Former Minority Whip Roy Blunt obviously missed the national consensus last year that comparing Barack Obama (and any other African-American) to a monkey was racist and abhorrent, because he did it Friday at the Values Voter Summit. No wonder people say their "values" increasingly include racism.
Salon's Alex Koppelman reports that Blunt chose the conservative Values Voter Summit to trot out an anecdote about British soldiers and monkeys to illustrate that Republicans have to deal with the issues the President brings to the table. Naturally, in the anecdote, Republicans are British soldiers and the first African-American President of the United States... is a monkey.
Almost from the day the first ball was hit on this golf course something happened they didn't anticipate: monkeys would come running out of the jungle and then grab the golf balls. And if it was in the fairway, they might throw it in the rough. And if it was in the rough, they might throw it -- they might throw it back at you! And I can point to great and long detail about how many things they tried to eliminate the monkey problem, but they never got it done.
So finally for this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was, you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. And that is the rule in Washington all the time.
Blunt, who is running to replace Democratic Senator Robin Carnahan in the Senate next year, later told the audience that they should just ignore people calling them racist for criticizing Obama. While few would argue that criticism of Obama is inherently racist in and of itself, Blunt's use of a racially-charged anecdote comparing Obama to a monkey illustrates exactly why it is that so many people think those criticizing the President have less than clean hands (or pure minds) when it comes to racial issues.
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