I cannot watch this. Is he bringing his shovel? (It is like watching someone dying of cancer, smoking through a tracheotomy hole.)
Summary: “Oh that blackface costume”
ETA: Actually, this is a much better statement than I expected. He admits mistakes, says he does not expect forgiveness, claims to have learned and grown, and asks to be given the chance to be judged by his actions as the man he’s become and is now.
Dude, even if you were dressed as Michael Jackson, you are in a picture with a guy dressed as a KKK member.
Missed it. So what did he say?
Second question was about the Coonman nickname. He said there were two people in the class ahead of him who called him that, and he doesn’t know why. He didn’t address how it ended up printed below his photo with the other “Goose” nickname.
This picture does not reflect the values of who I am today, blah, blah, blah…oh, and I’m not resigning, I’m going to prove myself worthy, even if it means taking down the whole Democratic party with me…
Did he ridiculously try and claim he was not in the photo even though he already said he was?
After to admitting he appeared in black face as Michael Jackson -which he regrets- he tries to distance himself from the Coonman nickname -upper classmen bestowed it on him. He needs to resign.
I agree, except he should have ended it with I’m resigning.
I get the desire to prove he’s changed, I get wanting to make it better but, too much damage is done, public apology, resign, go away for a bit and then rehab your reputation.
This just feels like too much ego and arrogance
What does that even mean? The whole thing is just ugh don’t tell me.
Racist slur
Yeah I get that but I don’t know what it means to call a white guy a “Coonman.” Nicknames can be weird in the service, like maybe he put on an Earth, Wind and Fire album once and they razzed him about it or something. The whole thing is just bursting with potential to depress you about life.
He should state that he believes someone dressed up in heinous racist garb, but it wasn’t him, it was someone else…Brett Kavanaugh
Or Brett Kavanaugh’s evil twin who lives in a house with similar floor plan.
This one is relevant bizarrely often…
Okay, so a possible link there between dressing up as Michael Jackson for a dance contest in San Antonio, and getting the Coonman nickname? Or there’s more to it.
He’s basically saying the Michael Jackson thing wasn’t actually blackface, that he just put some black shoe polish on his cheeks. Try to imagine what that would look like. He did apologize for it, and said he realized later that it would have been offensive. Of course none of that came up before the election.
I didn’t see the statement—first he doesn’t say which one he was but he was one of them, and then he wasn’t either of them maybe, and now there’s a rigmarole about he was in costume and the shoe polish was just like an afterthought, it wasn’t blackface and so forth? Wha? Somebody has to tell him you need a story you can stick to, damn.
1984 -this is bad and how did he not think this would be revealed. This was not an accident or misstep. He needs to resign. The Democratic Party needs to insist that he is gone by Monday.
Was Michael Jackson still black in '84? That’s a serious question.