Another day, another United States congressman uses a racial epithet against President Obama. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., is apologizing for using the derogatory term “tar baby” to refer to the difficulties of working with the president.
An apology is grossly insufficient to redress this egregious comment, says CNN contributor Roland Martin and television journalist Juan Williams.
On the 630 KHOW Capils and Silverman radio show, Lamborn said: “Even if some people say, ‘Well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the ‘resident responsible. Now, I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you’re a part of the problem now and you can’t get away.”
Predictably, Lamborn sent his mea culpa to the media and Obama, although he didn’t directly address the president himself in the letter.
Lamborn’s office released a statement “apologizing for using a term some find insensitive.” The congressman, the letter continues, was “attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the president’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces. He regrets that he chose the phrase ‘tar baby,’ rather than the word ‘quagmire.’ The congressman is confident that the president will accept his heartfelt apology.”
Martin and Williams were in concert with one another when they said that many powerful Caucasians feel they have carte blanche to utter whatever debased and vile thought that drips from their brains and falls onto their tongues. Hurtful punishment has to accompany a sincere apology.
“Lamborn has to be sanctioned,” said Williams, a conservative black journalist who was, ironically, fired from his job when he mentioned that he gets nervous when he sees Muslims on his airplane flights. The author of Muzzled insinuated that, like children, if punishment doesn’t accompany errors in judgment, then such characters’ disrespect of Obama will only continue to escalate and get more and more debased and heinous.
“People cannot be rewarded for saying such things,” Williams said on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.” “But that’s what is happening.”
After ripping the president’s policies in the so-called apology letter, Lamborn then presumed in front of the Denver Post that Obama will forgive him immediately because the president is a morally upright individual.
“I absolutely intended no offense, and if this is at all on his radar screen, I am sure that he will not take offense and he’ll be happy to accept my apology because he is a man of character,” Lamborn explained laughably and arrogantly, presupposing that he can determine when his ridiculous gaffe will be forgiven by the person he lampooned.
–terry shropshire
