I’m even more troubled by the Niagara pouring over Virginia’s happless democratic Governor Ralph Northam than I was over Minnesota’s Al Franken. His crime in my opinion is panic and stuttering. They come in the wake of a one – two punch.
First, he spoke like a doctor when pressed on late term abortions. I didn’t follow that disaster which was whipped up by Pro-lifers chuffed at the prospect of overturning Roe v Wade and by New York’s unnecessary law trying to one up all the pro-life legislation profiferating in Pro Life country.
Coincidentally one of my recent Facebook correspondents, who is in anguish over the disappearance of the Republican Party in California, shared her thoughts on this sympathetic to Gov. Northam based on her personal experience. She shared them first with Jonah Goldberg of the Nation and told me I could share them with my audience if I promised not to amend them. (If I do that will come later)
This, however, is not the issue that has people baying for him to resign. What is known is that a picture of a man in blackface and someone in a KKK costume was put in an unofficial “yearbook” for his medical school back in 1984. If, as Northam now says he was not in it its too late. His first comment was to apologize for it. After that who can know what to think of his retraction made worse by the confession that he put some shoe polish on his face while participating in a dance contest in 1984. Here the ironies multiply. He was doing Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, Michael who was infamous for bleaching his skin a lighter color. It was a day and age where the dim movie “soul man” hit the theaters. It was only four years after Reagan’s election when he announced his presidential campaign a few miles from the murder of 3 civil rights workers in the 1960’s almost making it seem like the issue of civil rights was all over.
Its galling to see Republicans calling for the Democratic governor to resign considering Northam’s racist in-sensitivities pale compared to President Trumps. As for the Democrats. There is a stampede to remove him. If he leaves it should be because he has so poorly explained himself and that seems to be what many Virginians are thinking. Some day we may learn who made the yearbook. who the people were in it. And how it fell into the hands of a conservative Internet site. No matter what we learn from this reporting it doesn’t save the Governor from his poorly thought out self defense. Who the heck does he think he is? Donald Trump? Lie man. Lie!!!!!
