* You will recall the kerfluffle last week after atheist activist and Green Party state legislative candidate Rob Sherman wrote this on his website and then deleted it…
“Now that Negroes like Representative Monique Davis have political power, it seems that they have no problem at all with discrimination, just as long as it isn’t them who are being discriminated against.”
Sherman was referring to Rep. Monique Davis’ tirade against him during a House committee hearing, for which she was given Keith Olbermann’s daily “Worst Person in the World.” She later apologized for the remark, according to Sherman.
* Sherman, however, refused to apologize for his own comments. Sherman told me last week that he deleted those words after receiving an e-mail from 2006 Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney.
Sherman claimed that at the time he “didn’t know there was anything wrong with the phrase negro.” And in the same conversation with me he went on to explain his original comment while refusing to apologize…
“Now they are blacks and have political power, so discrimination is OK, but then, when they were called negroes and had no political power, discrimination was an outrage.”
* Last night, Olbermann aimed his dart at Sherman, giving the Green Party candidate yesterday’s “Worst Person in the World” award….
* Sherman responds today on his website…
In a desperate attempt to maintain their popularity with the non-atheist majority, several Caucasian journalists have desperately grasped at a phony excuse to criticize me by condemning me for referring to Rep. Monique Davis, who is a Negro, as being, of all things, a “Negro.” […]
Rep. Davis seemed to be OK, two weeks ago, with discrimination against my group, because her group has political clout and my group doesn’t, but she retracted those statements last week. The White journalists have demanded that I apologize to Rep. Davis for not using a euphemism that Caucasian journalists approve of.
Go read the whole thing if you have the stomach.
* Zorn wrote this last week…
Sherman’s beef was with Monique Davis, legislator. Not Monique Davis black legislator or black legislators in general.
* I agreed with Zorn then and I agree even more so today after reading Sherman’s latest bizarre tirade. Sherman was and remains way, way out of bounds.
The Green Party folks have claimed that they’ve worked hard to make sure they have candidates which reflect their party’s values. This is their first test. Rich Whitney apparently stepped up to the plate once, but Sherman seems to have since ignored his advice after once briefly agreeing with him. Let’s see if Whitney or somebody else in the Greens does so again.
*** UPDATE *** Zorn weighs in…
(E)very effective crusader needs to be able to tell the difference between when he’s fighting the good fight and when he finds himself where Sherman finds himself today, on the wrong side of a bad fight.