'And when I said I was like David Duke without the baggage,
I meant that David Duke had to pack a lot of white sheets.'
All right everyone, pack it up—nothing more to see here.
The problem has been solved.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has agreed to meet with the head of a civil rights organization who criticized the congressman for speaking to a white supremacist group in 2002.
Scalise will sit down with Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and fellow Louisianan. Morial previously served as the Democratic mayor of New Orleans.
First off, I would once again like to remind America of the key words
in 2002. Steve Scalise, who has fancied himself a "
David Duke without the baggage" because that is the sort of thing a Louisiana Republican might find themselves fancying, spoke to the white supremacist group founded by Duke
in 2002. As in, during the Bush administration, and after the turn of the millennium, and a very,
very long time past the time when "white supremacist group" was something that even the most fish-mouthed political backwoodsian could embrace under the
sure they're racists but they make a lot of good points banner that let David Duke saunter into respectable Republican politics in the first place. We're talking about 2002, and about a politician who willingly called himself "David Duke without the baggage" because he had a lot of respect for those points that David Goddamn Duke was making, if only David Goddamn Duke hadn't previously tarnished his image by being photographed in the traditional garb of his people, the well-pressed bedsheet.
And now that same Steve Scalise, the fellow who proposed to prospective admirers that they consider him a David Duke without the baggage, is running whip operations for the Republican House during the Obama administration, and if that's not an on-the-nose metaphor for the entire Goddamn Republican Establishment during the era of the first non-white president than I would be hard pressed to find a better one. But it is all right now, because Steve Scalise is arranging a meeting with a Black Person, which will patch things right up.
In his Jan. 6 letter, Morial asked whether then-state Rep. Scalise’s 2002 speech to the white supremacist group European-American Unity and Rights Organization was “a subtle ‘dog whistle’ of affinity to David Duke's group of supporters.”
He went on to suggest Scalise had engaged in a pattern of questionable actions while serving in the state legislature. Scalise twice voted against the creation of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Morial pointed out. And as a congressman, Scalise also voted against naming a U.S. post office after Lionel Collins, “a pioneering civil rights lawyer and the first African-American judge in Jefferson Parish, La.,” Morial wrote.
The Hill reported this month that as a state lawmaker in 1996, Scalise also tried to kill a resolution that would have Louisiana apologize for its role in the institution of slavery.
Yes, but that is because back then Steve Scalise was a David Duke without the baggage, whereas now that he has been elevated to the role of Chief Republican Tactician for the Sabotage of the Barack Obama Administration he is a reformed man. It happened the moment he moved into his new office, in fact. There was some baggage wouldn't fit, you see.
That ought to be an entertaining conversation. By rights it should be videotaped, because watching a man ditch that much baggage ought to be a damn informative thing, certainly informercial-worthy, but we will likely have to settle for the post-reports on how the two men agreed to disagree on whether or not a history of being and voting like "David Duke without the baggage" can be scrubbed clean when a man really, really needs it to be in order to further his chosen career path.