Mike Huckabee Seeks Clarification On Whether His Mau Mau Uprising Comments Were Dumb Or Not
Over at Mediaite, Mark Joyella runs down the highlights of an interview that presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee gave on Sirius Radio's POTUS channel, in which he responds to last week's nonsensical Kenya-Mau Mau Uprising bleatings by...well, I was going to say "by continuing to put his foot in his mouth," but that's not exactly what he's doing. Would that he had! Then, the noises he made would have sounded more like "MMMMHHUUNNGGGH GGHHHHLLLEEEGGHHH," punctuated by choked inhalations.
If Huckabee did spend the next three days gnawing on his own metatarsals, I'd be inclined to say he would "win the week." Instead, Huckabee offered up some more excuse making. Apparently now it's everyone else's fault, for evaluating his remarks in context!
On the reaction to his comments on Kenya, Huckabee says they "ranged from-this guy is so dumb he doesn't know that Barack Obama grew up in Indonesia not Kenya-all the way to the other extreme...well, I can't be both. I can't be the dumbest guy in the room and the smartest guy in the room at the same time."
Okay, let me help out here. President Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He did spend some significant time in Indonesia, a nation that was not affected in any way by British colonialists in Africa or the Mau Mau uprising. Obama's father is from Kenya, but he was from a part of the nation that was also not affected by the Mau Mau Uprising. Winston Churchill, who was the "head of the government at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion" was "trying as best he could to get the British in Kenya to negotiate an to end the fighting" and "not supporting or condoning the violence." So Obama would have in no way grown up with negative feelings about Churchill's involvement in the Mau Mau uprising, which happened in a part of Kenya where his father never lived, and not in Indonesia, which is an entirely different country from Kenya. And that is why Obama had no reason to take out any lingering frustrations with a bust of Churchill, which is still, at this very moment, in the White House.
So all of you people who are calling Huckabee the "smartest guy in the room" are really doing him a disservice. Please stop confusing the man, okay? All of you people calling him the "dumbest guy in the room," just be sure that Charlie Sheen isn't standing in the room too.
Elsewhere, Huckabee asserts that he never intended to criticize Natalie Portman as an "unwed mother," and that it was Michael Medved that "brought up Natalie Portman." Says Huckabee, "I used that as a segue, not to talk about Natalie Portman, but to talk about the economic realities of unwed mothers." Okay, but during that "segue," Huckabee said this:
You know Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine.' But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.
Pronouns and their antecedents! Who is the "we" that "glorif[ies] and glamoriz[es] the idea of out of children wedlock?" (What is "out of children wedlock," by the way?) The "we" refers to "Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts." I have no doubt that Mike Huckabee is sincerely concerned about the economic struggles of single mothers. But his basic position is that any woman who doesn't simply hang her head in abject shame for her becoming a fallen woman is, by definition, glorifying a societal problem.
Again, I recommend that some Huckabee adviser head to DSW and pick out a comfortable yoga shoe, to chew upon for the next seventy-two hours.
RELATED:
Mike Huckabee: 'I Can't Be Both The Dumbest...And Smartest Guy In The Room' [Mediaite]
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First Posted: 03/09/11 03:24 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 07:35 PM ET