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| Goodie Sutton, my nominee for the most racist newspaper editor in the United States. |
So, a little karma happened with this story.
Under pressure, this racist loser has resigned. He's still not sorry for the editorial, but I love the deliciousness of this update.
The new publisher, owner and editor of the Democrat-Reporter is a woman named Elecia Dexter.
Oh, Dexter happens to be a black African-American woman.
Dexter says her understanding is that Sutton is actually still the owner of the paper. But regardless, this is definitely an improvement. It couldn't get any worse.
As for Sutton, he says he now has time to, as he says "drink beer and chase women."
Good luck with that, bubba.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSION
Racism is, of course, always bad.
There are different degrees of it, or at least different degrees of what is said out loud by racists.
A small town newspaper editor in Alabama, though, has gone full throated racist, and his words are jaw-droppingly horrifying. The editorial's headline: "Klan Needs To Ride Again"
This piece of, um, literature was recently published by a creep named Goodloe Sutton, who is the publisher of the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Alabama.
As the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser reports, Sutton is unrepentant and stands by his editorial.
Sutton begins with the source of his ire: "Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama."
Um, OK, if you say so. Then this all turns very dark, very quickly. He blames the "socialist-communist ideology" for all this, and then pretty much applauds the KKK who once "rode through the night to frighten some evil doer. Sometimes they had to kill one or two of them but so what."
Sutton then dreams of the day in which the Klan heads north to "raid the gated communities. They call them compounds now."
Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown went over to Linden to interview him about the editorial. During the interview, Sutton said, "If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we'd all be better off."
Brown asked what Sutton meant by that. He suggested lynching.
It gets even more off the rails. Here's another excerpt from the Montgomery Advertiser article:
"'We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them,' Sutton said.
When asked if he felt it was appropriate for the publisher of a newspaper to call for the lynching of Americans, Sutton doubled down on his position.
'....It's not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communist we're talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?' Sutton asked."
Apparently, it's anybody who disagrees with him. And, to state the obvious, yes he is calling for the lynching of Americans.
Sutton goes on to say that the Klan is not racist and violent, hilariously comparing it to the NAACP.
As an aside, Sutton's newspaper used to be good. In the 1990s, the Democrat-Reporter got national acclaim for reporting on a corrupt sheriff in the area.
However, the Democrat-Reporter gained a reputation for racism and ugliness well before Sutton's recent editorial. In recent years, readers were treated to headlines like "Homosexuals take black spotlight" and "Slavery was a good lesson for Jews."
I've been complaining that the boorish Trump administration has given racists, bigots, misogynists and the like "permission" to blurt out their awfulness in public rather than keep in hidden.
Sometimes I've been told I've been overstating the Trump influence on the worst of American society. I counter that this editorial bolsters my case. I have always thought there are people as odious as Sutton out there. However, it seemed that they had largely gone silent, or crawled back into the woodwork.
They're back out. But maybe Trump has done us a favor. Through example, he has encouraged these lowlifes to come back out into the sunshine. Now we know they're there, and I hope we can deal with them more easily.
Point at them at object and perhaps, just maybe, they'll think twice about hurting other people. You can only hope.
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