Democratic Presidential Hopeful Brian Schweitzer: Southern Men Are Effeminate, and I'm 60-70% Certain that Eric Cantor is Gay

Apparently he was hoping to win the election without any southern votes at all.

(It wasn't the only time Schweitzer was unable to hold his tongue. Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this ... men in the South, they are a little effeminate," he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, "They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I'm fine with gay people, that's all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he's not, I think, so I don't know. Again, I couldn't care less. I'm accepting.")

Last night, doing the podcast, I said that the media always calls these sorts of racist or homophobic statements, if spoken by a Democrat, "earthy" and "folksy," and thus endearing to blue-collar "common folk" voters (who the media assumes are stupid, racist, and gay-hating).

When Republicans say such things, they're haters on par with the Nazis; when the Democrats say them, they're merely "folksy" or "earthy." Charming, in a lowbrow sort of way.

Sometimes they'll praise the Democrat speaking such unspeakable things as possessing "the common touch."

Well, it did not take long for the Democrat Partisan Media to prove me right yet again. Here's objective analyst Aaron Blake using the f-word for Schweitzer's remarks:

Why Schweitzer felt the need to make these comments is anybody's guess. What's pretty clear is that he's got basically no filter. So what seems folksy and spontaneous one day could just as easily turn into campaign-ending gaffe the next day.

So these comments seem "folksy" but could be twisted into a campaign-ending gaffe.

I don't recall Aaron Blake ever terming, say, George Allen's "macaca" outburst as potentially "folksy."

Update: Aaron Blake says that he intended to mean that Schweitzer's general approach was "folksy," but that it turned into a campaign-ending gaffe with this particular statement.

posted by Ace at 02:11 PM

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