GOP Lawmakers In Kentucky Apologize After Asking Government To 'Jew Down' Lease

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: Huffington Post

Two GOP lawmakers in Kentucky have apologized after using an anti-Semitic phrase during a discussion of a state lease agreement on Tuesday.

The state’s Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee was discussing leasing agreements when Republican state Rep. Walker Thomas could be heard on a hot mic laughing while asking if the state could “Jew them down on the price,” according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The committee chair, Republican state Sen. Rick Girdler, repeated Thomas’ words.

“We’ve got a representative up here [asking] if you could Jew them down a little bit on the price,” Girdler said before he apparently recognized that the language was offensive.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-lawmakers-kentucky-apologize-asking-235250134.html

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[Stuart G]

1. Very Sad..Defines those two forever and forever. K and R

[Demovictory9]

2. seriously? they didn't realize that's a slur?

[Stuart G]

3. Yes, they knew that was a slur, what they didn't know that it was a "HOT MIKE"

[Demovictory9]

8. aahhh ...that explains it

[OldBaldy1701E]

18. BINGO!

I salute the sound guys who left it on. Well done!

[sakabatou]

23. "We're sorry that we got caught, not for what we did!"

[Diamond_Dog]

4. Holy cow what year is this anyway?

I’m so sick of these bigots!

[Initech]

22. Seriously! It seems like we're living WWII all over again!

[kacekwl]

5. Sorry dummies if your Jewish, Hispanic,

Black, Asian, Native American or anything other than lily white supremacist racist you're a complete fool to vote republican.

[madaboutharry]

6. "When people show you who they are,

believe them the first time.” - Maya Angelou.

They are anti-Semites who no doubt talk like this all the time. They just got caught this time. This is the kind of thing you can’t take back.

[sarcasmo]

7. Klantucky

[LiberalFighter]

9. Where the hell would they get that language?

I have never been around or known that type of language.

[Mickju]

10. I grew up hearing that frequently in Dallas in the 50s and 60s.

I hoped that people would have learned that that is unacceptable.

[Polybius]

11. I heard it all the time as a kid in the 80's from adults in NY

Not so much anymore.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. My dad used to use that expression all the time. Probably got it from his father.

When I was just a kid, I didn't realize what he was saying -- I thought he was saying "CHEW him down on the price", which kinda made sense. After I went off to college I realized what the expression really was, and what a stereotype it represented. I never mentioned it to my dad, because I never heard him use it again, so someone must have pointed it out to him. I don't think he ever meant it in a hurtful way, it was just a habit he grew up with. His own father was a genuine Southern-fried Archie Bunker, so it's a wonder he didn't "inherit" more bad traits, but bigotry wasn't one of them.

People often don't question things that were all around them when they are growing up. It takes seeing some of the outside world to make the odd and irregular -- even the unacceptable -- in your own upbringing clear. Of course, I would kind of expect someone in public office to be a little more aware of such things.

The phrase "cotton-pickin'" was often used as a mild expletive -- kids wouldn't say "damn" (or worse) in front of their parents, so they said "cotton-pickin'" when they needed a curseword. Of course, it started out as a slur against Blacks ("Get your cotton-pickin' hands off my property!" ) but was so widely used that people lost track of its original sense. My mother used that expression until recently, and I had to explain to her why she shouldn't use it. She's as unoffensive a person as you could ask for, and has told me a lot of stories about how appalling conditions were in the South when she first moved down here in the '50s. Her usage of the term was purely innocent ignorance. But to someone who lived in the South back then, it was just part of the local language. I recently found the expression used several times in a kids' comic book from the early '60s. People don't always think about the expressions they are using, if they are sufficiently well-worn. But sometime you need to stop and think it over.

[yardwork]

17. I heard that in the rural Midwest in the 60s and 70s.

It was said casually, almost as if it were a grudging compliment. Anti-Semitic stereotypes are deeply ingrained in U.S. culture.

[2naSalit]

20. It was common...

In New England back in the 50s and 60s. Having an olive complexion, I was usually chastised for being either black or Jewish and both were equally unacceptable in social circles when I was growing up. Strangely, my bigoted mother would use the "n word" regularly, up until 1965 yet had substitute epithets, but I never heard her say anything about the Jewish because my dad's family had many holocaust victims and survivors, particularly his dad with whom she had a good relationship.

It was a regularly used verb and noun back then.

[maxsolomon]

25. It was common parlance in my Ohio childhood.

I graduated HS in 1981.

My grandpa was an equal-opportunity bigot, but it wasn't virulent, per se. It was quotidian. Jews, Italians, Germans, Poles, Irish, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, everyone got slurred.

[ShazzieB]

12. Another gift from Kentucky, the same state that is responsible for...

...electing not one but two of the biggest jackasses in the U.S. Senate and sending them back, term after term.

[2naSalit]

19. And people complain about...

low population states having two Senators and too much power. Looks like some high population states are something to focus here, what these two do affects my life way over here in a low population state in major and adverse ways and I have no power to do anything about them.

[Abolishinist]

13. Let's see...

Thomas is from "Christian" (of course!) County, population 74,000, which went for the former in 2020 63% to 35%. Considering the Jewish population of the entire state is .3%, it would be safe to say there are from none to 50 in his county. But that leaves 15,000 dumb, stupid, ignorant reich-wing white trash MAGAs who voted for him.

So yeah, I'm sure his apology was sincere. Cough. Cough.

[keithbvadu2]

15. The art of the non-apology apology

The art of the non-apology apology

I'm sorry you didn't like me kicking you.
vs
I'm sorry I kicked you.

[yaesu]

14. this kind of behavior has got to stop. nt

[JohnnyRingo]

21. OMG! In a way that's hilarious.

Being so aloof that he would ask someone that, then when people gasped, look at them and say "what, did I say something wrong?". hahaha

"OK then, let's adjourn and call out for lunch. The beaner probably wants Mexican, egg rolls for the chink, and keilbassi & kraut for the pollock." "Does that sound right?"

This could be SNL in real life.

[Diamond_Dog]

24. LOL!

[soldierant]

26. I am 76, and that was disgusting when I was two.

Just how old are these people? Or does time work differently in Kentucky?