Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. Previously, he served as Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/19/wingnuts.racist.playboy.art.jpg caption="Email sent by TN state legislative aide (L) and Playboy.com article (R)."]
If you debase or dehumanize people who disagree with you politically, you’re deep into wingnut territory. That’s what we see in this installment of "Winguts of the Week," which looks at racist emails sent by southern Republican politicos and an ugly Playboy web-feature on “Conservative women we hate to love.” Get ready for a generous helping of racism and sexism from the right and the left.
I love the South, but southern conservatives have a notoriously complicated history where race and politics intersect. Little learning curve was shown in South Carolina this week when longtime local GOP activist Rusty DePass "joked" that First Lady Michelle Obama was descended from a gorilla, which had gone missing from a local zoo: "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors – probably harmless." Watch
The comment, posted on the former state election director and Richmond County GOP chair’s Facebook page, drew widespread outrage. (Note to the over-60 crowd: the world of social networking isn’t conducive to racist asides that might have gone unchallenged in a country club or pool hall.)
DePass’s initial public defense was to claim that Michelle herself had said she was descended from apes. This apparent Scopes-Monkey Trial-era reference to evolution was not consistent with anything found in the first lady’s remarks. Silence about the scandal from the South Carolina Republican leadership was deafening but Mr. DePass eventually wrote a letter of apology to the first lady, presented in front of the local NAACP. Seems like evolution of attitudes might be a good thing all around.
But Rusty DePass wasn’t the only southern Republican politico to wade into the murky waters of racist emails masquerading as humor. This week, Tennessee state legislative aide Sherri Goforth found herself in the national news when she emailed an image labeled “Historical Keepsake” – showing the august portraits of presidents of the United States from George Washington on, ending with a pair of googly-eyes peering out from a black background to symbolize President Obama.
When confronted, the aide to State Senator Diane Black said only that she regretted sending the image to the wrong email list and from her government address. She stated that she had been "reprimanded" by her supervisors but not otherwise punished, let alone sacked, for sending out the email on the taxpayer’s dime. Here’s an idea – send her to work at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis for a few months on furlough.
This week, the echo-chamber was buzzing about David Letterman’s off-base joke about Sarah Palin and her daughters. But that seems comparatively innocent next to Playboy.com’s June feature “So Right, It’s Wrong – Top Ten Conservative Women We Hate to Love.”
The list – featuring former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin and author Peggy Noonan, among others – was capped off by what I can only call here a “hate-fornicate" rating. You can guess at the real term they used, but suffice it to say that it suggested aggression. The segment posed as an homage but unfavorably compared one woman to Eva Braun and said of a pro-life journalist, “you get this one pregnant, she stays pregnant. Karma is a b*tch.”
Playboy has never pretended to be politically-correct, but this was way over the line, even for them. The feature, penned by one Guy Cimbalo, was subsequently dropped from the Playboy Web site but archived by the conservative blog RedState.com, which rightly pointed out that a corollary liberal list would have provoked far more widespread outrage.
Playboy issued a statement on the controversy that sidestepped outright apology: “The feature on Playboy.com was by no means intended to insinuate or encourage violence against women – something the organization adamantly abhors. It has been removed from the site.” Playboy is usually focused on the good-natured appreciation of beautiful women – but this feature went far beyond its critics’ stereotypes of the magazine as sexist or in bad taste; it was a foray into the politics of hate.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.