Truth Check: Troglodyte
It’s a case of “I can call my girlfriend a bitch, but you cannot.”
Normally I don’t use this forum to discuss political issues in my adopted home state. However, this struck was as funny.
From the Marin (CA) Independent Journal…
A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from South Carolina demanded an apology yesterday over remarks made about Sen. Strom Thurmond during a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Sausalito.
Citing an article in Friday¹s editions of the Marin Independent Journal, U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham said his Democratic opponent, Alex Sanders, should “renounce and apologize” for the remarks of his Sausalito host, who called the 99-year-old Thurmond a “political troglodyte.”
The article goes on to cite a dictionary’s definition of the word: “A member of a fabulous or prehistoric race of people that lived in caves, dens or holes” or “a person considered to be reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish.”
Whether the 99 year old senator is a member of a prehistoric race may be a matter of debate. He was, in fact, a Dixiecrat who openly supported segregation until it was politically beneficial to start supporting civil rights. Many folks in the state of South Cacalacky will argue he truly had a change of heart. I’ll let that one go.
Lived in caves? Well, he was the man to physically grab a handful of a female reporter’s ass during an interview in the 1990s. He was also the man who when attending the grand opening of Greenwood, SC’s Fuji plant was heard to ask–fairly loudly–“Where are all the geisha girls?” Caveman…perhaps, but I’ll let that one go too.
Reclusive, out of date…the man can’t walk on the Senate floor without collapsing and now lives…LIVES at a hospital.
The problem is this: Real South Carolinians (and that doesn’t include me, by the way…it’s like the mafia…you have to be born into it) can joke all they want about Ol’ Strom. However, when someone from California dares to make a fairly obvious statement, it is time to call for retractions, recompensations, and repairations. Again, my girlfriend is a bitch, but don’t let me hear you saying that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pulling for the old guy. The way I see it, any man who can live through a half century in Washinton deserves all the Weekend at Bernies Pt. 3 animatronics his people can find. I hope he lives to be 120 and grabs my wife’s ass on his birthday.
But a troglodyte? It may the first time I have ever whole-heartedly agreed with a political operative from California.
