Look, he grew up in Virginia just a few years after me, and in a more rural part of the state. So I’m sure he heard the same jokes and slurs that I did, plus probably a few I didn’t. Like the guy who shoots a black person and is fined fifty bucks for shooting a coon out of season. That sort of joke.
First of all, it’s gotten to be a triple bank shot for him to be anything but guilty. Somebody else put ‘Coonman’ into his VMI senior page. It wasn’t him in the pic. Somebody else hijacked his med school page too, and put the pic there. (He has the worst damn luck with yearbook pages!)
And that’s allowing that it’s OK for this to be all about him. And it isn’t. It’s about the Commonwealth of Virginia, not him. And at that point it all falls apart, because he won’t be able to govern effectively.
And if he believes that the Democratic Party’s agenda is better for the Commonwealth than the GOP’s agenda, then he owes it to his party to enable its candidates to be successful this November. To say the least: This. Is. Not. Helping.
I can see why he would have not looked at that photo. When I visit my parents, they have some pics of me and the fam, and I don’t like looking at them, not because was wearing blackface, but because I had a stupid haircut.
When he heard of the photo, I can see how he would imagine himself in his MJ get up, and how embarrassing that would be, and how he wouldn’t want to bring himself to look at it. “I don’t need to see it, I know what it looks like.” type deal.
Then, when someone mentions a KKK hood, he says, “…wait, I don’t remember the KKK at that talent show. Let me take a look at that. Ah, shit, that’s not me, that’s not the photo I was thinking of.”
That is just speculations, and even if that is the case, I still think he messed up badly enough that he’s lost credibility and showed poor judgement that he should step down. I don’t know that he is irredeemable, and on Friday, he probably would have been, had he handled this differently, but he just keeps digging himself deeper, and showing poorer and poorer judgment.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure that this was pretty much the plot to a sitcom at some point.
We’ll have to disagree on this. I think it’s preposterous to suggest that if a potentially career-ending story about a picture of you from several decades ago has hit the press you’d think “oh, I know what that’s probably about” and not bother to actually look at the story.
I didn’t say that is what happened, I said in the post that you are quoting that it is pure speculation, so there is nothing to disagree with.
Yes, I do think that it is not unreasonable that when offered to see an embarrassing photo of oneself, one may decline to take a look at it, certainly not your chosen hyperbolic description of “preposterous”. Is what you are disagreeing with that people can be embarrassed enough about their mistakes that they may not want to relive them?
Also, in the part that you chose not to quote, I said that, even if that were the case, he’s still messed up the response more than enough that he’s just digging at this point, and if he wants any chance of redemption, that begins with resignation.
I agree with you. To buy his excuse, we’d not only have to believe his first impulse would’ve been to publically apologize for something he hadn’t looked at, but we also have to believe no one gave him a decent description of the photo before he apologized for it. It’s implausible to think he would have reflexively apologized for impersonating Michael Jackson in the absence of anyone bringing up MJ.
Since I can imagine racist or insensitive high-schoolers nicknaming a guy who does a blackface routine “Coonman”, to me the simplest explanation for “Coonman”, Michael Jackson blackface memories, the yearbook picture, and his memory issues is he did his blackface routine on multiple occasions and is extremely stressed out about it coming out now.
But he says this was just dressing up as some black pop star, I’m pretty sure nobody much thought that was offensive in 1980. Very different from the coon/KK thing.
I’m coming to feel that the blackface thing itself is really no big deal. It shows that he, as a young white guy in Virginia, was racially insensitive in 1984. At the time, former KKK officer Robert Byrd was the highest ranking Democrat in the US Senate, and the highest ranking Republican was Strom Thurmond. Notice that, whether he put that photo in the yearbook or not, the administration of the medical school apparently had no problem printing it. The times have changed, and from all appearances Northram has changed with them.
The weird evolving explanations look potentially more damaging than the actual offense. But I’m not signing on to the general principle that having been involved in racially insensitive “joking” 35 years ago is something we call on people to resign from public office for.
If a white guy wants to look like Michael Jackson, he doesn’t darken his skin, he lightens it.
I heard an interview on NPR with IIRC the head of the Black Caucus in the Virginia legislature, and he seemed to be saying that dressing up like Michael Jackson was, in itself, offensive.
Cite. I suppose it would be the same if someone dressed up as a rapper.
Here’s an article an old friend wrote, which I think it’s a good take, though it’s more informal personal reflection than analysis.
(Note: It’s a transcribed twitter thread, and evidently published without much proofing. My friend normally isn’t as careless a writer as this article might lead you to believe.)
As a VA Democrat, it’s hard not to see all three of these folks as tainted beyond redemption at this point. Virginia needs state leadership that can credibly oppose white supremacism, as well as misogyny and sexual abuse.
Which is why (I am half-seriously suggesting) Fairfax should resign, and then Northam should appoint state senator Mamie Locke (former mayor of Hampton, VA, in addition to over a decade as state senator) as Lieutenant Governor, and then Northam should resign.
By “tainted beyond redemption” I’m speaking in terms of politics, not necessarily in terms of morality and decency. I’m not sure if anyone is tainted beyond redemption, morally speaking.
Not in 1984, he doesn’t. Which is when this happened.
Jackson had dark skin then–that was the year of the Pepsi commercial:
A lot of comments seem to assume that Northam had to have had a good Michael Jackson costume.
Why should we assume that? Why should we assume he looked substantially different to the image shown in the med school yearbook? He could have had a lousy MJ costume.
I agree, and continue to think that Northam, having dreaded the emergence of a dance-contest MJ photo for decades, might have given the yearbook one a cursory glance or no glance at all, in horror about what was clearly headed his way. People don’t behave rationally when they are consumed with dread and fear.
As I’ve said, I still believe he has to resign. But I can believe that his Friday response was honest, and that he didn’t really realize the photo wasn’t from the contest until Saturday.