I am an ardent defender of free speech but there are some words for which I have little use. The only time you will ever see or hear me use the “N-word,” is when I am quoting some liberal, typically a black liberal, and only in context. It’s offensive no matter who uses it, but some folks get a pass and that’s typically the only reason I’d bring it up.
This past week 82-year-old Bob Copeland, an old white guy from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, called the President an F-word N-word, so this is a departure for me. He’s not the typical liberal hypocrite or a protected servant on the progressive plantation. He is a former lawyer and an elected police commissioner, and the world wants him to resign.
I don’t think using the N-word in a private conversation, overheard by someone in a public place, (who still has a right to be offended by it), is grounds for his resignation. Think about it. If Bob were a democrat with a history of being in the Ku Klux Klan, the New Hampshire State Democrat party might treat him the way every other Democrat treated Robert Byrd (or any other Democrat in the Klan, for that matter). Those Democrats segregated, Jim Crowed, harassed, harmed, intimidated, and even killed people they called the N-word. But Byrd was revered, honored, elevated, and excused for his documented racism, and the entire racist party history has been white-washed, denied, excused, or ignored.
I know, that whole Kleagel thing was just “taken out of context” anyway, and while they probably wouldn’t have invited him up to the Granite State (except to register him to vote now that he is deceased) he was a reliable Democrat vote and that’s what they really cared about.
Although New Hampshire’s front-line Democrat Defense in the so-called war on women flock to the side of former President Bill Clinton whenever he stumbles into the state, so maybe Byrd would have been welcomed with open arms?
Bob’s best course of action could be to register as a Democrat. He should then “clarify his remarks” by saying that the reason he thinks the President is an (F word N word) is because he should have created amnesty, establish cap-and-trade, and overturned Citizen’s United–all by executive order; admitted he was targeting Tea Party groups and doubled down, and gone straight for single-payer health care instead of wasting time on this patient affordable care act crap that is making re-election for a lot of Democrats look almost impossible.
The lefty press would applaud him. He’d be their hero. Democrats would fundraise with emails calling for everyone to “Stand with Bob.” He wouldn’t be the white racist from New Hampshire, he’d be speaking truth to power and on the short list to challenge Kelly Ayotte for the US Senate in a few years time, with a who’s-who list of Super PAC’s lining up to fill his campaign war chest. Mayb he’d get a beer summit.
And if that didn’t work he could sign up for a sensitivity class, promise to seek therapy, never attend either, and walk away like he was covered in teflon.
But Bob is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Democrat, though he is an elected official. When the non-Democrat elected official comes up for re-election the people in Wolfeboro can decide if his remarks warrant his dismissal. Note that if they don’t dismiss him they may be branded by the professional left as racists, which is a moot point seeing as more than a few media resources have inferred that mostly white New Hampshire can’t be that way because it never occured to very many people of color that they might like living here.
Bob gets to live with what he said, and seems content to do so.
Folks in Wolfeboro who thought they knew Bob will just have to decide if they still value his company.
Wolfeboro is not that big. Bob may find some locals a bit less polite or open and that is how these things work. Polite society and their right to freely associate or not, have a way of tempering behaviors we find offensive and more than a few cold shoulders at the post-office or around town will send a strong message.
But Bob is eighty-two. Bob may not give a s**t, and that is also Bob’s choice. But this is no more indicative of a racist culture within any part of any community than Bill Maher’s mouth is evidence that everyone in entertainment and media (or at HBO) are women-hating, misogynist, bigots.
But I guess it’s news. And it is offensive. And while he doesn’t have to apologize to the President he could apologize to the person who overheard him, or the people in town for using the language in public, or the owner of the restaurant he was sitting in when he was overheard. That would be polite. But that’s his call. He seems happy to stand on his remarks and to defend them based on whatever reasoning strikes him as sound. He says he doesn’t hate anyone, that he is not a racist, and he wont resign.
He is 82. I think someone would have noticed if he was a racist by now and if he was we’d have stories about that by now as well. I don’t think we do.
Whatever the deal is, he is elected to office. Wolfeboro will do what Wolfeboro does. And not long from now the world will wander off to the next best, newest, sensational story and Bob Copeland will still be Bob Copeland, whoever that happens to be. But unless he used to wear a white hood and use the N-word, he’s no Robert Byrd, and Democrats are still making excuses for that bastard.
