize their position, but that happens only so many times.
I don't want to be a "humorless feminist" (especially since I have a very active sense of humor, facetious and immature as it may be), but I'd rather not laugh because some people think something's funny, and I don't want people using that excuse to let racist comments slip by.
As far as I see it, that sounds like a pretty damn bitter "joke" to me. I have the feeling he was a good friend of McCain and was raised in a rich racist family. How insulting that these gorillas think they can come in and take over OUR white house. It's called the WHITE house after all, right? Right? Haha oh but I'm just kidding!
Asshole.
My FIL regularly spams my husband with inane rethuglican email forwards. About half of them are racist, and the other half are X-tian wet dreams about how God will eventually punish all those libruls and atheists. The rest are sexist jokes.
Sometimes he manages to squeeze in some cool images, though (or at least they were cool five years ago when they were new). So the other day my husband is purging his inbox of another batch of his Dad's email forwards which uncharacteristically belong in the latter category, so he says "At least he didn't send anything horribly offensive this time". And then he opens the last one...
It contained something to the extent of "A little girl wrote to Sarah Palin and asked where humans came from. Palin wrote back saying that Gawd made Adam and Eve in his own image. Then the little girl wrote to Michelle Obama and asked her the same question. Obama wrote back saying that there was a bunch of monkeys that eventually turned into humans. The little girl goes to her grandfather [I wonder why not her parents; they must have turned away from Jebus and embraced the evil librul ways] and asks to explain the discrepancy in the answers. So Grandpa replies "Honey, Palin told her about her ancestors, and Obama told you about hers"" In closing, there was a picture of a chimp next to Michelle Obama's picture.
Even aside from the fact that any human with a single functioning braincell could not possibly be a creationist, and the fact that chimps are not monkeys, that email was something I would have thought only Klansmen would forward. And the sad thing is that my FIL is normally one of the nicest, most helpful people I've ever met (I guess only to white people, though). Just goes to show how ingrained and accepted racism is in our society: it's definitely not just the domain of kooky extremist Neo-Nazis.
But it was just a joke! Doncha godda sensa HEW-MURR?
Oh yeah, that GOP sure is working hard on rebuilding itself after realizing that it has a big "FAIL" sign posted on its forehead. Keep up the good work! *eyeroll*
Yeah - ha fucking ha.
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write such a moving analysis of this issue. Wow...I hope that you were not hurt in the process of displaying such mock rage.
Sometimes that's all the analysis an issue requires or deserves. Someone as simple and ignorant as Rusty DePass doesn't have a lot of nuances to his racist attempts at humour. We're not discussing the writings of Douglas Adams here.
But, I don't imagine that there was anything mock about the rage towards his comments.
"Sometimes that's all the analysis an issue requires or deserves."
Notice how when it's an issue about WOC, "all the analysis an issue requires or deserves" is a pithy one-liner.
Yet, an earlier blog post about a white woman's backlash from her fake pregnancy/childbirth (See "Anti-choice blogger's dying baby a hoax") got 5-6 PARAGRAPHS.
Still think that race has nothing to do with deciding what kinds of either detailed or thoughtless "analysis" is provided?
5 paragraphs which were entirely made up of either quotes, back story to explain the situation to unfamiliar readers, and links to other blogs.
In my opinion, a comment comparing a POC to a gorilla doesn't need any explanation.
What other analysis do you need? It's been stated that it's racist, there isn't much more to it! If you want an essay go somewhere where the readers don't already understand the implications behind this.
Right like feministing readers have not shown time and time again that they are more than willing to engage in pearl clutching white privilege. I have watched one to many times as the work of Samhita gets destroyed by ignorance.
The point of analysis is discussing the ways in which whiteness acts as a systemic force. How about admitting that even while Jessica is supposedly decrying the action of DePass she is simultaneously benefiting from them. Saying oh shit this is racist belies the effect of such language upon people of color. It is far easier for whiteness to brush this off with a simple WtF when it does not effect their lifes chances...Gee if only we were as important as Palin or Letterman our issues might actually be worth a run on sentence.
Um...confused. So every time some idiot says something racist about Michelle or Barack Obama, someone here needs to write a term paper? There was a lot on here about race before and after the lection, and I've seen a number of posts in both the main and community sections about international race issues.
From my limited viewing of this webpage, there is quite a bit of discussion about race, both by poc and people who don't identify as such. To say, "poor Samhita, everyone picks on her because you're all so white" is pretty insane-she's written some great and inciteful posts, and some people have written astute comments disagreeing with her points or agreeing with her points, and she's also gotten some silly or stupid comments. Every single issue on almost every message board on the internet gets treated the same way. It seems to me like you're making a really generalized claim of racism based on almost nothing. And can I add that calling me a "pearl clutching privileged" feminist is pretty obnoxious when you don't know me, and don't have any basis for that claim?
He's just sorry he was caught. Clearly his "inner voice" saw no problem with this statement when he made it, he probably doesn't see anything wrong with it now except how it can hurt his own political career.
Rusty DePass is just jealous because his ancestors came from a different branch of the evolutionary tree, and "scum-sucking maggots" are not considered to be as sexy as gorillas.
So why don't I see his ass all over the media like Letterman? And where is the GOP outrage? There is none because only progressives feel the need try and be better than those they oppose.
As Miss Manners likes to point out, "I'm sorry you feel that way" is not an apology.
"I wish I was shocked by this."
Eh. What else can you get out of a pig but the grunt?