For reasons that are truly beyond us, there’s no end to the long parade of cartoons and e-mails about President Barack Obama or members of his family, and it’s very tempting to say, “This time we won’t report on it; it’s beneath us even to give the idiots who create this trash a platform.”
But when it’s elected officials who are involved, we can’t ignore it.
In this case, it’s a Republican Party official and tea party activist in Orange Country, Calif., who’s the culprit. Marilyn Davenport sent an e-mailed image depicting President Obama and his parents as apes, accompanied by the message, “Now you know why – No birth certificate!”
County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh has called for the resignation of Marilyn Davenport, an elected member of the party central committee who sent the e-mail to some committee members and others last week.
Baugh said he received it Friday afternoon and quickly responded with an e-mail telling Davenport it was “dripping with racism and is in very poor taste.” He said the issue should be referred to the Orange County GOP’s ethics committee.
According to an e-mail Baugh sent to committee members Saturday, Davenport described the Obama photo as a “joke” and wanted to know who had leaked the e-mail to the OC Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley, who broke the story. She called the leak “cowardly” and wrote, “Anyone brave enough to come forward?”
Reached at her home in Fullerton, Davenport declined to comment. In an e-mail to central committee colleagues, however, she described the controversy as “much to do about nothing” and vowed that she would not resign.
“I’m sorry if my e-mail offended anyone, I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth,” she wrote. “In no way did I even consider the fact he’s half Black when I sent out the e-mail. In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race. We all know a double standard applies regarding this president. I received plenty of e-mails about George Bush that I didn’t particularly like, yet there was no ‘cry’ in the media about them.”
It’s not enough that these lunatic Birthers insist that America’s first Black president wasn’t born an American, but now they can’t even acknowledge his humanity.
They’ll do anything to deny in their minds the legitimacy of what happened on Jan. 20, 2009. Sure, presidents are fair game for satire, but there’s nothing funny about saying the president has no birth certificate because he’s an animal. It’s just plain sick.
