Beloved Nixon-Ford Official Tragically Dies At 98
America has lost its greatest leader, Earl Butz. The racist Nixon-Ford Administration agriculture secretary always kept the white protestant Republicans laughing with his poetic comedy stylings. For example, back in 1974 he made fun of Pope Paul VI's support of population control with a wacky fake-Italian accent: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules." But it was his whimsical, outrageously vulgar and racist view of America's African-Americans that truly made his mark on the world.
Butz survived the Watergate purge and continued on as secretary of agriculture under hapless factotum Gerald Ford. While Butz was a cretin who enjoyed showing his animal sex toys to disgusted colleagues, he had not been caught breaking into opposition headquarters or invading Cambodia or anything, so he kept his job, which was fucking over this nation's farmers.
But in 1976, he finally went too far. Or, more accurately, he went too far while the wrong people were listening. Flying west to the '76 GOP convention on a commercial flight with John Dean and, uhm, Pat Boone.
Butz got everybody laughing with some jokes about dogs and skunks fucking each other. ("And that's how Mexicans are born!") Next, he answered Pat Boone's question about why blacks weren't too fond of voting Republican, and instead favored Democratic candidates.
"The only thing the coloreds are looking for in life," said Butz, "are a tight pussy, loose shoes and a warm place to shit."
And then it somehow ended up in TIME Magazine and Butz had to quit and Reagan didn't get the nomination and Ford did and then Ford lost the general election to Jimmy Carter, who actually wasn't all that kind to his black supporters, and then Butz lived for another 32 years, the end.
Earl L. Butz, Secretary Felled by Racial Remark, Is Dead at 98 [NYT]