South Carolina GOPer Apologizes For Racist Joke About Michelle Obama
Rusty DePass, a prominent South Carolina Republican activist and former state elections director, has now made an abject apology for having joked on his Facebook page that an escaped gorilla from a local zoo was an ancestor of First Lady Michelle Obama.
"I am truly sorry for any offense I have caused," DePass said at a press conference -- held at the offices of the South Carolina NAACP, no less. "My remark was clearly inappropriate and I apologize for writing it."
DePass had previously sort-of apologized for it -- but also said that Michelle had originated the comment by believing in evolution. This new apology at least appears to be a step in the right direction.
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"My remark was clearly inappropriate" may be as close as one typically gets to "abject" in the modern world, I don't know. What he did was very offensive indeed, and when offered a chance to apologize at first falsely blaming Michelle Obama for forcing him to say she was a relative of apes. How? Because she believes in evolution, and that in his twisted mind raised the ape connection to which he was thus nominally obliged to respond with a crude racist slur. Yessiree, that's *real* offensive.
She can forgive him if she wants, and thank heaven we don't have to.
June 17, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does TPM have a list of all the apologies someone in the republican party has made in the past 6 months? Or just since Obama has been in office. Maybe we could rank them! And please include apologies to Limbaugh - those are funny.
June 17, 2009 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Me, I'd like a list of all the racist "jokes," tweets, e-mails, and other statements that prominent goopers have made since Obama took office. They're piling up so fast that it's getting difficult to keep track.
June 18, 2009 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apology is Policy.
--"The X Files"
June 18, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bluesplashy, you have inspired me! I don't have the time right now to make this retroactive for the next 6 months, but for some reason I suspect there'll be plenty more apologies down the road. So, for you (and the greater good of humanity) I present: http://ideeplyregret.blogspot.com/
June 18, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oooo, a forced apology.
Just like a real heartfelt apology, only NOT.
Jackass.
June 17, 2009 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep.
June 18, 2009 4:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
A step in the right direction would be for this gooper to acknowledge that not just Michelle Obama, but virtually all people educated in science believe in evolution.
June 18, 2009 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
He's of a Talibangelical/bigot cohort, of course, so that ain't happening nohow.
?
June 18, 2009 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I am truly sorry for any offense I have caused,"
This is 'abject'? Uh, maybe for a Republican but not for civilized people.
June 18, 2009 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clearly, this guy has not evolved.
June 18, 2009 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
"inappropriate" strictly construed means his joke was not intrinsically bad, just bad in the way it's inappropriate to wear a tee shirt to a funeral but ok at the beach. Good ol' Rusty will keep yukking it up with his good ol' buds - who see nothing wrong with talking this way among themselves.
June 18, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly SHG. Note that Rusty states that his comment was "inappropriate to write" but nowhere in that apology does he say that he doesn't believe what he wrote. I think the way he put his apology is simply code for the other bigots out there to not worry; he's just saying what he needs to say because he got caught being a bigot.
June 18, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Typical Republican linguistic perversity: Gingrich now says that it was inappropriate for him to call Sotomayor a racist when in fact he meant that her words (which apparently have no association whatsoever to her thinking) were racist.
June 18, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now watch him turn around and tell all his twitter followers that he was the victim of a lynch mob.
I'll believe he's sorry for more than getting caught when he matches his GOP contributions with contrributions to the NAACP.
June 18, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Somehow he let his fear of evolutionary theory that he THINKS negates his religious beliefs get mixed up with his fear of a descendent of South Carolinan slaves who is now the First Lady of the United States get mingled together, and this came out. He couldn't stop himself.
Michelle is related to gorillas--we all are. It's no disgrace--people around the world have come to know them as beautiful gentle family-loving creatures. She never said she was descended from gorillas, because like anybody with a halfway decent education, she knows humans and modern apes descended from common ancestors.
DePass is afraid of his own family tree--which includes apes AND Michelle Obama. The latter, for all he knows, could be a pretty close relation. South Carolina whites did a whole lot of procreating with their slaves back in the day.
Personally, I suspect Michelle would rather be related to the gorilla. Wouldn't we all?
June 18, 2009 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
It never ceases to amaze me how these dumb-f**king white guys are so ignorant not to know that gorillas most closely represent themselves. Gorillas have white skin, and a very small johnson.
June 18, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
It never ceases to amaze me that some people think they can effectively respond to one kind of ignorance with another. ;)
June 18, 2009 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tar and feather his sorry pathetic ignorant ass!!!!
June 18, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
The thing about rich, white southern Republicans who say stuff like this is that they really don't have a clue why saying stuff like this is wrong. They have neither the will nor, usually, the capacity to do the kind of soul searching necessary to recognize that the problem lies within. They remind me of the people in the dog fighting and cock fighting and their fans. Like the dog fighting fan doesn't understand that his enjoyment of the "sport" is the result of something deeply twisted and ugly within himself, so the guy who yucks it up at a crude racist joke. They sneer at the concept of empathy--usually while making a crude joke about gays.
Which tends to explain why the Republicans' carefully orchestrated capaign against "the lawless empathy standard" after the Sotomayor nomination so rapidly degenerated into public displays of ugly racism. The two things go hand in hand.
June 18, 2009 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
He's a disgrace to the name Rusty.
June 18, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's he apologizing for? He's done us all a favor by reminding us of the depths of racist sludge that make up the Republican base.
June 18, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here in Tennessee, a GOP aide who forwarded a racist email about Obama seems to regret only having sent the email to "the wrong list of people": http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/16/goforth-apology/
June 18, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
He should be chained to the back of a Pick Up and dragged 10 miles like they do Blacks in Texas. Better yet his racism is no less than the Governor of South Carolina who thinks Black Kids are not worth educating...refusing the Stimulus money. I never stop in South Carolina, I always drive through the state. When they call me regarding Vacation Packages on Hilton Head I tell them, "I would vacation there if they take down the Rebel Flag from their Capitol."
June 19, 2009 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink