Ralph Northam: Preening Hypocrite

Gov. Ralph Northam is a fool. Worse, he believes us to be simpletons.

When he’s criticized, he pulls out the how-dare-you-I’m-a-pediatrician trope. Yet, as we all saw during his 2017 campaign for governor and again this weekend, he’s just another political hack who will say and do anything to get elected. Now he’s trying to cling to power by shoveling constantly shifting - and increasingly preposterous - stories at the public.

Sorry, Ralph. No one believes you now. Some of us never did.

And no, I’m not going to show compassion to this preening hypocrite. Remember what he did to Ed Gillespie in 2017? Ruthless Ralph Northam was willing to paint a good, mainstream Republican as racist and smugly proclaim that a vote for Northam was a vote against white supremacy, while all the time he was the one dancing in blackface.

This unprincipled man deserves our scorn.

Hours after a picture from his medical school yearbook page went viral and the nation had a brand new parlor game - Is Ralph Northam The Klansman or the Idiot in Blackface? - Northam issued a statement admitting that it was him in the photo.

“I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now,” he said. Blah, blah, blah.

But one day after he become a national punchline, Ralph Northam had a change of heart. To the horror of Democrats burning photos of themselves with this entitled redneck, Northam declared he was staying.

And here’s what he and his numbnut advisors came up with for a press conference:

Yep, he did go out in blackface in 1984, but the yearbook photo isn’t a picture of that.

Never saw this photo before.

Didn’t buy a yearbook. 

Pictures got mixed up in that yearbook.

Someone with “an agenda” leaked the picture.

After consulting with old friends and classmates about whether that could be him, he decided it wasn’t. 

He remembered the other time he “darkened his face” and didn’t remember this time so it couldn’t be him.

Definitely wasn’t him in the Klan robes. 

Just to be sure, he’s going to use facial recognition software to see if that’s him in the picture.

That time he did “darken his face” he didn’t use a lot of shoe polish: : “I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put on my cheeks and the reason I used a very little bit because – I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried that — you cannot get shoe polish off.”

He had no idea what his nickname, Coonman, meant. 

Oh, and 1984 was a different time and place. 

Where to start with all this insane gibberish? 

If you have to ask your old pals if that could be you in the Ku Klux Klan robes or blackface, it probably was you.

First , no, Ralph Northam, most of us have never slathered shoe polish on our faces. We have no idea how hard it is to get off. But thanks for the face-darkening tip.

Second, I’ve lived in Virginia for more than 40 years and never once saw anyone in blackface or cavorting around in Klan robes. Don’t blame the rest of us for your moronic behavior.

Third, If you have to ask your friends if that could be you in the Klan robes or blackface, it probably was you.

Fourth, who cares who leaked the photo and why. You’re not the victim, Northam. We are. If the public had seen this photo in 2017 we’d have been spared your governorship.

Fifth, c’mon Coonman, you and your team aren’t even trying. You couldn’t come up with some kind of raccoon story to explain your racist nickname?

Ralph Northam is a human horror show. And I’m not just talking about the photos.

His folksy explanation of infanticide earlier in the week was chilling. Frankly, those who have family members with severe birth defects find his clinical lack of respect for the disabled chilling.

I don’t want him to resign, although I know he will. Eventually.

I want every late-term abortion enthusiast running for Virginia’s General Assembly later this year to have creepy Ralph Northam standing with them.