Kansas congresswoman Lynn Jenkins recently apologized for offending anyone with her comment about her fellow Republicans "trying to find a great white hope." She said that the comment had nothing to do with President Obama and she claimed that she was completely unaware that the phrase had racial overtones.
What was not reported on though was the fact that she, at the same time, also apologized for other comments that she insisted were misinterpreted as being racially insensitive. I have the rest of the apology here:
"As I said already, I don't know how the president got injected into this debate. Clearly my comments had nothing to do with race, but I can see how, if you really wanted to, you might have been able to misinterpret them.
For example, when I said, 'I hate that Uncle Tom' I was referring to my Dad's brother Thomas Crowley. He's a real bastard. But I never knew that his name was also a racial slur. That's definite news to me. And I guess I should also clarify that the Aunt Jemima I referred to is his wife.
Also, when I said, 'we need to dunk that Oreo in milk' I was simply commenting on how I like my cookies served. See, I don't like chocolate. And milk makes the chocolate taste not as strong. That's all. It was just a statement about my food preferences and nothing more.
And when I said, 'let's get someone to beat that lazy porch monkey' I was referring to the monkey that lives on my porch. He hangs out there with the raccoon, or 'coon', that I also made reference to. My porch is like a zoo; I really can't explain it. But the monkey in particular is quite lazy. I ask him to do some chores or help out in some way, but instead he just lies there. And any time I try and reach some sort of compromise with him, like on his health care for example, he just throws his feces at me. It's terrible. Someone clearly needs to beat some discipline into him. That's all I was saying. I had no idea that term could also be used in a racial way.
And finally, when I said, 'I have this friend who has a black president that she hates. Do any of you white people out there have any white friends who might be able to defeat him?' that was clearly not about me, but about my friend Schmlynn Schmenkins from Schmansas. It's a very small country very far away, but when I see her next I'll totally have her give you guys a call and straighten this whole thing out.
So see, obviously I am not a racist. At all. This has just been one big misunderstanding. I mean I'm always the first to call a spade a spade, but in this case I am clearly no spade. If by 'spade' we mean horrible bigot. So I'm glad we have that all cleared up.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go get that tar baby out of my watermelon patch."