For Immediate Release:
Dateline: Alexandria,
VA
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Well, let’s see: my college has embarrassed me, my law school’s professors continue to make me wish I had earned a law degree by drawing “Skippy” from the cover of a matchbook, black students were apparently insulted in my home city’s famous art museum, my baseball team allowed itself to be split by “the resistance,” and my adopted state of Virginia has the most ridiculous governor since Rod Blagojevich was making Illinois residents consider moving to Tierra del Fuego. To refresh your memory regarding the Ralph Northam Ethics Trainwreck, since it’s been stashed in the news media memory hole for a while: the same week that he appeared to casually explain how post-birth abortion works while showing all the passion of someone describing how to replace a carburetor, Northam’s med school yearbook surfaced showing the governor-to-be either dressed as a Klansman or wearing blackface, unless you subscribe to the theory that the photo of two men in such get-ups was just randomly planted on Northam’s page. In a dizzying sequence, the Governor 1) apologized for the photo and wearing blackface in it, apparently admitting that it was him 2) said that he didn’t think either figure was him, and he could “tell by looking at it” 3) admitted that he did once wear blackface to look like Michael Jackson in a talent show 4) said that he had to have someone explain to him recently that blackface was considered offensive. The short version: he’s a babbling, untrustworthy idiot. Luckily for the Governor, Northam’s Lieutenant Governor, Justin Fairfax, was quickly accused of rape and sexual assault by not one but two women, with one of the accusers having more than a Blasey-Ford level of confirmation to back her accusation up. Now, do not doubt that any Republican governor of Virginia found to have a racist image by his name in his yearbook would be relentlessly hounded out of office by the Washington Post and allied Democratic media. Recall how George Allen’s Senate campaign was derailed by months of criticism for his use of an obscure foreign racial slur (“maccaca”) to describe a student report at a campaign event. Yet Northam’s bizarre photo and his doubletalk surrounding it vanished from the news scene in a couple of weeks. So did Fairfax’s #MeToo problem, though he essentially called both women liars, something the #MeToo lobby has declared worthy of a metaphorical public execution. How could this be? Well, if both Northam and Fairfax had to resign or were otherwise forced from office, Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, would become governor. But Herring admitted that he once wore blackface at a college party in 1980! What a dilemma. Democrats would be demanding all three be loaded into tumbrils if they were Republicans. But if the Democrats all had to live up to their party’s supposed values and leave office, a Republican would be next in line for the Governorship. Thus we now have this alignment of priorities: A black Democrat who has been accused of sexual assault is less acceptable as Governor than a white idiot, also a Democrat, who wore blackface and could not make a coherent, straightforward, honest statement explaining the photo on his page in a yearbook, and since the state and the party would be attacked as racist to replace both, including the African American #MeToo denier, with a white Democrat who also wore blackface, all three of them would have to go if one did, but since having an idiot, a purveyor of a racist taboo, or a rapist in office are all preferable to putting a Republican in power, never mind. Move on. It is hard for the ethical and those subject to head explosions to move on, however, since anything that reminds us of this epic demonstration of the cynical, hypocritical, ridiculous nature of the entire Democratic Party, which grandstands about racism and the abuse of women but is only interested in the issues as weapons against Republicans, not principles they are willing to apply to themselves., compels any normal person of adequate intelligence to wonder: Why does anyone trust these people? Why would anyone give them power over anything, never mind our states, nation, and lives? I’m sorry, I got carried away and didn’t mention the latest development, which is, after all, the topic of the post. Yesterday, government into turmoil, investigators hired by Northam’s alma mater, Eastern Virginia Medical School,released a 55-page report that concluded, as the New York Times archly put it, which of Governor. Northam’s accounts was true. “No one we interviewed told us the governor was in the photograph, and no one could positively state who was in the photograph,” the investigators wrote. The inquiry also did not determine whether the photograph had been placed in error on a page that included Northam’s name and pictures. From the Times: “James Boyd, the president of the Portsmouth chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said he had “zero trust” in the inquiry and believed that it had been improperly tilted toward Mr. Northam. The firm, he said at the news conference where Eastern Virginia announced the results of the investigation, seemed to be “attorneys for Ralph.” The lawyers defended the scope of their inquiry, which included interviews with 52 witnesses, and their findings. And on Wednesday morning, the medical school’s president, Dr. Richard V. Homan, said that the photograph should not have been included in the yearbook. It had been, he said, a “failure of administrative oversight.” “Their publication was hurtful, particularly to the African-American community and to our campus community,” Dr. Homan said. “It should never have happened.”
Observations: - The investigation was a blatant PR exercise by the medical school, and after so many years was almost guaranteed to prove nothing, thus allowing the school to say, “It was all a horrible mistake” and Northam and Virginia Democrats to shrug, “it’s a mystery!”—you know, like who killed Ron and Nicole.
If O.J. hired investigators after 30 years, and Kato Kaelin was senile, and Bob Kardashian was dead, and Marcia Clark and Mark Furmin were bitter and useless, resulting in a report that said “We couldn’t determine with certainty what happened,” what value would it have? - Occam’s Razor applies. Even assuming you were as dense and clueless as Northam, if a photo of someone in blackface dominated your yearbook page, and it was not you, and you found it objectionable, what would you do?
Wouldn’t you 1) say something 2) do something, and 3) at least know about it? After 30 years? - Even in the completely unlikely circumstances that you never saw your own yearbook page—honestly, is that credible?— and that nobody ever mentioned to you the equivalent of, “Uh, why is there that photo of someone in a hood having sex with a goat on your page/”, once you did see the page after exclaiming, “WHAT? Let me see that!” would you ever say, “Yes, that’s me!” if it wasn’t you?
Presumed scenario: after Northam’s apology and admission, advisors say, “People are going nuts! You’ll have to resign over this! Quick–come out and say you were just trying to be responsible, but that you KNOW that’s not you. Yes, we know a reversal will make you look ridiculous, but Democrats don’t mind ridiculous. It’s better than blackface.” - The report does these things: It reminds us of how ridiculous and untrustworthy Northam is. It reminds us of the lack of integrity among Virginia Democrats, in exactly the same way the popularity of Joe Biden, an unapologetic serial sexual harasser and assailant, shows the hypocrisy and unseriousness of Democrats nationwide. It proves, once again, the double standards of the new media.
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