Pictured above is Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County GOP Chair, Jim Roddey. It should come as no surprise to you that he is old or white, nor should you be shocked when I tell you that at an election party last night, he called Obama supporters "mentally retarded." Old, white and ignorant: the base of the Republican Party.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Roddey was telling a joke in front of about 200 people, saying:
"There was a disappointment tonight. I was very embarrassed. I was in this parking lot and there was a man looking for a space to park, and I found a space for him. And I felt badly -- he looked like he was sort of in distress. And I said, 'Sir, here's a place.' And he said, 'That's a handicapped space.' I said, 'Oh I'm so sorry, I saw that Obama sticker and I thought you were mentally retarded."
And, in case you were wondering, yes, the crowd did indeed applaud and laugh at the joke.
I'm pissed at Roddey for a number of reasons, the biggest being that he just made light of the mentally handicapped. I do, of course, have an Obama sticker on my car, so I'll just get this out of the way right now:
Fuck you, asshole.
Also, Right-Wing blogs and news outlets will now be talking about how us liberals are overreacting to a joke, and how Roddey meant nothing by it. This is garbage, and I'll come back to it in a second. He did apologize today, according to a separate article on the same news site:
In email today, Mr. Roddey called his remarks "regrettable," and added, "I have a long record of supporting people with disabilities and should have remembered that before I spoke. My remarks were inappropriate and I apologize."
I appreciate the apology, but obviously it's not up to me to accept it or decline it. I am curious, however, as to why Sarah Palin didn't nose her way into this (here's the garbage I mentioned like four sentences ago). A liberal says something about the handicapped (which I don't condone either) and she jumps all over it, but a conservative makes a distasteful joke and she's silent. What the fuck, Palin? Don't pick and choose your battles based on party lines. That's a pretty strong indication that you don't actually have any moral fortitude on the subject.
Image found at The TexasFred Blog.
I'm only mentioning that to cite the source. Don't actually go there.
He's surprisingly quite conservative despite the picture.
Also, he sucks.
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