Make America Great my ass!
Posted on 02/08/2019 6:19:15 AM PST by billorites
RICHMOND, Va.—A top Republican Virginia lawmaker was forced to defend his role editing a college yearbook with photographs of students in blackface, as the state’s political crisis spread to both parties Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment served as managing editor of the 1968 yearbook at Virginia Military Institute that included the blackface photos and racial slurs.
Gov. Ralph Northam, Democrat, faces calls to step down following the emergence last week of a photo from his medical-school yearbook that showed a person in blackface and another in Ku Klux Klan garb. Mr. Northam said he wasn’t in the picture, after first saying he was.
Attorney General Mark Herring, also a Democrat, disclosed Wednesday that he was in blackface while dressed a rapper as a college freshman in 1980. Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is denying an allegation he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Richmond has been plunged into chaos without a clear sense of how the leadership crisis will shake out. In the event all three top Democrats left office, the next person in succession for the governorship would be the speaker of the state’s House of Delegates, who is Kirk Cox, a Republican.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said at a press conference Saturday that he wasn't either of the people depicted in racist attire in a picture from his 1984 medical school yearbook. Photo: AP
Mr. Norment, the top Republican in the GOP-led Senate, said in a statement that he wasn’t in any of the photos and didn’t take any of the photos, but that he wasn’t surprised that “those wanting to engulf Republican leaders in the current situation” would highlight his yearbook. The disclosure was first reported by the Virginian-Pilot.
“The use of blackface is abhorrent in our society and I emphatically condemn it,” Mr. Norment, who added that he was intent on staying in his role to pass a fiscally responsible budget.
Delegate Lamont Bagby, a Democrat and chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, said Thursday the caucus was working through the revelations. He said the black caucus would release a statement sometime Thursday but didn’t know when. “Every time we get ready to put a statement out, something else happens,” he said.
He said the group also would like more information about the allegations against Mr. Fairfax. “We are anxious to see what an investigation gives us,” he told reporters at the Virginia state house.
Asked about Mr. Herring’s recent disclosure that he wore blackface as a 19-year-old college student, Mr. Bagby said, “We’re working through that as well.”
Rep. Donald McEachin (D., Va.), said the state’s congressional delegation planned to issue a statement of support for Mr. Herring. Mr. McEachin, who is black, said there was a “qualitative difference” between Mr. Northam and Mr. Herring’s situation.
“I had the occasion to speak to him, obviously it was by telephone, but he sounded like he was on the verge of tears,” he said of Mr. Herring. “I believe that he was sincere in his apology.”
He said how Mr. Northam handled the situation suggests “he does not have the capacity to lead or the capacity to heal us.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers have been working on a revised two-year budget and grappling with reconciling federal and state tax codes due to the 2017 federal tax overhaul law.
Aubrey Layne, Virginia’s finance secretary and a member of Mr. Northam’s cabinet, said he has been assuring debt-ratings firms that the state is getting its budget work done despite the political storm roiling Richmond.
“It’s a short cycle,” Mr. Layne said in an interview. “And we’ve got a lot of work to do.” The legislature has until Feb. 23 to finish its work.
A Republican, Mr. Layne says he tries to maintain a nonpartisan profile in his job, which involves working with Virginia’s divided government. He has also been meeting with the governor.
Regarding the political turmoil, “I think the sooner we can deal with this uncertainty the better,” he said.
Note: Not him in blackface so #FakeNews.
Hey Scott Calvert & Jon Kamp - there’s a rumor the janitor at the school was a Republican too... it’s a hot tip - run with it.
Make America Great my ass!
I agree. It’s far different to have been one among many editors of a yearbook in the 1960s in which those pictures of other people appeared, compared to having been the subject of such photos in the 1980s. A quantum difference in PC failings.
I went out for Halloween in 1960 as aunt jemima.....pillows in front and back....black face on.....sue me
Next they’ll include anyone who attended the offending school.
This is really, really weak sauce from the media and Democrats trying to deflect. They had all this time to search for their "whataboutism" and this was all they could find?
By all means let us judge everything yesterday by today’s made up standards.
Just more things to be offended by to make the news.
This MUST be a Virginia thing, else we’d see it all over the place........................
It’s a purposefully misleading title.
All Lawrence Olivier films to be banned due to one called othello
The Wall Street Journal has devolved to nothing more than a Washington Post wannabe.
WSJ loves to be in Washington Compost territory with its “reporting”.
Of course, this is the rag whose editorial board called for “a five-word constitutional amendment” reading “There shall be open borders”, solidifying their ardent Marxism.
It’s lunacy to see this as “news” and put in print. What difference does it make if one paints his face ... I heard the reasoning... and it’s ridiculous.. it’s divisive and it’s political!!
I am so tired of silly stuff that is deemed important to adults... which tells me they are yet children in their minds.
Look at what they are doing to the Trump family... the names, the investigations, the bad mouthing to the world...
look at the murdering of new born babies, out of convenience.
And the news is black face!.. because it serves their purpose!
One more thing... if someone like beto ever becomes President, this country will be part of mexico... and the world will take on a different flavor... distasteful!
Apparently there’s a new business. Locating yearbooks in libraries and writing down the names of all in them for comparison with a list of people currently in public office. When a match is made, money is made for the revelation.
Good thing kindergartens don’t publish yearbooks, or the vultures would be looking in them too. Day care yearbooks? Congressman such and such put his diaper over his head and it looked like a kkk hood - he must resign!
Insanity is the current fad.
I’m thinking that too. I could think of thousands of dress up ideas that don’t include blackface. But blackface seems to have been the go-to idea there in the past.
Yep, fake news. The real news is that democrats think it’s okay to kill your children.
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