GOP Candidate in W. Virginia Refers to President Obama as Sambo
What Racism in the GOP?
Former Berkeley County delegate and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Faircloth said Thursday that a joke he told referring to President Obama as “Sambo” and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a “bimbo” was simply an attempt to “bring a little humor” to the campaign.
Faircloth said he apologizes for the joke if it offended anyone, which it has, including a West Virginia branch of the NAACP.
He said the joke he told at a candidates forum on April 29 in Romney, W.Va., is representative of the humor in politics. Faircloth cited examples from his own life that he said prove he is neither racist nor sexist, such as the fact that he raised three biracial children as a godfather.
“There’s nothing racist or feminist about me,” Faircloth said in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon.
Faircloth said some people in West Virginia think President Obama has tried to punish the state. And he said if it takes a joke to bring attention to that issue, “I don’t mind doing it.”
Faircloth told the joke during a forum hosted by We the People of Hampshire County, according to a story published Wednesday in The Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail.
Faircloth said the joke was about President Obama being unhappy with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As a result, President Obama, for his upcoming campaign, would decide to replace Biden with actor Sylvester Stallone. Obama would then replace Clinton with Pelosi.
Faircloth said Obama’s campaign slogan could then be: “Vote Sambo, Rambo and Bimbo.”
The comments angered members of the Jefferson County, W.Va., branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
