EX-SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR IS A LOT OF THINGS … BUT RACIST ISN’T ONE OF THEM
Former S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford is in hot water over a remark he made previewing the second general election debate between U.S. President Barack Obama and “Republican” presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Sanford – a Fox News contributor – was appearing on America’s News HQ on Sunday evening when he made what one former spokesman termed an “inartful” analogy.
“Obama’s going to come out in this (debate) much more forcefully, and he’s going to throw a lot of spears,” Sanford told Fox anchor Shannon Bream. “And I think it’s very, very important that in this case that, you know, Romney stay focused on his vision for the country and stay focused on the things that, I think, matter most to people in this country, which is, where is the economy going, where are we with jobs, and what’s happening next on the debt and the deficit issue?”
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite seized on Sanford’s “throw a lot of spears” comment.
“The term ‘spearchucker’ is a racial slur against black people, but what would a 52-year-old white guy from South Carolina know about that?” Christopher wrote, tongue firmly implanted in cheek. “Also, he didn’t call President Obama a ‘spearchucker,’ he just said he would be throwing spears. That’s completely different.”
Christopher’s headline labeled Sanford a “fear-chucker.”
Sheesh …
Mark Sanford is a lot of things, people … but racist isn’t one of them. For starters he appointed four African-Americans to posts in his cabinet and one of his chiefs of staff, Henry White, was black. Sanford was also the first South Carolina governor to formally apologize for the “Orangeburg Massacre,” a 1968 incident in which several white S.C. Highway Patrol officers fired into a crowd of black protesters (killing three of them).
Previous governors of both parties had refused to do that.
Not only that, back in 2010 Sanford gave a certain Indian-American female more than $400,000 to get her gubernatorial campaign off the ground (although he’s made it pretty clear that he regrets that particular decision).
Of course he’s also notoriously careless with his analogies – like the time he compared growing up on an expansive Lowcountry, S.C. plantation as living in a “concentration camp for boys.”
Sanford’s former spokesman Joel Sawyer – now a Republican consultant in the Palmetto State – dismissed any implication that Sanford meant something racist by his comment.
“Not an artful analogy at all, but incredibly off base to suggest he meant anything racist by it,” Sawyer told FITS. “Mark’s record speaks for itself in terms of minority appointments and reaching out engage and address groups like the NAACP.”
Also last time we checked Obama was only half-black … so if you’re politically correct enough to view Sanford’s remark as offensive, at least do him the solid of acknowledging that it’s only half-offensive.
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57 comments
Non issue.
More crap from liberals!
More crap from the NAACP. Not all liberals view his comments as “racist”
Meh.
The real tragedy here is that Fox News pays to hear what Sanford thinks about something.
Ot that anyone thinks Sanford has anything to say. He is definitely an authority on how to destroy a state.
Whenever I think of Sanford, his wayward, deceitful penis comes to mind. His penis contains a brain larger than the one in his cranium. His penis brain typically over-rides his cranium brain. They are in a constant ying-yang-like struggle.
It’s actually yin-yang, Flounder, but you seem to spend a lot of time thinking about another man’s dick. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if that’s where your head is at, but it is interesting to note.
When he was governor of SC, I alwyas marvelled at how “ARTFUL” Sanford was to BASH the people (Conservatives) who elected him…but he’d pander to those who HATED him (like SC State)….
Glad he’s getting the hand bitten that he used to give Handouts to the Race-Hater class…
Good to see this little weasel Squirming for the rats he tried to placate at the expense of us contributors….
He was just reading what the Fox “News” teleprompter told him to say.
Try to Ride the middle of the road, like Sanfrod…you get run over…LMAO…Should be a lesson to all moderates and/or so-called libertarians…
Also: Joel Sawyer is prostituting (or lying) for Sanford again…
Just like FITS, incest is rampant in Columbia. If you are so stupid as to be in bed w/ this phillanderer, you deserve whatever disease you contract…
NASTY people are politics…
I wouldn’t even say the comment was in-artful. It was a perfectly valid comment. When someone is taking criticism, we say they are the “chief spear-catcher.” Only if you yourself view blacks in a degrading manner or are purposely trying to make a controversy, would you make a racial connection.
The President will be throwing spears, jab and barbs. He may also lob bombs, fire both barrels and break out the flame thrower. There are any number of weapons-based analogies that we commonly use when discussing political disagreements.
We have destroyed our own ability to communicate because of fear of being a racist. Between that and trying to make complex arguments in 140 characters, we are a generation away from grunts and gesticulations being the standard for making a point.
So true. Maybe the increase in the number of tattoos is also based on lack and fear of articulation. Visually, tattoos can be very impactful; no words spoken. Point taken. We as a culture are regressing. Tribalism is on its way.
Isn’t he also engaged to a woman of color?
Don’t say that within HER hearing; she and her family think they are the elite of the elite.
Are you saying that people who are not caucasian cannot be elite, Whoops? Sounds kinda racist.
Not at all, but very often the south american elite of european descent do…
English language is a tough language to understand at times. There are so many words and how they are used in a sentence sometimes gives double meanings. You have to know the speaker and understand what the situation is to get the real meaning of what he or she says.
Just from watching the video, I would say Mark was to trying to make a point that Obama would come back with sharp points in the debate, thus the use of the word spears.
Last year at one of the TV show, he mentioned meeting a black woman who gave him a hug and that gave him the incentive to get out and move on. That to me he is definitely not a racist.
Wrong…he said “a big black woman came up and gave me a hug”…a person with feelings would have said a woman came up and gave me a hug.
That’s true, he could have said a woman but by his saying a black woman shows he is not a racist. That’s the point I was trying to make.
I am sorry …the comment is racist. The GOP has always been a little racist. The Republicans I knew when I was younger in SC regularly used the “N” word and spoke disparagingly of poor people and their tendency to vote Democratic. The GOP does not reach out to blacks and those in need because it looks down on those in need.
I am white and successful and a job-creator and I’ll be damned if I ever return to the GOP which also hates unions, immigrants, gays, Latinos, people on disbablity, people on unemployment, women….the list is endless.
Indeed the GOP looks down on blacks. I know this from years of personal experience here in South Carolina.
And yet, weren’t southern democrats for segregation, as opposed to their republican counterparts?
Throwing spears is a very common term. Oh wait, it is only common amoung people who want to say nigger but know they can’t without getting in trouble.
Yup. Of course people like you never go farther than that. They try to ignore the fact that they became dixiecrats and then folded into the GOP where Lee Atwater used them to form a winning coalition.
This is in reply to the dishonest comment from contused.
That’s right, they were used. Eisenhower however did get the ball rolling with the Civil Right Act of 1957. This was despite the fact that LBJ and his Dem friends tried and succeeded to weaken the bill so LBJ wouldn’t offend other Southern Dems and weaken his presidential aspirations. There was Republican opposition to the bill but in the end Eisenhower created a coalition and the Repubs provided 37 of the 60 votes needed.
I appreciate the way you ignored my point. Simple question, what happened to the Democrats who were against the bill? Where did they end up?
Wait, I am not racist. I have several black friends….I mean, I appointed several black people to jobs.
“I have a few friends who are black.”
But seriously, I think it is a stretch to call his comment racist.
Obama throwing spears?
LMAO
Has anyone seen him trying to throw a baseball – the Wuss in Chief throws like a girl – a retarded girl that is.
And don’t forget the mom-jeans he was wearing.
Gotta LOVE how FITS broke his neck to claim the Voter Integrity law is racist….
Only now to see his Ace-Boon-Spoon dangling in the wind by people who Sanford kissed the @$$ orf to be seen as cool …while dissing Republican voters…
Play to idiots and now you look like one…Well Played Sanford…about as well as you played the role of ‘father’…
Obama is an incompetent socialist without any experience running anything.
But he ain’t a spearchucker.
Who was the Turkish dictator he praised in his first or second State of the State addresses?
Ataturk, or maybe it was the “Young Turks”
Too funny.
Next maybe he will say the proverbial, “At least Mussolini got the trains to run on time.”
I wasn’t sure. Thought it was someone different. Something that starts with Sem …
Will should know. He was the press secretary at the time.
Today’s southern GOP IS the old Dixiecrats.
I hate Sanfrauds Dumb-ass but I think this is total contrived Democratic b.s….next thing you know they will have him walking the plank or at least swabbing the deck….hmmmmm swabbing…..swab….hey that’s a Q-tip…..and heeeeey…they are made out of cotton….oh shit, there’s another racist remark.
From anyone else I would say, yeah, it’s racist. From Sanford I would say, he’s being the same doofus he’s always been.
I read somewhere that Sanford bought a cattle ranch in Argentina and he was going to sell his sub-par beef to the fast food industry. Mr. Sanford, the cattle are calling.
Chuckin a spear is WORK…Obama ain’t gone do no work…
Community organizing is his bag…
Sit on your @$$ and pontificate about how bad The MAN is…even though The Man handed out to you, everything you ever got…
Hey Big T, since you post about 500 times a day on various sites, we can only reasonably assume you don’t have a job.
So drop the bullshit about somebody not working.
Or is being a lawyer not a job? Or law professor? He worked 2-3 years in public service as a “community organizer” rather than go straight into law to make piles of money. Yeah, what a dick.
Handed everything? Like what? He wasn’t like Romney who was saddled with a million dollar trust fund before he left college and had his way paid by his father. Nah, he was a poor kid abandoned by his father, raised by his grandparents and earned his way up. Compare that to W, a guy that got piss poor grades and still managed to get into Ivy League schools and then managed to bankrupt an oil company in the middle of a boom before being given a gravy position getting a publicly funded baseball stadium to cushion his trust fund. Yo’re a fucking moron.
And on the flip side, Mitt Romney hasn’t worked, except to run for office, in 12 friggin years. Sure, he poured somebody else’s money into the Olympic rathole, but he sure hasn’t done anything resembling work in over a decade. He’s a professional politician and a shitty one at that. How many offices has he actually won? One. And he left that after four years because the voters were sending his ass a pink slip.
“Or is being a lawyer not a job? Or law professor?”
Those are, indeed, jobs. According to many reports, though, he didn’t do much work while he held those jobs.
How did a Brotha who (by his own admission) sat around and did drugs get into elite, cushy White-guilt schools and colleges…
You ain’t that D@%n stupid are you….???
PS: Mitt Romney is one of the few men in America who has created as much wealth as obama has gobbled up by gamin’ the Affirmative Action system into the White house…
Um, dumb shit, the previous president was a coke user and was denied admission to the University of Texas Law School but got into Harvard despite having shit grades.
How’d that happen?
And considering W and Cheney had six DUIs between them, are you really going to talk about substance abuse?
Next, the idea that Obama, not Romney, is the product of the privilege is absurd even by your reliably supercilious standards. Those of us that work for what we got have a saying for people like Romney – Thanks daddy.
In any event, we all know you don’t work. So drop the bullshit. I wonder which gov’t assistant programs you’re presently abusing. Glad we can pay your internet bill.
“And yet, weren’t southern democrats for segregation, as opposed to their republican counterparts?”
That’s BEFORE the (d)ixiecrat switch to the GOP after the Civil Rights Act.
Mike s and Booyah: go read Urban Legends “Dixiecrats and the GOP,” written October 2011
Oy. Strom Thurmond didn’t become a republican? Next thing you know you will be saying Liberal Fascism is a factual book too.
This is what I love about Republicans. They just make shit up.
Yeah, Strom thurmond remained with the Repubs and Robert Byrd with the Dems. About even I’d say.
No integrity. Byrd appologized wile Thurmond thought they were only good for sex. My larger point remains amd even though you deny it is true you kjnow I am right.
He needs to stick to digging holes with his tractor.
YOU BETCHA!
YOU BETCHA!
Fuck a bunch of “shirker” Mark Sanford and Fox for paying that ‘shirker” to say one damn word.
Whores all………
I agree with all of the post above. Thanks for the insightful analysis.
Hey le, how y’all dooin these days?
I saw Ann Coulter on Bill Maher’s show the other night. She’s written a new book in which she says the passing of the Civil Rights Act in the sixties ended racism. Now, according to Ann, more people in the US are pedophiles than racist.
Of course, the truth is we’re all racist. It’s simply a matter of degree.
Still waiting for her book on changing sexes, and how well his/hers went.
All right, we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks. But we don’t want the Irish!
nontroversy is right – never heard this before reading it here – no one really cares what Sanford thinks anymore – they barely cared when he was governor – Mark who???