Standup comedian, Sarah Silverman, is taking on Rick Perry for being a racist in a show she is calling “Live from N*****head: Stripping the Paint Off Of Good Ol’ Fashioned Racism,” reports POLITICO on Tuesday.
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Silverman believes a Washington Post story from earlier this month in which it was revealed that a plot of land leased by Perry’s father for hunting had a rock on it which, in the 1980s, had the word “N*****head” scrawled on it in spray paint.
Silverman believes that this story was brushed over by the news media—which is a mistake that anyone who doesn’t pay attention to politics for a living could make. For those of us who draw a check by watching media coverage of political campaigns, we know that this story was not only not brushed over but got far more play than it deserves.
“The fact that Perry enjoyed a family hunting lodge with this name is gross, the fact that it barely made news or had consequences is dangerous,” Silverman told POLITICO. She says that her show is an opportunity to “illuminate an ugliness that barely got news and surely had almost no consequences for Perry.”
Lost on Silverman is the fact that the story may have had few consequences for Perry because it was so thinly sourced that it could not have any more staying power than it got (which was nearly a week of lasing coverage and defense from the Perry campaign). A thirty-year-old rock on a property which can only be linked to Perry through his father that no one could remember seeing besides two anonymous sources. Those sources who do remember the rock from the Reagan-era also remember the lengths to which Perry’s family went to remove the racial slur (which locals repeatedly re-wrote on its surface with spray paint).
When asked if Perry himself is a racist, Silverman opined “I don't know but he is tied to the past.”
Silverman vocally supported Obama in 2008 and has complained in the past of the racial animus that is likely to fuel some of the resentment to President Obama among his detractors. “I think the festering racism in certain areas and certain people helped to form a lot of their criticism of the president — not all — but a lot of it,” she said. Silverman neglected to mention whom she believed was off the hook—I, for one, will be waiting with bated breath. I know many are hoping to be Silverman’s list of non-racists this Christmas.
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