Oh, John, honestly. Tsk:
The senator said he hoped it wouldn’t be viewed as a racial remark. He argued that he was trying to say that it wouldn’t make sense for him to have a role in something left to the courts.
Last summer, a top McCain rival, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, apologized for referring to the troubled Big Dig construction project in Boston as a ”tar baby” during a fundraiser in Ames, Iowa.
The term dates to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br’er Rabbit. It has become known as a way of describing a sticky mess and has been used as a derogatory term for a black person.
UPDATE: Whoopsie! Link fixed.
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The link didn't work.
Oops, sorry. The link is fixed now.
John McCain. Such an angry man. An angry, angry bitter man.
Somehow I don't think John McCain was calling the Big Dig a "derogatory term for a black person." Someone should ask the one lone black man living in Boston what he thinks.
I didn't know about Romney, but I did recall Tony Snow using "tar baby" a while back, and getting huffy when folks asked him to apologize.
In the words of Auric Goldfinger, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thre times is enemy action." We all know about Republican talking points and have some experience with these people talking in code. Here is my best guess as to what this particular code phrase means.
"I, dear voter, believe in American culture. You may be afraid of [you know, the colored], but I am not, and I will protect you. Also, aren't they particularly touchy? After all, what did we ever do to them?"
Also, once, a republican used the word "niggardly".
I know they taught us this word in vocabulary class in public school, making SURE that we learned the etymology.
But I KNOW that the only reason it was put in was because it kind of sounds like the N-word.
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