Mike Ertel resigns as Florida secretary of state after blackface photos surface

Orlando Sentinel ^ | 1/24/2019 | Steven Lemongello

[pepsi_junkie]

This is like the second-round of the #metoo thing. It’s the latest cause-celeb that’s got bodies dropping everywhere.

#Metoo was and is far worse. With this one if you posed for pictures wearing black face you are in trouble. With #metoo if you were ever in a room alone with a woman you could be in trouble is she decides she wants you to be.

I'm completely safe from the blackface thing but even though I've never harassed or assaulted anyone I still fear being destroyed by one nutcase women who makes stuff up and "we have to believe the woman".

[READINABLUESTATE]

“Democrat?”
Nope, Republicrat.

[Quilla]

A local Circuit Court Judge was running for reelection some year ago in my town. Thirty years prior, he and his bride took a nude polaroid of each other on their honeymoon. The marriage didn’t last long. She must have really carried a grudge as she gave her polaroid of him to the gentlemen running against her ex. It appeared on the cover of our newspaper the next day with a small black line over his privates. He was defeated.

[pepsi_junkie]

I am a Christian straight white male over 60 and from the South. Per the tolerant Progressive left it is now acceptable to disrespect, degrade, insult, and even persecute me. Why would I give a flying fig if something I do or say “offends black people”?

Black people are the victims of 200+ years of democrat policies, from slavery to Jim Crow to destroying the family and locking them into never ending poverty and violence via the walfare state and destroyed school system. I still have hopes that some day the scales will fall from their eyes and they will see the democats for who they are: their eternal tormentors.

[Tallguy]

Good point.

[fruser1]

Neo-con, RINO, never trumper, Vichy?

[Rockingham]

Being a Christian — wise as serpents and innocent as doves — pretty much precludes giving offense needlessly.

[fruser1]

Oops! My apologies. Stupidly I didn’t realize you were asking about the sec of state in fl. Thought you directed at me. Sorry again.

[hopespringseternal]

While what has been done to blacks is outrageous, it is also largely self-inflicted. I am old enough to have seen black men of a couple of generations back accomplish amazing things in spite of racism, including holding a family together and providing for them.

Today, the crisis blacks face is far worse: So very many young black men are nothing more than sperm donors. Inner city culture is a seething cauldron of hate and self-pity that periodically erupts, burning down its own community.

[Rockingham]

Yikes! Like land mines, angry ex-wives can lay in wait for years.

[pepsi_junkie]

I blame the democrats for 80% of it. For 200 years they systematically enslaved then oppressed them, then when forced at the point of a gun to stop, they began whispering in their ears "you can never succeed, everyone hates you, families aren't important because we'll take care of you better, you are nothing without the charity of the democrat party". For fifty years now that's what blacks are told from every democrat politician, every school, every newspaper, every TV show, etc. Then for good measure the dems destroyed the public school system so that most have no hope of ever really amounting to anything (they graduate unable to read).

If they had purposely set out to destroy an entire community they couldn't have done a better and more thorough job than they did with the black community. And they don't care a lick about the lived they have destroyed along the way, not one bit.

The other 20% is totally on the blacks who embrace violence and thuggery, I'm not giving them a pass. But I also hope that someday the black community will waken from the spell the rats have put them under and realize that the side that wants equal treatment and opportunity and which celebrates effort and achievement regardless of background or race is the one that they should embrace and recognize these democrats for what they are.

[bgill]

Ok, I’ll confess, I dressed up as Minnie Mouse for Halloween when I was 6. I’m sorry and will never do it again.

[trebb]

Kind of ironic the majority are Dems....

[super7man]

To me “blackface” is not about putting black stuff on your face. It is about how you act once you’ve done it. AND it is about stereotypical behavior. If you make a video of a black face person standing at a blackboard writing down the mathematics of Maxwell’s Equations, people see it as a non sequitur and scratch their heads thinking “What is that about?”.

Same video showing blackface person trying but failing to play basketball or dancing with “white boy” rhythm it conveys the stereotypical difference between whites and blacks. And it can be funny.

Bottom line, for a stereotype to be funny there must be an element of truth to it.

[bk1000]

“pretty much precludes giving offense needlessly”

Giving offence deliberately, yes, but I am not responsible if my very being causes some perceived “offence” that I have not intended.

[pabianice]

How the OS human-looking Kingons came to be was a great story arc on “Enterprise.”

[Rockingham]

Some things are objectively offensive no matter how we subjectively intend them or claim to intend them. I assume that the phrase “your very being” is a rhetorical flourish and trust that your parents did not raise you to put on blackface before going out in public.