LAUGH BREAK: Virginia Dems Are Hoist with Their 'Intersectionality' Petard

At any moment, some action or character trait that was celebrated just a few years ago suddenly becomes verboten; or some hitherto unknown social-justice concern comes flying in from left field or outer space and lands in your lap. Such is the case with the senior Democrats in the Virginia state house, who from the governor on down have suddenly been accused of behavior that was perfectly acceptable when Al Jolson, Laurence Olivier, or Harvey Weinstein used to do it.

The New York Times is beside itself with the intersectionality of it all: Less than a week after Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark R. Herring said they wore blackface as young men, Mr. Fairfax on Friday faced a second assault accusation in three days. He is now under intense pressure to resign or face impeachment, transforming what had been a crisis for Virginia Democrats into a searing dilemma for the national party.

The political turmoil for Democratic leaders this weekend is unfolding at the intersection of race and gender, and risks pitting the party’s most pivotal constituencies against one another. If Democrats do not oust Mr. Fairfax, at a time when the party has taken a zero-tolerance stand on sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era, they could anger female voters.

But the specter of Mr. Fairfax, 39, being pushed out while two older white men remain in office — despite blackface behavior that evoked some of the country’s most painful racist images — would deeply trouble many African-Americans. “I think the Democratic Party would lack credibility if they followed a double standard,” said Representative Karen Bass of California, who is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. Ms. Bass said that both Mr. Northam and Mr. Fairfax should step down.

That at least would leave the Democrats with their AG, Herring, to step into Northam's white shoes. But Herring committed the same SJW crime as Northam (who, to make things even more ludicrous, denies it), so why should Northam have to go and Herring get to stay? But if Herring goes, then the next in line for the state house is... a Republican! Oh no!

“It’s a nightmare right now,” said Representative A. Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat who can trace his history here back to Revolutionary War-era slaves. “We’ve worked hard on the Democratic brand for so many years,” he said, “and now we have to deal with this.” If by the Democrat "brand" he means slavery, segregation, secularism, socialism, and sedition, well, they're doing a helluva job.

Almost all of Virginia’s Democratic leaders and lawmakers on Friday night called on Mr. Fairfax to resign and a legislator vowed to introduce articles of impeachment if Mr. Fairfax did not quit by Monday. The state Democratic Party, after a conference call of its steering committee on Saturday morning in which there was near-unanimous support for Mr. Fairfax to resign, issued a statement saying he no longer had “their confidence or support” and should quit.

Gov. Northam also insists he will not resign. He does not face an imminent impeachment threat, and neither does Mr. Herring, the attorney general and second in line to the governor, who has been effusively apologizing for once wearing blackface. The governor, in an interview on Saturday with The Washington Post, said he intends to use the remainder of his term to pursue racial reconciliation and has been reading works like “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alex Haley’s “Roots” to learn more about experiences of African-Americans.

Still, the whole world is watching -- or at the least the Times certainly is: Just how far Virginia Democrats go to confront these three statewide officials — who swept into office in 2017 on the first wave of backlash to President Trump’s election — will send a signal about how committed they are to taking a hard line on racial and sexual transgressions, and will echo well beyond this state’s borders.

But perhaps there's another way to swerve past the deadly junction of race and gender and into a head-on collision with Saul Alinsky's Rule No. 4, which famously states: "The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."

“It’s unrealistic to expect politicians to have lived perfect lives — the general public doesn’t expect that, and they are much more forgiving than the Twitter outrage mob,” said Elisabeth Smith, a Democratic strategist, singling out Mr. Herring. “If anything, we’ve learned the importance of taking a step back and taking a deep breath before demanding these guys’ heads on a plate.”

So nothing has changed in the plantations of Virginia. The black faced, baby killer/white Virginia governor will learn black sensitivity by going back to somebody else’s Roots.

The Black Lt. Governor will be given the choice to resign or be impeached.

Washignton Examiner:
Posted on 2/8/2019, 6:15:57 PM by TigerClaws

Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s aides want him to read his way out of trouble.

If you can believe it, the aides’ strategy for helping him survive his “blackface scandal” involves assigned reading, including Alex Haley’s book Roots and an essay written by the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, according to BuzzFeed News.

It’s the whitest solution to a blackface problem that only the whitest of whites could have devised.

Northam stands credibly accused of having once attended a party in the mid-1980s dressed either in blackface or Ku Klux Klan regalia, according to an old yearbook uncovered first by the right-wing news site Big League Politics.

At first the governor apologized for the yearbook photo. Then, he backtracked, after his apology failed to kill the controversy, by denying any involvement in the photo. Northam then held a press conference wherein he maintained he couldn’t possibly be the man in blackface because he “vividly” remembers looking different the one time he dressed in blackface to impersonate Michael Jackson for a dance competition.

So his defense for wearing blackface was that it was a different sort of blackface.

This all really happened, even the part where Northam nearly “moonwalked” for reporters.

Suffice it to say, the governor has had a rough go of it, looking like both a supremely incompetent fool and a baby boomer racist. He has refused his own party’s many calls for his resignation, and he has even floated the idea of becoming an independent just so he can stay in office. But if you thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous, the governor’s staff is here to disabuse you of that notion. Via BuzzFeed News:

His office has begun to explore how it might recalibrate Northam’s legislative agenda to focus closely on race and equity … The move would mark a brazen attempt to hang onto his office by shifting the conversation away from Northam’s admission of having once worn blackface and his denials that he is featured in the racist yearbook photo, either as the person in blackface or the person in a Klan outfit. Northam’s policy team is looking at crafting a set of proposals based on the premise that the governor’s mistakes have rendered him keenly aware of inequity and the lack of justice faced by black Virginians 400 years after the first African people arrived in the Commonwealth, at Point Comfort, in 1619.

The centerpiece proposal is not complete in its scope or in terms of what it will seek to accomplish. But there are many possibilities being considered for a broad platform: increasing resources for affordable housing; setting new, more equitable standards in small business procurement; implementing programs that expand economic opportunity for entrepreneurs; pumping money into public services like education and transportation.

Then, comes the really embarrassing detail [emphasis added]: Northam doesn’t plan to hold any more press conferences any time soon. Advisers are in the midst of negotiations with major networks for a nationally televised interview they hope will humanize him. Additionally, his advisers have assigned the governor homework: He’s begun to read Alex Haley’s “Roots”, and “The Case for Reparations,” the seminal essay in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

This is like something lifted directly from a “South Park” episode. Northam should just pay an indulgence to Jesse Jackson and get it over with already. This also seems like the lazy man’s way of familiarizing oneself with the black community. (“Isn’t there a book I can just read?”)

The amazing thing is: There’s no way that we’ve hit rock bottom with what’s happening now in Virginia. It surely will get worse or weirder from here.

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