Login

Register

Member List

RSS Feed

Amanda | Contact

Auguste | Contact

Jesse | Contact

Pam | Contact

Next entry: BREAKING: Daddy D resigns from Focus On the Family board Previous entry: Friday Better Than 25 Random Things “Positive—-Sly & The Family Stone” Edition

Look, With Some Minor Edits, It’s Fine

Zachary Roth has figured out that significant portions of a Bobby Jindal anecdote from Tuesday night never happened, and Politico found out from a spokeswoman that the story didn’t happen when Jindal said it did, it wasn’t actually told to him directly, and, uh, yeah.  Despite all that, Jindal’s aides claim it’s the exact same story, despite being a different thing that happened at a different time in a different way to someone else. 

I’ve decided to edit the portion of Jindal’s speech containing the anecdote to make it clearer what actually happened, and then you’ll see that it’s pretty much the exact same thing.

The original:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

During Katrina,

I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine.

When

I

walked into his makeshift office

talked to him after Katrina

I’d never seen him so angry

. He

was yelling

told someone on the phone about how he’d yelled into the phone days earlier: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I

asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’

kept listening.  He told

me

whoever was on the phone that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I

told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’

stood by while he continued to tell the story.

And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’

Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

See?  There’s absolutely nothing relevant about the story, particularly as it relates to Jindal, that changes.  It’s just like I was telling Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars when I played Greedo. 

UPDATE:  According to Redstate, Roth is racist because Jindal lied.  Apparently, that’s how racism works now.  So, uh, I can jump fourteen feet in the air.  You’re all racist now, fuckers! 

 

------

Registration is now required! We're still in the process of getting it all squared away, so for the moment don't forget to Login or Register using the links in the upper left menu before starting to write your comment.

Posted by Jesse Taylor on 07:28 PM • (27) Comments

I wish you’d stop using such vicious racial stereotypes against Jindal.  I’m not entirely sure how exactly what you wrote is racist, but some feel that it is, so there!

Comment #1: Jrod  on  02/27  at  07:50 PM

Just plain making shit up cause it sounds good and folksy?  I guess maybe he is the next Ronald Reagan after all.

Comment #2: togolosh  on  02/27  at  07:53 PM

The thing is, people already figured out that the story was bullshit pretty much right after he told it.  Nobody with two brain cells to fire a synapse between bought his bullshit. He’s a serial liar who mocks things he doesn’t understand and lies to support baseless hatred of any government that isn’t local enough to be easily corrupted, or run by corporate cronies.

In short, he’s a textbook example of a typical GOPper.  No wonder they want him in ‘12.

Comment #3: Blue Fielder  on  02/27  at  07:56 PM

Uh, yeah, I was like 98% sure he was lying as the words “During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee…” left his mouth.

And then I wondered why he would go out of his way to brag about his friendship with Harry Lee, a notorious racist who is not widely known outside the greater New Orleans area for anything other than being a notorious racist and a crook. 

And then I wondered why he was telling a story about how totes ahsum Katrina was in service to what kind of vision the Republicans have for America. 

Now that this story is making the rounds, all I can really think of is Jindal’s horrible Huckleberry Hound Reads My Pet Goat vocal cadence while relating the <strike>anecdote</strike> lie, and how Jindal is basically the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin.  With a little residual worry about this new trend of spinning Katrina to Republicans’ advantage vis a vis the “wait, nobody has seen Bobby Jindal and Joseph Stalin together at the same time…” thing.

Comment #4: The Opoponax  on  02/27  at  08:19 PM

See?  There’s absolutely nothing relevant about the story, particularly as it relates to Jindal, that changes.  It’s just like I was telling Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars when I played Greedo.

Seriously? Dude, finally this controversy can be solved. Tell us once and for all who shot first?

Comment #5: Michael Clear  on  02/27  at  08:20 PM

I’m starting to wonder if Moe Lane is a real person or a performance artist. Maybe someone ought to ask him if he thinks Ann Coulter is racist, seeing as she said “Wasn’t Bobby [Jindal] great in “Slumdog Millionaire?” at CPAC today.

Comment #6: Incertus, Nacho Daddy  on  02/27  at  09:03 PM

I seriously think Bobby Jindal told the story as he remembers it. Because that’s what he has to tell himself happened to continue seeing heimself as an edgy motherfucker and a maverick and an important person (though for normal people being governor of Louisiana is enough to make you important).

Comment #7: Hershele Ostropoler  on  02/27  at  09:03 PM

The Red Staters know that libruls accuse them of racism all the time for no reason other than because the target of what they’re saying is a brown person, so therefore saying anything bad about a brown person means you’re racist. Even if it’s clearly true. Or something.

Hah! Take that, libruls! We’ve turned your own attacks that we deny and pretend not to understand against you!

The comments are especially entertaining—responding to a request for evidence of this “racism”:

- Jindahl (sic) is a conservative “star” who doesn’t look like “the Left’s” stereotype of a Republican, specifically his skin color. Apparently this makes criticism of him racist, because liberals never criticize conservatives who do look like the stereotype of a Republican. Or something. Then he declares the questioner a troll for being against conservatism.

Comment #8: Redshift  on  02/27  at  09:04 PM

So, uh, I can jump fourteen feet in the air.  You’re all racist now, fuckers!

Not me. I was there to see you do it.

During Katrina.

Comment #9: Quaker in a Basement  on  02/27  at  09:47 PM

He forgot to mention that Harry Lee was an arch-racist Dixiecrat bastard, something I didn’t even know until it was pointed out on here the next day. Bad example for him to use, ESPECIALLY in referencing Katrina!

Comment #10: Ben D.  on  02/27  at  09:48 PM

Anyway, Jindal is done. As I said in the other thread, dorks don’t get elected President.

Comment #11: Ben D.  on  02/27  at  09:53 PM

Good lord, Incertus, did you need to point that bullshit out?  I nearly punched through my goddamn door.

Man, I just made a series of posts at my site taking the piss out of Jindal, and then finished it up by defending his sorry ass from someone even worse.  I was so angry after reading that I swear I could have burst into flame at any moment.

Comment #12: Blue Fielder  on  02/27  at  10:09 PM

Ye gods man! I think reading Moe’s post made my descendants dumber.

Like Lamarckian stupid.

Comment #13: Sarcastro  on  02/27  at  10:10 PM

I wasn’t able to make it through more than about 2 minutes of Jindal’s speech. But OMG I can hear that anecdote in exactly his obnoxious, stilted voice and cadence. Curse you. Curse you all.

Comment #14: kristin  on  02/27  at  10:17 PM

“So, uh, I can jump fourteen feet in the air.  You’re all racist now, fuckers!”

Can I get out of being racist if I pretend to believe you, or do I have to believe you for real?

Comment #15: preying mantis  on  02/27  at  10:40 PM

He forgot to mention that Harry Lee was an arch-racist Dixiecrat bastard, something I didn’t even know until it was pointed out on here the next day. Bad example for him to use, ESPECIALLY in referencing Katrina!

Great example for him to use stirring up the base. He gets to claim solidarity with just the kind of republicans who might ordinarily be deterred by his complexion. And he relies on the notion that when he says “government bureaucrat” no one is going to remember that the bureaucrary was being run by his party at the time. In short, he was doing a Bush: talking to his audience as if they were all clod-stupid. But sadly for him without the ass-kissing from the press that the office of republican president guarantees.

Comment #16: paul  on  02/28  at  01:12 AM

Jesse—toes 14 feet off the ground, or outstretched arm 14 feet? With or without trampoline or springboard? How can I know if I’m racist or not, when the right interpretation makes it actually possible?

Comment #17: Samantha Vimes  on  02/28  at  03:04 AM

Vimes: questions of any kind are also racist. So there.

Comment #18: Bagelsan  on  02/28  at  05:08 AM

Jesse:

So, uh, I can jump fourteen feet in the air. You’re all racist now, fuckers!

I didn’t intend to know that you can jump fourteen feet in the air, and from where I’m standing that doesn’t look like fourteen feet, anyway, so we’re totally cool and not-racist, now.

Comment #19: Dan, Grand High Emperor of Bananas Foster  on  02/28  at  08:46 AM

I’m trying to understand where all this republican-althousian “liberals are mean racists for criticizing our token darker spokespeople” is coming from, and I think I have a partial answer.

I think republicans really really believe that minorities have some kind of superpower magically protecting them from criticism - at least criticism from the left. Because the left is so enthralled and PC and shit that we can’t possibly ever think of criticizing a minority person - of course, that’s why Obama got elected! So then they put up some minority people for show, and get all confused and upset when the magical PC liberal criticism shield doesn’t work. Because they’re that racist (and stupid, not that the two don’t go well together).

Then, since obviously liberals are not PC enough to fear calling minority GOP-ers on their bullshit, by extension we must be racist. It makes sense now.

Comment #20: CassieC  on  02/28  at  09:35 AM

And he relies on the notion that when he says “government bureaucrat” no one is going to remember that the bureaucrary was being run by his party at the time.

Except that the state of Louisiana had a Democratic governor at the time.  Which is probably what he’s referring to.

This anecdote really gave me the impression, as with a lot of what Palin said during the campaign, that Jindal doesn’t understand the difference between talking to people in your home state and talking to the whole country.  He doesn’t understand that nobody is going to know who Harry Lee is (and the folks who look him up aren’t going to like what they see).  He doesn’t understand that while this story would be understood in Louisiana as a complaint against the Democrats, when most Americans think of who “government bureaucrats” were in 2005, they’re thinking Republican Party. 

Though, on the other hand, anyone from a part of Louisiana that actually gets hurricanes knows that it’s not really a good time to casually pop in and pay the Sheriff a visit, so…?

Comment #21: The Opoponax  on  02/28  at  10:46 AM

How surreal is that redstate thread?  One guy says racism is a strong claim that requires some evidence, and what’s the evidence here? And then everyone else pitches a nutty:

Why yes, garhighway1. If it wasn’t true…
Moe Lane Friday, February 27th at 6:54PM EST (link)

…people like you wouldn’t freak out about it so. What was it that you said about Palin, the last time you were here? Something about her not being able to talk in complete sentences, as I recall. I’d post something about Cantor, so that you’d be able to complete your trifecta and unload on a Republican Jew - but you bore me.

Blam.

Disagreeing with Moe Lane is evidence of his being right.  I get it now.

Comment #22: southpaw  on  02/28  at  12:44 PM

So, uh, I can jump fourteen feet in the air.

You are the Magic Negro and I claim my five pounds.

Comment #23: JupiterPluvius  on  02/28  at  04:54 PM

I think republicans really really believe that minorities have some kind of superpower magically protecting them from criticism - at least criticism from the left. Because the left is so enthralled and PC and shit that we can’t possibly ever think of criticizing a minority person - of course, that’s why Obama got elected!

Republicans are really racist.  They really believe that minorities are stupid, and that the only reason a POC ever achieves anything is b/c of affirmative action laws.

There is always a white man (or men) in the background actually running things.  Barack Obama is no different from Morgan Freeman: he’s a black man reading a script written for him by the white men actually running the administration.

This is why when we make specific criticisms about the lies and damned lies one of their spokespeople made, they think that they can just cry “Racism” b/c that specific person happened to have a higher melonin content.

They seriously don’t get that we are NOT racist; that POC and women are actually intelligent and capable; and that “racism” as a word actually means something specific and can’t be tossed off like an ace to shut up opposition criticism. 

Seriously, “playing the race card” to them means bringing up race at all, b/c apparently no one is allowed to criticize a minority openly; we just all privately know they are stupid.

Comment #24: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes  on  02/28  at  07:15 PM

Republicans are really racist.  They really believe that minorities are stupid, and that the only reason a POC ever achieves anything is b/c of affirmative action laws.

The very definition of Rushism.

Comment #25: Blue Fielder  on  02/28  at  07:28 PM

Caren-S-b CoAP said it better, but that’s exactly what I wanted to say. I think it really helps to understand their mindset, but sometimes I’m afraid that twisting one’s brain into those awful shapes might lead to permanent damage.

Comment #26: CassieC  on  03/01  at  03:19 AM

I made this Jindal clip for your amusement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvNc3zdd58

Shower me with Praise, Pajoulsta!

Comment #27: DAVER  on  03/01  at  06:10 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.