Apologizing for South Carolina has become a full-time job.
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| Jake Knotts |
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| Nikki Haley |
I'll put my money on those creative conservatives, all spawned by Mark Sanford's administration: Andre Bauer, Sanford's Lt. Gov. and candidate for Gov; Nikki Haley, former Sanford supporter and gubernatorial candidate backed by Sarah Palin (who's been hanging out in our neck of the woods a lot; what does that tell you?); Jake Knotts, State Senator who started a scheite storm when he called Nikki Haley a "raghead"; Larry Marchant, former Bauer top aide who claimed an affair with Haley; and political blogger and former SC political consultant Will Folks, who waxed uncharacteristically sincere in order to unburden his conscience, announcing a one-night stand with Haley.
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| Larry Marchant |
If you Google South Carolina, right under a link to vacations, beaches and the government you will find the latest news on the Nikki Haley scandal. If you Google Sen. Jake Knots, there are plenty of unflattering headlines.
Negative news about the state is all over the Internet.
Danny Qualls lives in Greenville. He said, “You know if you were an outsider and you saw that maybe you would want to think twice about maybe wanting to live here.”
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| Will Folks |
Why, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association has condemned Jake Knotts for his racial slur against Nikki Haley and will continue to support Ms. Haley's campaign. We are in such big trouble. South Carolina is now internationally infamous for its intestine political posturings. In his article for The Guardian (UK), Richard Adams sums my homies up beautifully:
In the bizarre competition taking place between Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina over which US state has the craziest politicians, it's thePalmetto State that is still the clear leader after another week of internecine soap opera.
Nikki Haley is an Indian-American from a family of Sikh immigrants, and the only woman running for the Republican nomination to be South Carolina's next governor. Since this is South Carolina, she has now been accused by two men of having affairs and was last night denounced by another Republican as being a "raghead" and foreign agent.
Republican state senator Jake Knotts went on a local politics chatshow on Thursday night and called Haley a "raghead", and at least once "a f#!king raghead," according to one local newspaper report.We should be so proud that they love us in London.
So, once again, Dear Readers, I must apologize for South Carolina. I can think of one silver lining, here: nearly all of the actors in this Soap are, at least, Tea Party-ish, and the campaign will go to the candidate who can appear the most morally superior and the most politically reactionary, so the Democrats look good without lifting a hand.
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| General Wade Hampton I |
A Democratic-Republican? We could use a few more of those in the US Congress right now. Anyway, that Wade Hampton, what a peach of a guy, huh? Nice hat, too. In fact, I think Gen'l Wade was more interested in the hat and his purse than in public service...which no doubt set the bar for generations to come. We've got a word for his sort these days. Are you reading my mind?
Hampton served in the American Revolution as a lieutenant colonel in a South Carolina volunteer cavalry regiment. He was a Democratic-Republican member of Congress for South Carolina from 1795-1797 and from 1803-1805, and a presidential elector in 1801.He was a colonel in the United States Army in 1808, and was promoted to brigadier general in 1809, replacing James Wilkinson as the general in charge of New Orleans.He used the U.S. military presence in New Orleans to suppress the 1811 German Coast Uprising, which he believed was a Spanish plot.During the War of 1812, Hampton led the American forces in the Battle of Chateauguay in 1813. On April 6, 1814, he resigned his commission and returned to South Carolina after leading thousands of U.S. soldiers to defeat at the hands of a few hundred Quebec militia, then getting his army lost in the woods.Thereafter, he acquired a large fortune land speculating. At his death it was told that he was the wealthiest planter in the United States, owning over 3,000 slaves. Hampton spent much of his time in a mansion, now known as the Hampton-Preston House, in Columbia, South Carolina. (Wikipedia)
As a matter of fact, that hat would look good on a number of South Carolinians.
And the award for the Coveted General Wade Hampton I Asshat Award goes to......(drumroll)......
I'm so sorry, Nance. Massachusetts, but specifically, Boston, used to be the Barnum and Baily of politics--James Curley was elected mayor of Boston and served 4 terms even though he had been indicted for fraud and influence peddling. He eventually served time in jail, but was pardoned by Truman after pressure from the Mass. delegation.
ReplyDeleteThere are other examples, and it is still happening today. The president of the Mass. Senate is in trouble.
Your state just has the most colorful reprobates--and more than we do at the present time.
It is also interesting to note that South Carolina has the worst high school graduation rate in the country.
If only folks would concentrate on improving that instead of going for Olympic gold in "Slur-Slinging Crapfest."
I feel your pain.
My, my, my - what a great post. I was thinking of writing a piece about your state senator and the governor of Mississloppy. They almost look like twins; maybe Siamese and they had to be separated at the head and which resulted in permanent brain damage.
ReplyDeleteNance, Folks shouldn’t get himself too tied up in Knotts over a Hyde and Sikh affair after having a Clinton come between two Bushes.
ReplyDeleteI think sleeping with the likes of Will Folks should disqualify anyone from higher office.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Folks could be making stuff up.
I'd never heard of Folks before, but, naturally, I had to visit his site for this post. I made it through two and a half of his pages and hightailed it out of there before I became radioactive!
ReplyDeleteNance I think you should move back to North Carolina and then we can move to have SC cede from the Union. Or we can expand the borders of NC, eliminate SC and send all these circus clowns to re-education camps and teach them how to be decent human beings!
ReplyDeleteWell, Nance, at least we southerners are a colorful lot! North Carolina hasn't been the same since we lost Jesse Helms; we're down right tame, almost borderline respectable. I almost envy SC. It's too bad that Jesse didn't live to see Obama as president; it would have been interesting to see if his head would have exploded.
ReplyDeleteJust have to say that I love the General Wade Hampton I Asshat award.
I'm feeling sort of weak. I may need to take to my bed with the vapors. It ain't easy being southern.
Oh, lordy, Sheria! The vapors!? I am so cracking up reading this!
ReplyDeleteI do sometimes miss Jesse; didn't agree with much of any of his views but he certainly was a character.
Seeing him chewing his tongue as he tried to articulate his feelings about Obama as president would have been priceless.
My favorite Jesse story is one that may be urban legend but I don't think so:
When the state legislature was debating funding for the establishment of the North Carolina Zoo, Jesse stood up and declared, "Why do we need to spend all that money creating a zoo? All we need to do is throw a fence around Chapel Hill!"
The difference between the South and the North - in the South, we don't hide our demented relatives in the closet, we take them out and parade them around and have long conversations with them. How else could you explain Virginia Fox?
I do declare, Rocky, y'all hit the nail on the head, we are not ashamed of our crazy relatives down heah.
ReplyDeleteAs for the vapors, all southern belles get the vapors sometimes. When I was 11 I read Gone With the Wind and I loved the book. Then daddy took us to the drive-in and we saw GWTW on the big screen and I knew that I was destined to be Scarlett O'Hara. By the time I had worked out that I would be Mammy and not Scarlett, it was too late, the die was cast. Of course Scarlett never had the vapors but the stress of accepting that I could never be Scarlett has weakened me.
This may be small consolation, but at least your politicians wear their Idiocracy on their shirt sleeves. Your candidates are truly WYSIWYG. Almost everywhere else, we are forced to tolerate a high degree of duplicity, and this is no laughing matter.
ReplyDeleteWhoa! Rocky and Sheria, you do NOT get to have this vaporfest without me!
ReplyDeleteBack in undergrad at Meredith, we called the local Raleigh television tower, with its bright white light on top, the Star of Jesse. He might have been cute in his chipmunk-cheeked little way, but he was one dangerous sumbitch. We forget how dangerous the idiosyncratic southern political psycho can be at our own peril. Or any political psycho for that matter.
When I lived in Eagle River, AK, I never thought for a chilly minute that some beauty pageant lightweight from Wasilla down the road would ever make me scared for my grandson's future.
Rocky, I'm moving back to Chapel Hill (I lost too much money in 2008 to make it in Cary anymore). At least I'd be near Sheria and I could know that there'd be one other liberal in town besides me. Other than my Dear Husband (who was hell to convert), I know of exactly one other liberal in all of SC and she lives all the way across the state. And blog posts like this one aren't upping my street cred, either.
Oh, and I always wanted to be Rhett.
I have to let this go but once I activiate the southern in me I have to ride that mule for a while. So rhett, whenever you move to the southern part of heaven, please give me a call.
ReplyDeleteNance, there are worse places than Chapel Hill to be a liberal. As a whole, I think North Carolina is the more temperate of the true Southern states.
ReplyDeleteAs for Jesse, though he did amsue me from time to time, I never underestimated his power and influence. I always watched him closely...
As for Rhett, you two can just keep riding that mule down the road; RHETT IS MINE!!! :)
And I'm sure you realize that the word "amsue" in the post above is the local dialect for "amuse." LOL!
ReplyDeleteAm Sue -- and you're not.
ReplyDeleteI used to think the Republicans were, as George Bush told us, about undoing the 60's, but really it's about undoing decency. There are so many baboon heads around you'd think you were in an ancient Egyptian temple.
oh my my my my my my my . . . . current place of residence - SC!!
ReplyDeleteNance! I live (suffer) here too - frequently feeling the urge to bang my head against a wall . . . I am not originally from these parts but hail from the NE. I am in a permanent state of culture shock.
And as for SC and its ideas about educational systems - oh don;t get me started!