{"id":178222,"date":"2019-02-04T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/04\/why-letting-republicans-run-as-democrats-is-a-bad-idea\/"},"modified":"2019-02-04T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T00:06:00","slug":"why-letting-republicans-run-as-democrats-is-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/02\/04\/why-letting-republicans-run-as-democrats-is-a-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Letting Republicans Run as Democrats is a Bad Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Case in point, Ralph Northam, who voted for Bush in 2000 AND<\/b> 2004<\/a>, is now known to have not only had a fucking Klan picture in his medical school yearbook, but had the nickname “Coonman” in his VMI yearbook<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It was no easy feat. But on Saturday, Ralph Northam staked a claim in the annals of most surreal political news conferences, presiding over a 40-minute extravaganza that would do Mark Sanford and Jim McGreevey proud. Or something like that.<\/p>\n

In a bid to salvage his job, the Democratic governor of Virginia denied he was one of the men dressed up as a Klansman or in blackface in a picture on his medical school yearbook page \u2014 after admitting the night before he was, in fact, in the photo.<\/p>\n

But that was just the start. Here are six of the strangest moments of the presser.<\/p>\n

BEAT IT<\/p>\n

Northam said he \u201cvividly\u201d remembers dressing up in blackface to imitate Michael Jackson at a talent show in 1984 and that this memory solidified his belief that he wasn\u2019t photographed in his yearbook dressed in blackface or in a Klan outfit. But when asked by reporter, he couldn\u2019t remember the artist\u2019s name and relied on his wife, Pam, to whisper his name.<\/p>\n

  \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

 In a different yearbook at Virginia Military Institute, Northam was nicknamed \u201cCoonman.\u201d Why? He wasn\u2019t quite sure, he said.<\/p>\n

 \u201cMy main nickname in high school and in college was \u2018Goose\u2019 because when my voice was changing, I would change an octave. There were two individuals, as best as I can recollect, at VMI \u2014 they were a year ahead of me. They called me \u2018Coonman\u2019. I don\u2019t know their motives or intent. I know who they are. That was the extent of that. And it ended up in the yearbook. And I regret that.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This guy was a college age Republican at the height of the Reagan administration.<\/p>\n

He voted for George W. Bush in 2004.<\/p>\n

Of course he was doing racist sh%$ like this, it’s what college Republican pukes did back then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Case in point, Ralph Northam, who voted for Bush in 2000 AND 2004, is now known to have not only had a fucking Klan picture in his medical school yearbook, but had the nickname “Coonman” in his VMI yearbook: It was no easy feat. But on Saturday, Ralph Northam staked a claim in the annals …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,374,398,406],"class_list":["post-178222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-politics","tag-racism","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}