Paging Doctor Northam

Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and his
controversial 1983 medical school yearbook photo 

"Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry. It's going to take a doctor to heal our differences. And I'm here to tell you, the doctor is in!"

Hard to believe it's been just over a year and two months since the embattled Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam said those words to cheering supporters after soundly defeating Republican candidate Ed Gillespie back on November 7, 2017.

What a difference 15 months makes.

Over the past couple of days I've spent quite a bit of time buried in the hundreds of reader comments on Saturday's New York Times article on Northam's stubborn determination not to cede to pressure to resign from Democratic leaders on the state and national level - including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former vice-president Joe Biden and Senators Kamala Harris and Corey Booker to name just a few.

There's also growing grassroots pressure for him to step down from angry voters as well, as evidenced by the Virginia citizens gathered in front of the governor's mansion on Saturday wielding hand-written signs and calling on him to resign - as well as thousands of people expressing similar views on social media as well.

While more than a few comments on the NY Times article from conservative readers expressed the easily-provable falsehood that Democrats have dismissed Northam's racism as a "youthful indiscretion", a quick glance at media headlines makes it clear the consensus is that he has to go.

Is Northam a racist?

Personally speaking I don't think it's fair, or even possible to make a determination like that simply based on a black and white photo posted on his medical school yearbook page back in 1983.

Just because Northam grew up on a farm on the rural eastern shore of Virginia and speaks with a distinctive southern drawl (or donned blackface at a party) doesn't make him a racist.

A photo of the 1978 Oancock HS football team shows
a fairly integrated student body

According to a Washington Post article by Jenna Portnoy, Northam graduated from the predominantly African-American Oancock (Virginia) High School in 1977 where he was voted "most likely to succeed" and was one of the few white kids on the boys basketball team.

Take a look at this photo of the 1978 Oancock HS football team (pictured left).

It was taken the year after Ralph Northam graduated, but as a simple snapshot of the school environment in which he was raised, it does reveal a fairly integrated group of students.

If Northam was a racist, why would he play on a basketball team mostly comprised of African-Americans? And why would a group of his black peers vote him most likely to succeed?

Portnoy's WaPo profile of Northam also paints a portrait of a man who's held some pretty progressive political views during his time in Virginia politics - including support for a woman's right to make decisions in cases of abortion and support for a bill that would legalize marijuana to treat some childhood illnesses and conditions related to seizures (he's a pediatric neurologist).

Of course it should be noted that the much more progressive Democratic primary challenger for the governor's chair, Tom Periello did force Northam to shift his policy positions to the left out of political necessity.

But the fact that the now-infamous photo making media headlines was placed on Northam's yearbook page when he was an adult and a college graduate, and the fact that he made the decision to don a costume with clearly racist overtones, does raise questions in an era in which Trump's presidency has been defined by bigotry and contempt for, and hostility towards non-white people.

In his press conference on Saturday Northam admitted that in 1984 "I did participate in a dance contest in San Antonio, in which I darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume."

But in the same press conference Northam also raised eyebrows by claiming that neither the person wearing black face, or the person wearing the Ku Klux Klan hood were him - just a day after apologizing for the photo.

2017 Northam campaign flier with the photo
of Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax removed 

Now if it is true that Northam is not in the photo, what's the photo doing on his yearbook page?

Interestingly, the yearbook photo isn't the first time Northam has received criticism for imagery with racial overtones.

During the 2017 race for Virginia governor, the Northam campaign caught flack for removing a photo of his then-39-year-old African-American lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax from a version of a campaign flier (pictured left).

Basically I agree with the crux of the public statement released by Fairfax, who recently made headlines after exiting the legislative chamber while Republican members of the State Senate honored former Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

Following a Saturday press conference in which Northam asked for forgiveness, Fairfax, who would become governor of Virginia if Northam resigns, said on Saturday (in part):

"Like so many Virginians, I am shocked and saddened by the images in the Governor's yearbook that came to light yesterday. They are an example of a painful scourge that continues to haunt us today and holds us back from the progress we need to make.

I cannot condone the actions from (Northam's) past, that, at the very least, suggest a comfort with Virginia's darker history of white supremacism, racial stereotyping and intimidation."

Outside of the optics of the photo itself, one of the most troubling (and ironic) aspects of this controversy is that Northam was elected governor in part on his ability to portray his Republican opponent Ed Gillespie as racially intolerant.

It was a label that stuck as Gillespie willingly embraced inflated racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and phony MS-13 fear-mongering during the Republican primary in an effort to woo Trump supporters.

Ralph Northam (left) and Republican candidate
Ed Gillespie during a 2017 gubernatorial debate

The 2017 Virginia race for governor wasn't just a gauge of voter's feelings about the first year of the Trump administration - it was a snapshot of a much broader cultural divide in America and a contest with clear national political implications for the 2018 midterm elections.

Election Day in Virginia, November 7, 2017 took place just over two months after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in which white supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr. intentionally rammed his car into a crowd of protestors, killing 32-year-old Heather Hoyer and injuring 19 others.

It also came against the backdrop of the closely-watched special "off year" election for the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he was nominated for Attorney General.

A race between the Republican candidate Roy Moore, the controversial former Alabama chief justice known for his right-wing political and social views, and the Democratic candidate, former U.S. attorney Doug Jones.

Jones' eventual upset victory in December, 2017 flipped a reliably-Republican Senate seat Democrat for the first time in decades, a victory spurred in part by some Alabama Republicans and independents expressing their disapproval of Trump by voting Democratic.

It was a costly and contentious political race that drew national attention and was widely viewed as a repudiation of Trump, who'd publicly defended Roy Moore against multiple allegations of improper sexual relations with girls as young as 14-years old.

The United States was already politically divided over Trump's embrace of anti-immigrant fear mongering, racism and authoritarian world leaders.

Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (left) and
then-lieutenant gov. Ralph Northam in happier times

So the 2017 Virginia governor's race became something of a lightening rod.

Not just for hot-button wedge issues like the removal monuments of Confederate leaders, but also for support for the Affordable Care Act as well as sanctuary cities and protections for undocumented immigrants.

Northam was relatively unknown on the national political scene when he won a 2013 election to serve as lieutenant governor under the popular Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe.


McAuliffe, the charismatic former head of the Democratic National Committee, had famously served as co-chair of Bill Clinton's successful 1996 presidential campaign, and was the chair of Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 bid for president.

Because the state of Virginia limits governors to one four-year term in office at a time, Northam announced his intention to run for governor in 2015 with the blessing of then-governor McAuliffe and the national Democratic Party.

Much like former Republican vice president George Herbert Walker Bush's rise to the presidency in 1988 following Ronald Regan's 2nd term, it's fair to say that Northam's political rise in 2017 was on the coattails of McAuliffe - a well-connected, veteran Democratic political operator - as much as it was on voter's displeasure with Trump's first year in office.

But that progressive platform on which he successfully ran for governor in 2017, and the perception of him as the centrist-progressive Democratic candidate standing in opposition to the racial division of the Trump agenda, has been overshadowed by a 36-year-old photograph.   

And in the wake of the widespread condemnation of Republican Iowa Congressman Steve King's recent (latest) controversial comments defending white supremacy, and his continued use of his official House website to promote a blog known as a platform for known white supremacists like Richard Spencer, the pressure on Ralph Northam to resign from Democratic leaders will only intensify in the days ahead with the 2020 presidential race on the horizon.

Only Ralph Northam can answer the question of why he would don blackface or a KKK robe at a party, but that image could very well spell the end of a promising political career - and cast a dark shadow on his political legacy for years to come.

All Eyes On Alabama

Roy Moore arrives to vote on his horse "Sassy"

Like millions of other people both here and around the globe, I'm anxiously awaiting the results of today's senatorial election in Alabama.

The last thing the Republican-majority in the U.S. Senate needs is a smug right-wing extremist who uses Christianity to cloak his tiresome and incessant moralizing in a self-righteous veneer to hide glaring personal flaws (multiple accusations of ephebophilia) that would land most people in jail. 

While I find Roy Moore's overheated conservative bluster, misogyny and unhinged bigotry against people of color and homosexuals repulsive, that kind of quasi-fascist nonsense isn't the biggest concern for America in my view.

Politically-speaking, if he is elected to the senate, the broader consequences for the Republican Party in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections could be severe.

And let's be honest, an-already controversial candidate who arrives to cast a vote on a horse (pictured above) is not about serving his or her constituents.

That kind of person is all about trite theatrics, stupid gimmicks and of course, themselves.

As if arriving to vote on a horse is going to make people forget that he is accused of initiating sexual encounters with multiple underaged girls, including with Leigh Corfman when she was 14-years-old.

The new Republican Normal? AG Jeff Sesssions

Personally I'm much more troubled by the prospect of another ideologically-archaic conservative southerner and former judge (we see you Jeff Sessions) coming to Washington, D.C. to bring an unhinged brand of right-wing theocracy to the floor of the U.S. Senate.     

The legal implications of Roy Moore adding his voice to senate votes for federal and Supreme Court judges is deeply troubling for a democracy founded on the principle of separation of church and state.

This is after all, a man who said the antebellum south, when the agrarian southern economy was fueled by enslaved African-Americans, was the last time that America was "great" - and yes, Moore said that in front of a live audience in September.

It should tell you something that reliably-conservative Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby is on record as saying that he will "probably write in a good candidate" rather than cast a vote for Moore to be his fellow Alabama senator.

The implications for the people of Alabama are pretty significant too.

After all, what will it say about the image of a deep southern state still trying to shake the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and the battle for civil rights if its citizens vote to elect a man who pines for the era of 19th century slavery and believes homosexuals are deviants engaged in illegal conduct?

We'll know the answer soon.

Anyway I gotta run to go check out the returns as the results come in, the polls in Alabama close in less than half an hour and according to ABC News the race is tighter than expected with voters almost evenly divided on the allegations of Moore's sexual misconduct -with underage girls.

How can voters be "divided" on that?

Anyway all eyes are on Alabama, where some folks can be remarkably forgiving for a man who rides to the polls on the back of a horse named Sassy.

Trump's Situational Outrage & The Real Doug Jones

Addie Mae Collins, Carol McNair, Carole Robertson & Cynthia Wesley: 
killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963

By 10:27am this morning, Donald Trump had already sent out a message via Twitter condemning the horrific terrorist attack that killed at least 235 Muslims who were worshipping at the Al Rawda mosque in the Northeastern Egyptian town of Bir al-Abed during Friday prayers.

He made no Twitter comment about 43-year-old Kevin Neal's shooting spree in Tehama County, California last week that left five dead and ten wounded.

45's preachy situational outrage was also illustrated in the comments he made to reporters on Wednesday as he prepared to leave the White House for Thanksgiving Vacation - when he all but endorsed Republican Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore by flagrantly lying about Democratic Alabama senatorial candidate Doug Jones being "soft on crime". 

As Joan Walsh shrewdly observed in an article in The Nation on Wednesday, Doug Jones was the U.S. Attorney for Alabama who successfully tried and convicted two of the white supremacist terrorists responsible for the heinous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama back on Sunday September 15, 1963.

The bombing killed four girls (pictured above), 11-year-old Carole Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, and injured 22 - including Collins' 12-year-old sister Sarah who lost an eye when 21 shards of glass were embedded into her face during the explosion.

The aftermath of the 16th Street Church bombing

The four girls were in the basement of the church putting on their choir robes preparing for Sunday service when the 15 sticks of dynamite (triggered by a timing device that had been placed under the steps of the church early that morning) were detonated at 10:22am.

An FBI investigation concluded two years after the bombing found that KKK members Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry were all responsible for the bombing.

An FBI informant named Gary Rowe was suspected but never charged.

All four men were members members of a violent KKK faction known informally as the Cahaba Boys - a group associated with other local violent factions associated, and linked with, the KKK (including the Robert. E. Lee Klavern *) that had actively bombed homes and churches as part of a terrorist campaign to intimidate desegregation and voting rights efforts in rural areas of Alabama since the 1950's. 

[* It is of interest to note that some of the militant offshoots of KKK organizations (known as "klokans") in Alabama named themselves after Confederate heroes like Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest in an effort to link the re-emerging white supremacist movement of the early 20th century with the historical legacy of the Confederacy.

As Vox reported back in August, that was around the same time that groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy were actively promoting a nation-wide campaign to try and systematically re-write the history of the Confederacy in school textbooks and place Confederate statues and monuments in towns and cities - even in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War - to reinforce the ideology of white supremacy by creating a mythology that supported and justified it.]

Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss

Even though the FBI gathered thousands of documents and hours of undercover recordings of suspects and witnesses over the course of their two-year investigation into the bombing of the 16th Street Church, Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered the investigation closed in 1968 and all evidence gathered by federal agents sealed.

In a reflection of the deep-seated racial bias embedded within the U.S. justice system, it wasn't until November of 1977,  a remarkable fourteen years after the bombing, that former U.S. Attorney William Baxley was able to successfully convict Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss of the murder of Carol Denise McNair.

Chambliss admitted to having purchased a case of dynamite from a local area store two weeks before the bombings took place under the pretext of needing to clear a field.

Baxley had been a young law student when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963, and he actively fought to reopen the case starting in 1971 after becoming a federal prosecutor.

Now to circle back to Joan Walsh's observation in her article in The Nation, when Donald Trump simplistically dismissed current Democratic senate candidate Doug Jones as "soft on crime" last Wednesday, was he aware that Jones was the man who successfully indicted and convicted Thomas Edwin Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry  in 2001?

Jones' efforts were aided by the fact that in 1995, the FBI finally unsealed reams of evidence it had gathered about the bombings in the 1960's.

As Kevin Sack reported in a May 4, 2001 New York Times article, after William Baxley wrote an op-ed in the New York Times accusing the FBI of having intentionally covered up evidence in the 70's that could have aided in his prosecution of the four men, a spokesman for the FBI, Craig Dahle, claimed that the reason the Bureau kept the evidence under lock and key could have been due to
"a combination of possible factors, including changes in personnel and filing systems, the bureau's unwillingness to expose confidential informers, and lingering distrust between federal agents and Alabama law enforcement that dated from the days of Jim Crow." 

Evidence that Doug Jones, then the U.S. Attorney for Alabama, and his office used to indict and convict Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002 months after Cherry's lawyer unsuccessfully tried to argue that he was not mentally competent to stand trial.

The other suspect, Herman Frank Cash died in 1994 before the FBI unsealed the evidence that may well have led to his conviction.

Doug Jones speaks at a dedication of a memorial
for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings in 2011 

Both Blanton and Cherry were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for their roles in a crime shocked the nation and world.

An act that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity."

Given the FBI's suspicious concealing of critical evidence, and the years that had passed between the time of the bombings, Doug Jones' successful indictments and prosecution of Blanton and Cherry to time, patience, guts, prosecutorial skill and a genuine desire to see justice done in what is arguably one of the most heinous crimes in American history.

So how can Trump call Doug Jones "soft on crime"?

Now I don't believe Trump is totally brain-dead, he was 17-years-old when the bombings took place in 1963, so there's no way he doesn't at least understand the horrific nature of what happened.

Given his grandfather's involvement in the KKK in New York and his father's efforts to prevent black people from moving into apartments owned by the Trump Organization, what Trump thinks about those bombings is another story.

Even if he doesn't know Doug Jones' role in bringing two of the killers to justice, at least one of Trump's advisors has made it clear that part of Jones' appeal as a candidate for the senate is his involvement in the case.

Republican senate candidate Roy Moore 

So Trump's decision to back Roy Moore, who is arguably guilty of having committed multiple crimes for having engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with girls as young as 14 and 16 when he was a 32-year-old district attorney, on the grounds that (in part) Doug Jones is "soft on crime" really doesn't hold water.

To paraphrase a recent comment made by a guest on NPR, Trump supporters have a right to vote for him.

But if Trump supporters who live in Alabama are going to compromise their ethics and morals simply to support a candidate who is going to back Trump's divisive ideology and legislative goals - it's a truly troubling sign for modern American politics.

Regardless, Trump has a lot of cojones lecturing anyone about being soft on crime given the slew of his own campaign officials (including Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn) who already have been shown to have broken laws - to say nothing of the fact that he granted a presidential pardon to former Maricopa County sheriff  Joe Arpaio who was found guilty of multiple crimes in a court of law.

Given that the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, filed a complaint against Kellyanne Conway for violating the Hatch Act when she used her non-elected position as a "senior White House counselor" to publicly advocate for Roy Moore, and that the president is the person who would have to hold her accountable, we'll see if his talk about being "soft on crime" is just that - talk.

Seems more likely that it's just another example of 45's selective and situational outrage.