Conservative Ghandi, icon, and hero Cliven Bundy had a thing or two to say about "the Negro" during a daily news conference attended by just one New York Times reporter.
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
For the record, I don’t find this the least bit shocking. Not the racism or the hypocrisy.
After all, there’s not necessarily a great deal of daylight between what Bundy said about “the Negro” and what Paul Ryan said about the generations of lazy inner city men who were supposedly never taught the value of work.
What should be truly entertaining to witness is the contortions and acrobatics that every conservative pundit, politician, and shock jock engage in to walk-back their undying love of Cliven Bundy. Fox News host Sean Hannity in particular fell on his sword for Cliven while others referred to Bundy as the new Ghandi or the second-coming of the founding fathers.
I assume the armed lunatics who showed up at the Bundy ranch and aimed their rifles at federal agents are honorary Klansmen so I won’t be waiting for them to backpedal.
Update... here's video of Bundy's remarks via Media Matters