Big Daddy

Dear Big Daddy,
A chimp? A freakin’ chimp?!
–Really, really, really mad in LA

Dear RRR,
People keep telling the GOP they need a big tent. They shouldn’t be too surprised when someone gets confused and thinks they mean a circus.

Ok, that’s a pretty lame excuse (and joke). But it’s a whole lot better than anything Marilyn Davenport has come up with in her own defense.

In case you’ve been in a coma, I’m referring to the Orange County GOP official under fire for forwarding an email picture that shows President Obama as a baby chimp. Now the whole thing has gotten caught up in the who (leaked it to the press), what (did it really mean), why (was Davenport that dumb), etc. Davenport is trying to turn it into a he said/she said process story, which might be a good idea if public opinion was somehow divided on this … but it ain’t. She’s just keeping it in the news.

Now, there’s a bunch of problems here. First off, they made him the baby chimp in their happy little chimp family. Cute, cuddly, entirely benign except for that whole unfortunate hanging-out-with-Reagan incident. Obama beat your butts in 2008, scoring the biggest popular vote margin by a Democrat in a presidential race since LBJ in 1964. To put that in perspective, if you’d made this picture back then, lots of folks would have hardly batted an eye, not to mention would have had to use an X-acto knife and glue.

Wherever you are, racist Photoshop person, give the man his due – you could have at least made him the chimp daddy. Pretty badass animal you got there. A grown-up guy chimp has inch-long canines and can weigh as much as a man – except it’s mostly arms and torso. Strong enough to tear your arms out of their sockets – just ask anyone any cop or EMT who ever had to clean up after a “pet” chimp attack. If it weren’t for the long, despicable history of folks trying to associate our closest cousins with people darker than they are, chimps would probably be a popular sports mascot. “Go chimps/rip their arms off… .” OK, maybe not.

Second, racist Photoshop person, you suck at Photoshop. I don’t even know how to use email and I could do better.

Third, the whole thing was racist – and Davenport keeps trying to pretend otherwise, which just makes her look really, really, really racist. It’s not just that she’s racist – it’s that she doesn’t even seem to realize she’s racist. When the whole birther thing is your more moderate position, you’ve really gone off the deep end, even by Orange County standards.

Next she’ll claim it was for the Civil War sesquicentennial (I do know how to use spell-check). I don’t pretend to know what’s the matter with Kansas (her home state), but I’m guessing that John Brown has turned into a centrifuge in his grave. And don’t even get me started on the tortured feelings this “imperfect Christian lady” likely has about evolution.

Now I just want to say here that I do not think most members of the Republican Party are racists. Hardly. I know a lot of them, and know them to be good folks I just happen to disagree with on quite a few things. Most of them would love to have more minorities in their party.

But here’s the GOP’s big problem. Even though the majority of its members aren’t racists, they’re still the party of choice for some folks who really are racists. Just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and a gay pride parade is only as family-friendly as its most overstuffed purple thong (and I’m not talking about a shoe), a political party often gets judged by its most corrupt or (as is the case here) stupidest members.

So many folks are worried about getting the RINOs out, when maybe they’d be better off targeting the Davenports – which, to their credit, they are now. But they should have done it long before she gave me a reason to write this column.