Michael Steele's In The News Again!

Perhaps the least hilarious of the hilarious things Michael Steele said in his interview with Univision was that the American health care system doesn't need comprehensive reform -- just a little "elbow grease." Yes! Save the corrupt Medicare by passing a bill that bans prevents any aspect of Medicare from ever changing. These things, and more. But what did he have to say about the race card? 

Jorge Ramos - For instance, when you hear commentators like Glenn Beck saying that for him President Barack Obama is a racist, with a deep seeded hatred for white people, how do you react?

Michael Steele - That's one man's opinion.

Jorge Ramos - Yes, but...

Michael Steele - That's one man's opinion.

Jorge Ramos - but should you defend Barack Obama against these types of comments? I don't know, it's just a question.

Michael Steele - No, no, look the reality of it is when I ran for the United States' Senate and I was called an Uncle Tom by leading Democrats in the country, when I was called a slave by Steny Hoyer who is now the majority leader in the House no one came running to my defense and no one seemed to think that that was racists at the time. I don't play the race card, I don't play the race game, the way some tend to want to do.

Ha! UNCLE TOM THING: That was one blogger, and Michael Steele jumped all over it. SLAVE THING: Oh man, "when I was called a slave by Steny Hoyer." Here's a good recap of what happened, when Hoyer (with poor word choice, to be sure) "characterized Steele’s record as 'a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.'" To which Steele responded, "It goes to just the sheer craziness of some in the Democratic Party who think they can use racist terms and infer things about me just because I’m an African American Republican." And then everyone wrote about this and it was a big story and Michael Steele campaigned on it.

Michael Steele doesn't even have to play the race card, in one sense, because he is ahuman race card.Bobby Ehrlich picked Steele to be his lieutenant governor in Maryland to trick black people into voting for Republicans! Immediately after this selection, too, Michael Steele, the human race card, began playing the race card! This is a technique Michael Steele trademarked, called "squaring the race card."

Oreo cookie incident

After a September 26, 2002 gubernatorial debate, which had occurred without reported incident, Paul Schurick, Ehrlich’s communications manager, claimed that the Townsend campaign handed out Oreo cookies to the audience. Five days after the debate, Steele said that one or more Oreo cookies had rolled to his feet during the debate suggesting a racist statement against him. “Maybe it was just someone having their snack, but it was there,” Steele said. “If it happened, shame on them if they are that immature and that threatened by me.” At the time of the debate, Schurick had not mentioned any such incident, but in November 2005 he claimed “It was raining Oreos… They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there. It was very real. It wasn’t subtle.” In a November 2005 Hannity and Colmes appearance, Steele agreed with Hannity that cookies were thrown at him. Neil Duke of the Baltimore NAACP, who moderated the debate, praised the “passionate audience” and noted their “derisive behavior” but did not see such behavior. “Were there some goofballs sitting in [the] right-hand corner section tossing cookies amongst themselves and acting like sophomores, as the legend has it?” Duke said. “I have no reason to doubt those sources; I just didn’t see it.” The operations manager of the building where the debate was held, interviewed three years after the event by the Baltimore Sun, disputed Steele’s claim and said “I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal. There were no Oreo cookies thrown.” Some eyewitnesses including AP reporter Tom Stuckey who was at the event have said cookies were handed out. Other eyewitnesses could not corroborate Steele and Schurick’s claim.

Lastly, here's a funny thing Michael Steele said about immigration in this Mexican interview

I can sum it up for you this way, the party as I said is always the party, its been the party of assimilation and that is something that we believe in very firmly and basically what we should be saying is that there are rules that you need to get into the country, go the right door, fill out the right form, have some apple pie, hum a few bars of the star spangle banner and get to work, God bless you, and I think that that begins to set us on the right road to dealing with this issue.

 Special Sunday Post: RNC Chairman Michael Steele's bizarre interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos [Latina Lista]

 Michael Steele Doesn't Race-Bait, Except When He Does [Washington Independent]