Jake Knotts' 'Raghead' Remark: Nikki Haley, Obama Called Indian Slur By South Carolina State Senator 3JUN10 & Ari Fleischer: Fire Helen Thomas 4JUN10

The hate and ignorance expressed by these people is disgusting because they are old enough to know better and to know they should keep their stupidity to themselves. They should be ashamed but I doubt they are, I think their apologies are just a pathetic attempt to save their carriers. How sad they actually think these thoughts, how pathetic they are in positions of power and influence.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina lawmaker on Thursday called a Republican gubernatorial candidate of Indian descent a "raghead," saying we have one in the White House, we don't need one in the governor's mansion.

Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts later apologized for the slur, saying the remarks about President Barack Obama and state Rep. Nikki Haley were meant as a joke.
They came on Internet political talk show, Pub Politics. Co-host Phil Bailey said Knotts said, "We've already got a raghead in the White House, we don't need another raghead in the governor's mansion."
No audio was available because of a technical problem, Bailey said.
"If it had been recorded, the public would be able to hear firsthand that my 'raghead' comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest," Knotts said in his statement. "Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It's like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from."
He did not repeat his original comment in his apology. Knotts of Lexington is a supporter of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer's gubernatorial campaign.
Haley, who has been endorsed by Sarah Palin and is a favorite of the tea party, also represents Lexington in the Statehouse and has faced other landmines in her attempt to become the state's first female governor. In the past two weeks, two men have come forward to say they had trysts with her, which she denies.
Her campaign manager Tim Pearson called Knotts "an embarrassment to our state and to the Republican Party."
"Jake Knotts represents all that is wrong with South Carolina politics," Pearson said in an e-mail.

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Bailey, who also is director of the state Senate Democratic Caucus, said Knotts is known for speaking his mind, but he went too far.
"I was appalled by the comments," Bailey said.
Four Republicans and three Democrats are vying to replace term-limited Gov. Mark Sanford who rocked the state when he confessed last summer to an affair with an Argentine woman. It ruined his marriage and likely his political future, which included presidential aspirations.
Bailey said he hopes to have the full discussion posted on the show's website Friday.
State Republican Party Chairwoman Karen Floyd called on Knotts to apologize "so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us."
"The South Carolina Republican Party strongly condemns any use of racial or religious slurs," Floyd said in an e-mail statement Thursday night.

Ari Fleischer: Fire Helen Thomas 4JUN10

Longtime White House scribe Helen Thomas caused more than a few eyebrows to perk up when video surfaced on Friday of her declaring that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland.
Captured by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com, the footage made the rounds on mostly conservative and neoconservative sites, with some private complaints that her comments weren't getting wider play.
Thomas on Friday apologized in a written statement, saying she deeply regretted the comments -- which were offered, ironically, during the White House's Jewish Heritage Celebration.
But even as she was trying to walk back the remarks, calls for her firing mounted. Among the more vocal was former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who claimed to have a close relationship with Thomas when he was manning the daily briefings.
"She should lose her job over this," Fleischer said in an email. "As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling."
"She is advocating religious cleansing. How can Hearst stand by her? If a journalist, or a columnist, said the same thing about blacks or Hispanics, they would already have lost their jobs."
A longtime fixture of the White House press room, Thomas hasn't exactly hid her politics on the Middle East conflict. The day after Israeli Defense Forces stormed the flotilla, she pressed spokesman Robert Gibbs as to how the administration could stand by the blockade of Gaza and the broader treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government. A good faction of political and foreign policy observers found the line of inquiry refreshing.

The comments that surfaced on Friday were far less filtered than the quite-pointed questions she's offered in the briefing -- enough so that they've spurred earnest conversation as to whether she should be given a pass because of the historic perch she's held as the longest serving White House correspondent or whether it's time for her to leave that perch.
Here is the clip of Thomas: