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Monday, February 11, 2019

Is "Northam" The Greek Word For Idiot?

Governor Northam of Virginia has been in a bad place for two weeks now.  He promoted infanticide.  Then he admitted he had posed in blackface or in a KKK robe while in med school only to deny doing so the next day.  Then he admitted that he had used blackface to dress up like Michael Jackson and even also demonstrated his moonwalking technique.  Every senior Democrat in VA called for his resignation, but luckily for him, it turns out that the lt. governor has been accused of rape by two women.  Northam is refusing to resign, and the Democrats are in a pickle.  Do they keep pushing to get him out only to install an alleged sex criminal as governor in his place?  Well, things have continued to boil in this pot of VA Democrats.

Yesterday, Northam was trying to do some damage control by giving an interview to Gayle King on CBS.  He told King that this is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first indentured servants from Africa into Virginia.  King immediately corrected him to say that he meant slavery.  That may not sound like much, but it is.  Northam is trying to overcome a widespread perception that he is a racist or is at least racially insensitive.  Calling slaves from Africa "indentured servants" is about as racially insensitive as one can get.  For what it is worth, indentured servants in colonial days were people who exchanged the cost of their trip to America for a fixed number of years of service.  Many impoverished British people came to the colonies and had to work for 7 years in this fashion.  At that point, they were free to do as they wished.  Slaves were not coming to America voluntarily.  They were kidnapped in Africa, brought unwillingly to America and then held as property for the rest of their lives.

It's amazing that Northam would says something like this.  He brought up the point, not Gayle King.  Northam drove home the image of himself as a racist.  It has to be the biggest self-inflicted political wound of the week. 

I wonder; is "northam" the Greek word for "idiot"?

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