Republican White Guy Real Sorry If Anyone Was Offended By Racist Slur Because It Is A Day

• Stop us if you've heard this one before. (You have, but keep reading.) Some crusty old white guy Republican dude says a racist thing. There's a good chance he doesn't even realize it is racist because he is too busy wanting his country back and missing the good old days when it was perfectly A-OK and acceptable among polite society to say racist things. If enough people explain to him that, "Hey, that thing you said is racist, AND THAT'S WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!" he just might apologize. Not for being racist. Heavens no. Not for saying a racist thing. Certainly not that. Butifanyone was offended, well, sorry 'bout that part.Today's crusty old white guy Republican dude is former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. (Yeah, we know you're shocked.)

  Haley Barbour called President Barack Obama’s policies “tar babies” on a post-election conference call for clients of his lobbying firm, two sources familiar with the call told POLITICO. [...]

  “And then he said there is no one who will run for president who will endorse Obama’s issues, because Obama’s issues are ‘tar babies.’”

  And now, of course, the standard boilerplate:

  “If someone takes offense, I regret it. But, again, neither the context nor the connotation was intended to offend,” wrote Barbour, who is known for his political savvy, but whose folksy Southern style has occasionally drawn allegations of insensitivity on fraught racial and cultural issues.

  Oh, that would be Politico informing the uninformed reader that the former governor is "folksy" and "Southern," so we probably shouldn't make too much of it because whatever, right? You know how those folksy Southern white Republican guys are. And he's got a charming drawl, all y'all, so it sort of balances out.

  Stay tuned for tomorrow's "sorry if anyone was offended" and/or "out of context" defense. There will undoubtedly be one.

  P.S. No, we are not going to explain "tar baby" to you. We already covered it the last time some Republican casually used that phrase when talking about Obama. We're sure he was real sorry about that too. If anyone was offended.

• Are you good at the Twittering? Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, I am so good at this clever Twittering thing, someone should pay me to do it"? You're in luck because Reader's Digest will pay you for the privilege of using your genius in 140 characters:

  "Reader’s Digest has a long tradition of curating and paying for anecdotes and jokes," Reader's Digest public relations manager Paulette Cohen said. "Dan Wilbur’s letter prompted us to begin classifying tweets in that same category, so we will now pay writers for tweets that we reprint in the magazine, as well as retweet them. We hope even more writers and comedians will send us their jokes in the future."

  So go be clever. You might make $25!

•  This is perfect in all the wrong ways:

  Former Sen. Joe Lieberman will replace Sen. Joe Manchin as an honorary co-chair of the anti-gridlock group No Labels, RCP has learned.

  “What No Labels stands for is what I try to stand for. Given the opportunity to help lead this movement, I really couldn’t say no,” Lieberman told RCP in an interview Monday morning.

  Feel free to share your thoughts on Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, and No Labels in the comments. If you're not too busy throwing up forever.

• Here's an interesting story about strippers. (Got your attention already, right?)

  Washington law requires strip-club dancers to get licenses, and the state Public Records Act requires the release of licenses generally. David Allen Van Vleet, a civil engineer from Pierce County, requested the licenses for dancers at a particular club, later telling the judge he wanted them because he planned to “pray for those dancers by name.” (The dancers, as is customary, perform under stage names.)

  But the dancers, notified of the request, sued to stop it -- and the judge ordered local officials not to release the licenses, holding that the dancers “are faced with the loss of their First Amendment rights, deprivation of their right of privacy, and threats to their physical safety if their private information is disclosed.”

• George W. Bush is still painting crappy portraits:  

  

  
   Oh, and he's still the worst president ever. And he can still fuck himself with a paintbrush. 

•  Weep for the lost art of copyediting:  

  

• Our pals at Happy Nice Time People predicted this would happen: The teevee showSelfiehas been canceled. 

  Before the season started, HNTP’s prediction was that this show faced an uphill battle, but, “I’m going to give this one the benefit of the doubt based solely on how darn likeable the two leads are… Earns a second season.”

  Be sure to check out Happy Nice Time People for all of your boob tube news, recaps, and predictions for the future.