Betty Winston Bayé: Emailing A Hateful Image Was No Innocent Mistake". I AGREE!
Betty Winston Bayé | Emailing a hateful image was no innocent mistake
By now you may have heard or read about the California tea party activist and elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee who sent an email to “a select list of friends and acquaintances” containing a photo that depicts President Obama and his deceased parents as a family of chimpanzees. The photo caption reads: “Now you know why no birth certificate.”
“I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” Marilyn Davenport said in her “humble” apology to “the select few who might be truly offended.
“I didn't stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this (depicting a black man, his black father and even his white mother as apes) could be offensive,” Davenport said.
That's poppycock. Absolute nonsense.
Davenport is 74 years old and the chances that she doesn't comprehend the hateful implication of depicting black people as apes is about as likely as a snowball's chance of surviving in hell.
I doubt that there's a black person in public life who hasn't at some time had the monkey epithet lobbed at him or her. It's a calling card for bigots. It helps, of course, to consider the source.
After years of courting bigots, the GOP is finding that the chickens have come home to roost. The inmates have taken over the asylum and Republicans unwilling to defend or to try to justify indefensible ignorance and racism are embarrassed and chagrined that their party has been hijacked. They've been left politically homeless in the face of state party officials like Marilyn Davenport, who had the nerve to say, “I am an imperfect Christian lady who tries her best to live a Christ-like honoring life. I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity. Everyone who knows me knows that to be true.”
“We all fall short” is a common Christian cliché. But Davenport apparently missed the Sunday school lesson that admonishes Christians to refrain from rejoicing at injustice and unrighteousness. The sole purpose of the Obamas-as-chimp email was unrighteous, and Davenport knew it. I'll bet that if her home computer were scrubbed we'd find even more racist political propaganda.
And in this matter, Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh was no profile in courage. After denouncing Davenport for spreading the racially tainted slur and urging her to resign from the central committee, he circled back and said, “I want to accept and do accept that Marilyn is not a racist.”
Meanwhile, Orange County Republican Tim Whiteacre was yet more emphatic.
Davenport, he said, is “a staunch, ethical Republican lady.” Not only that, but, “There is nothing unethical about this from a party standpoint because it wasn't sent out to the party at large with any racist statements and it wasn't signed as a central committee member. As a private individual, she is just real big on birther stuff. One of her passions that drives her is the President's lack of forthrightness about where he was born. Marilyn believes that nobody knows where he was born and so this picture says a thousand words.”
Nothing is unethical for people who have no ethics.
Baugh's mealy-mouthing — and Whiteacre's insistence that Davenport “is not a perfect lady, but she is no racist” and, in fact, “a gentle person who would feed you, help you, be there for you if you were in trouble” who is being unfairly “attacked by this non-story” — is precisely why Davenport's apology is as insulting as that email she sent. In fact, her defense team gave her license to say as she did, “I will not resign my central committee position over this matter that the average person knows, and agrees, is much to do about nothing.”
If this be true, the “average” American has far less to fear from enemies without than from the kooks within, who have gone mainstream and been driven to madness by a black president. These are the sorts of kooks who embrace 19th- and early 20th-Century notions — and who, before email was invented, sent postcards of lynchings to “select friends and acquaintances” because they found them amusing, too.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion.
By now you may have heard or read about the California tea party activist and elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee who sent an email to “a select list of friends and acquaintances” containing a photo that depicts President Obama and his deceased parents as a family of chimpanzees. The photo caption reads: “Now you know why no birth certificate.”
“I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” Marilyn Davenport said in her “humble” apology to “the select few who might be truly offended.
“I didn't stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this (depicting a black man, his black father and even his white mother as apes) could be offensive,” Davenport said.
That's poppycock. Absolute nonsense.
Davenport is 74 years old and the chances that she doesn't comprehend the hateful implication of depicting black people as apes is about as likely as a snowball's chance of surviving in hell.
I doubt that there's a black person in public life who hasn't at some time had the monkey epithet lobbed at him or her. It's a calling card for bigots. It helps, of course, to consider the source.
After years of courting bigots, the GOP is finding that the chickens have come home to roost. The inmates have taken over the asylum and Republicans unwilling to defend or to try to justify indefensible ignorance and racism are embarrassed and chagrined that their party has been hijacked. They've been left politically homeless in the face of state party officials like Marilyn Davenport, who had the nerve to say, “I am an imperfect Christian lady who tries her best to live a Christ-like honoring life. I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity. Everyone who knows me knows that to be true.”
“We all fall short” is a common Christian cliché. But Davenport apparently missed the Sunday school lesson that admonishes Christians to refrain from rejoicing at injustice and unrighteousness. The sole purpose of the Obamas-as-chimp email was unrighteous, and Davenport knew it. I'll bet that if her home computer were scrubbed we'd find even more racist political propaganda.
And in this matter, Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh was no profile in courage. After denouncing Davenport for spreading the racially tainted slur and urging her to resign from the central committee, he circled back and said, “I want to accept and do accept that Marilyn is not a racist.”
Meanwhile, Orange County Republican Tim Whiteacre was yet more emphatic.
Davenport, he said, is “a staunch, ethical Republican lady.” Not only that, but, “There is nothing unethical about this from a party standpoint because it wasn't sent out to the party at large with any racist statements and it wasn't signed as a central committee member. As a private individual, she is just real big on birther stuff. One of her passions that drives her is the President's lack of forthrightness about where he was born. Marilyn believes that nobody knows where he was born and so this picture says a thousand words.”
Nothing is unethical for people who have no ethics.
Baugh's mealy-mouthing — and Whiteacre's insistence that Davenport “is not a perfect lady, but she is no racist” and, in fact, “a gentle person who would feed you, help you, be there for you if you were in trouble” who is being unfairly “attacked by this non-story” — is precisely why Davenport's apology is as insulting as that email she sent. In fact, her defense team gave her license to say as she did, “I will not resign my central committee position over this matter that the average person knows, and agrees, is much to do about nothing.”
If this be true, the “average” American has far less to fear from enemies without than from the kooks within, who have gone mainstream and been driven to madness by a black president. These are the sorts of kooks who embrace 19th- and early 20th-Century notions — and who, before email was invented, sent postcards of lynchings to “select friends and acquaintances” because they found them amusing, too.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion.
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