SubscribeMcCain Gets Tarred With “Tar Baby” Nonsense
From the illiterate Associated Press:
McCain Regrets Use of Term ‘Tar Baby’
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 16, 2007
(03-16) 12:54 PDT Cedar Falls, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential contender John McCain on Friday used the term “tar baby,” considered by some a racial epithet, and later said he regretted it.
Answering questions at a town hall meeting, the Arizona senator was discussing federal involvement in custody cases when he said, “For me to stand here and … say I’m going to declare divorces invalid because of someone who feels they weren’t treated fairly in court, we are getting into a tar baby of enormous proportions and I don’t know how you get out of that.”
After the event, McCain told reporters: “I don’t think I should have used that word and I was wrong to do so.”
The senator said he hoped it wouldn’t be viewed as a racial remark. He argued that he was trying to say that it wouldn’t make sense for him to have a role in something left to the courts.
Last summer, a top McCain rival, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, apologized for referring to the troubled Big Dig construction project in Boston as a “tar baby” during a fundraiser in Ames, Iowa.
The term dates to the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, referring to a doll made of tar that traps Br’er Rabbit. It has become known as a way of describing a sticky mess and has been used as a derogatory term for a black person.
As we have noted before, and as anyone who has ever cracked a dictionary should know, “tar baby” has nothing to do with “blackness” and everything to do with “stickyness.”
As the article does mention, the term comes to us from the “Uncle Remus” stories, which were collected from Blacks living in the southern United States.
Were they bigots?
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7 Responses to “McCain Gets Tarred With “Tar Baby” Nonsense”
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March 16th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Political Correctness is the new weapon of choice in a society that has lost its moral way.
What he said was not racist. But, McCain’s now on his apology tour and then he’s looking at a trip to rehab.
Hillary Rodham O’Hara can talk about the plantation in a Black church, talk with condescending Southern drawl and it hardly gets a more than a mention.
More dumbing down of America.
March 16th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
McCain should cut the apologies and be a man. Tell the politically correct police to go screw themselves.
McCain should also finally realize that people in the mainstream media are not his friends. McCain would have had plenty of real friends if he had not been playing footsy with the mainstream media and liberal Democrats in the last six years and stayed true to being a Navy combat pilot and the son and grandson of US Navy Admirals.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
The “tar baby” wasn’t ment to be a racist symbol even in the story. That is some people projecting their own issues, not the point the story makes. They have turned “tar baby” into a tar baby. The more you fight it … the more it engulfs you. It is meant as a personification of “quagmire”.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Moreover, Molly Ivins wrote in October 2001 “It now looks, with 20-20 hindsight, as though he should have taken a few more deep breaths before smacking that tar-baby that is Afghanistan.”
And back in ‘92, John F’n Kerry referred to the Vietnam War as a “no-win tar-baby”.
Everybody think back, and see if you can remember the cries of ‘racism!’ that erupted when these happened….
March 17th, 2007 at 2:44 am
McCain proving once again why, regardless of who the Democratic candidate is, he will never receive my vote for anything.
March 17th, 2007 at 3:12 am
I would venture that the notion of McCain’s remarks being racist is designed to appeal to generations that have never read the Uncle Remus stories. Shame too, because they teach some pretty powerful lessons in human nature in a way kids can understand.
March 17th, 2007 at 3:13 am
At least you can still buy the stories on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete.....0618154299