Remember kids, racism is a barbarous old relic of the past that is no longer applicable in American politics, therefore political remedies for racism like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are equally as outdated.
Nevada Assemblyman Ira Hansen (R), who the assembly’s Republican caucus selected as their choice to be its next speaker earlier this month, has a long history of racist, sexist and homophobic statements chronicled in a long list published by the Reno News Review. Among other things, as part of a broader statement of support for school vouchers, Hansen claimed that “[t]he relationship of Negroes and Democrats is truly a master-slave relationship, with the benevolent master knowing what’s best for his simple minded darkies.” Indeed, according to the News Review, Hansen keeps a Confederate battle flag on his wall, which he says that he flies “proudly in honor and in memory of a great cause and my brave ancestors who fought for that cause.” He also “tends to use the term ‘Negro’ and often does not capitalize it.”
Hansen has also published several columns attacking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., including one where he claims that “King’s private life was trashy at best. … King Jr. is as low as it gets, a hypocrite, a liar, a phony, and a fraud.” In another piece, he wrote that “[t]he lack of gratitude and the deliberate ignoring of white history in relation to eliminating slavery is a disgrace that Negro leaders should own up to.”
Reminder: not only is this charming gentlemen an elected state Assemblyman, elected to represent people in Nevada, but his Republican colleagues believe his views are acceptable (Or non-controversial? Unknown even though he had a newspaper column? You choose!) enough to make him the Speaker of Nevada’s State Assembly.
Oh and there’s more. Because with these aggregate colonies of fungus in people suits, there always is more.
Nor does Hansen reserve his condemnations for African Americans. He’s argued that “women do not belong in the Army or Navy or Marine Corps, except in certain limited fields.” He’s criticized the “sexual revolution” and the “women’s liberation movement” for encouraging women “to act as foolishly as men.” And he also claims to have a strange obsession with gay child molesters. He once wrote that he’s “been keeping a rough tally on homosexual/heterosexual molesters as reported locally” and that this inquiry revealed that “and roughly half of all molestations involve homosexual men preying on boys.” As the News Review notes, “Hansen gave no details, nor did he publish his list, nor did he explain how he knew the sexuality of the alleged molesters.”
I mean this guy is a walking caricature of Republican Racist Asshole, and the guy still ends up Speaker of Nevada’s Assembly. The dean of Nevada politics, Jon Ralston, has more on how Hansen ended up winning that position.
I got some intel from some GOP insiders, who filled me in on exactly what happened during Friday’s marathon session:
It appears that Pat Hickey never had much of a chance to be elected as speaker after serving as minority leader. “It went downhill quick,” one source told me.
Most of the night was a negotiation, with Ira Hansen eventually agreeing to give the majority leader slot to southerner Paul Anderson.
Fact was Hansen started with, as one put it, “all the new members and the Fiore wing,” a reference to Michele Fiore, who does not like Hickey and whose best friend, Victoria Seaman, was just elected.
So, with a majority at the outset, “Hansen had the votes so it ended up more like a negotiation than an election,” one source told me.
Again, Nevada’s newly minted Republican majority in the State Assembly had no reservations whatsoever about putting a guy who used the word “darkies” as their Speaker.
Awesome.
Not Adding Much to the Community
As a resident of Nevada, all I can say is “I didn’t vote for these assholes.”
Another Holocene Human
Well, I hope everyone who showed up to the polls in Nevada is proud of themselves.
The ones who didn’t are probably drinking.
Or, “Wait, there was an election?”
Another Holocene Human
We know why: Cliven Bundy Cliven Bundy Cliven Bundy
Another Holocene Human
@Not Adding Much to the Community: Assuming the Dems don’t blow it (seeming more and more likely) presidential race should send all these asshats back home to spend more time with their federal lands.
Another Holocene Human
“I’m a Proud Confederate”
He may have some job opportunities in Whiteystan, MO or Norfolk, VA as Assistant Principal. Might pay better than state legislator.
shortstop
The guy’s only 54 years old. Of course, in Mormon years, that’s 276.
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
That’s because Nevada (hell, the entire country at this point) is far more racist and bigoted than anyone really wants to admit, either because it’s too depressing to accept, or because they thing it’s just ‘telling the truth’ about ‘those people’.
@Another Holocene Human:
Again, such assumptions rely on the idea that the majority of the country doesn’t actually secretly approve of these sentiments. Hell, most of them at the very least seem to simply yawn at this shit and accept it as normal fucking political discourse.
Zandar
“Simple Minded Darkies” is my Black Sabbath cover band.
Ralston does point out that the last time Nevada Republicans had a Speaker from Hansen’s part of the state, the Democrats took over within two years.
KG
Outside of Clark County (which is where Vegas is), Nevada isn’t much different than the other square states in the middle of the map. Lots of space, few people, most of them old, white, and reactionary.
My only real surprise is that Clark County isn’t blue enough to counter these Mountain Clans.
Tone In DC
Every so often, I remember that many Americans who do not support the so-called Tea Party dislike the Teahadis because they aren’t right wing enough for said people.
ruemara
I’ve been feeling beloved by America for a while. Nice to know what was considered paranoia has turned out to be perfectly reasonable.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tone In DC: I try very hard to not think about this, ever.
shortstop
Not hard to see how he gets away with the 1875-style racism, sexism and homophobia among his fellow Nevada Repubs. But you’d think the anti-Israel stuff would cause him some headaches.
Jamey
I’m sure that all of these comments were taken out of context by the liberal media.
cckids
@Not Adding Much to the Community: Yeah, me too. Just embarrassing as hell that we live next to people who did vote for these mouth-breathers.
It isn’t losing the Senate as much as all the Governors, statehouses, etc. that depresses me so much about the election. There is SO MUCH damage they can & will do. I have no faith that they won’t be screwing with the electoral college allocation of delegates.
I’ve lost a lot of faith in democracy these days. Rachel did a bit last night about a poll that showed American’s top five priorities for the new Congress: student loan reform, increased spending on infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, lowering carbon emissions, more money fighting Ebola. Those were the priorities; then they voted for Republicans who will (openly admitted) do NONE of those things.
And when asked if they were happy with the way the election turned out, voters were.
Holding 2 diametrically opposed ideas in your head at the same time /=/ reality, people.
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
@cckids:
People want the shit Dems are selling them but only until they find out a Dem or a Liberal is selling it.
And far too often it’s because of the fear that a ‘blah’ might benefit from it if it comes from a Dem.
Seanly
—Kent Brockman
We should just face the fact that Americans are idiots. We say we prefer fair & equitable policies, we say that we should all just get along, but then we keep voting hateful idiots & grifters to power who want to take us backwards by centuries.
And who under the age of 70 still says “negroes”? That term went out of style in the mid-60’s.
? Martin
Just a friendly reminder that California represents more than 20% of democratic seats in the House of Representatives, both senate seats are blue, as is every state office and the legislature.
We’re fucking carrying this country for Dems, so please don’t associate us with our neighbors to the east. TIA.
Mike J
@Seanly:
People who are intentionally trying to offend, and will point out that MLK used the term.
C.V. Danes
Unbelievable. I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s the northeast that should secede this time and leave the rest of the country to these yahoos, since they apparently love them so much anyway.
Mike in NC
All of the people that I stood in line to vote with this time were elderly and white. Pretty sure they’d agree with everything this Hansen turd would have to say.
Zandar
@Kryptik, A Man Without A Country:
This is the answer to the “Why are Democrats losing the white middle class vote” question people keep asking post-2014 midterms, and I’ve yet to see any pundit even get in the same star cluster as this, let alone lay it out as the truth.
You have to look no further than Kentucky’s health care exchange, Kynect, to know that.
C.V. Danes
@Seanly: Democracy may not work, but it still works better than the alternatives.
Citizen_X
This just in: Nevada whores just announced that they have nothing to do with this guy, because they don’t want him ruining their reputations.
Betty Cracker
I like this sentence:
As if being an appalling, retrograde, racist shit-stain wasn’t enough, he’s also inconsistent in his capitalization of offensive nouns.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Is Negro considered a derogatory term? I’ve always thought of it as a somewhat antiquated but benign descriptor that was never intended to be derogatory. I never use it myself, but my grandmother used to use it to refer to black people, but never in a mean or racist way. For her generation it was just what they called black folks, like saying black or African American today. I don’t intend to start using the term, and this guy seems awfully young to be using it (my Grandmother would be nearly 50 years older than this guy) so he doesn’t have the generational excuse.
Shakezula
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Colored is an antiquated descriptor. But maybe this answers your question.
Shakezula
GOP outreach is the outreachiest!
low-tech cyclist
@Kryptik, A Man Without A Country:
All too true, I’m afraid.
Punchy
They dont just want to impeach this Darkie, they also envision him in the pokie. For exercising well-established executive powers.
There’s no way to contain the crazy; Yertle and Orange Stain are soon to be running an insane asylum.
The Thin Black Duke
@ruemara: What white people call “paranoia”, black people call “common sense”.
Trollhattan
@Tone In DC:
It appears even the 27% has its 27% a.k.a. it’s turtles all the way down.
shelley
So who were all these brave whites trying to liberate the slaves from? Martians?
Johnny Coelacanth
@KG:”My only real surprise is that Clark County isn’t blue enough to counter these Mountain Clans.”
Blame the LDS.
Trollhattan
@Punchy:
If by “running” you mean starting it up, putting it in gear, dropping a brick on the gas pedal then watching what happens then yeah, it’s going to be a thrilling, depressing two years.
Here’s hoping it’s only two years.
KG
@Johnny Coelacanth: actually, looks like turnout was 45% this year, that probably answers more questions than anything. for comparison’s sake, it was 80% in 2012.
scav
Lookie! It’s that shining “Their” ‘Merika they’ve bern so pining fer! It’s appearing on the horizon! Paradise Regained! Can we not help spread the good word and help intimately tie the views of this apparently acceptible leader to the tourist advertising efforts of the entire state? Ads where they are printed on Welcome doormats with stnning vistas of the Nevada landscape behind the stoop. Swelling music, a sunrise, the purple plains, towering pines, et cetera et cetera. Alas, he’s not pithy enough and reading isn’t exactly a stong suit for many. Would be fun to engage the business and tourism class by firmly stapling their apparently acceptible leader in all his verbose glory to their cash cow’s forehead. They love and only need the demographic attracted to that shit for local voting in by-years, but will they be content if the same purfume applied to their entire business positionning all the time?
gbear
I can’t link to it right now, but there’s a pretty amazing story in the Minneapolis StarTribune today about a republican county chairman who posted on facebook that all muslims should be ‘fragged’ because they’re all hateful terrorists. Every single one of them. He’s and going to the mat with it.
cckids
We have a friend who is a former state Senator; she says that already, Gov. Sandoval is vocally wishing the Democrats had kept control of the House & Senate; they actually wanted to accomplish something.
And BTW, if Harry Reid chooses to run again, he will have a difficult time beating Sandoval,unless things change over the next 2 years.
cckids
@Johnny Coelacanth:
Amen x1000
kindness
Isn’t it funny that all these rural ranchers who get hugely subsidized BLM land to graze their herds on hate the BLM (and insist the land is theirs).
Welfare queens.
gbear
@gbear: Umm, can’t edit either. The last ‘and’ is a booboo.
Archon
In a single lifetime (post war period until now) white American males have gone from being treated like kings to simply being first among equals. Now they are actually encouraged to hide their disdain for anyone but fellow white men. Remember the good ole days, when you could go overseas and get laid by some poor girl in some defeated or devastated country for a dollar, come home, slap your wife with impunity and call someone that looked like Barack Obama, boy? They sure as hell do, either they were there or their daddy told them about it.
So considering their relative decline in of power compared to the rest of the world, white American women and blacks respectively from 1950 until now we should almost be thankful that the average white man hasn’t revolted yet.
burnspbesq
Y’all are being way too hard on this guy. I mean, he supports full equality for women in the Air Force and the Coast Guard!
shortstop
@shelley:
In my experience having these conversations (shudder), there are two things going on here:
1) Plenty of white people (but no actual ancestor to the hillbilly saying this) were abolitionist and they deserve thanks from ungrateful black people for having made the right moral choice. It’s currently popular among certain Jesus sects to claim that “Christians” en masse were anti-slavery and that the many, many Christians who used the bible to justify human bondage were just doing it wrong. Of course, the same people making this argument now have no problem using the bible to try and withhold civil rights from LBGT citizens, but that’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT, man.
2) If black people weren’t so shiftless and lazy, they’d have risen up and freed themselves instead of waiting for kind-hearted white people to do it. Yes, I actually heard someone say this.
catclub
@Another Holocene Human: The first of the seven deadly sins is pride.
skerry
@burnspbesq: I was just about to say that when I saw your comment.
Another Holocene Human
@Kryptik, A Man Without A Country:
Not saying that. He was put in power by a bunch of freshmen GOP state legislators. In a high turnout NV election, those guys are going to get tossed and replaced with Dems again. If Dems regain majority, for example, that’s that.
NV is a very close purple state. You’re going to have flip flip flip election cycles. That’s all I was saying.
Another Holocene Human
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s not paranoia if they’re actually coming to get you.
Another Holocene Human
@gbear: Soooo charming in a state with a significant (and uncomfortably visible) Somali refugee community minority.
Some minna sohdans are extremely hateful about the Somalis.
Kinda like New Englanders and the Sudanese, but at least in Massachusetts even though they hate the Sudanese (just ask them … ask them about the “Lost Boys”) they can’t tell them apart from Nigerians, Haitians, and other “good” minorities, which is probably a very good thing!
(Haitians are considered a “bad” minority in Florida, because farm work and assholes. Boston has that ‘we’re Catholic too, get out of the worst hostility free’ card. (See also: Vietnamese. Dominicans. Lebanese Christians.) Not redeemable in Baptistland.)
Another Holocene Human
@kindness: It’s because of it.
You have to dig into the background.
White supremacy X1000.
They know it, too. They know they had no goddamn right but this.
Another Holocene Human
@shortstop: My great great whatever on the rich branch of my ancestry were members of the Union Club and guess what turns out some of them at some point had ALSO owned slaves. In fact in reality quite a few abolitionists had had a prior history in slave trade, slave owning, or, most common, slavery-escaping. Plus some ya know Quakers and stuff, who still remembered what it was like to be a persecuted minority because while they weren’t being executed on the State House lawn any more they were still a persecuted minority when all of this was going on.
It’s all bullshit, all the way down.
Thank goodness I rarely hear such apologia where I live now … little Civil War battlry going on here, few whites overall and slave cotton plantations showed up right before slavery was over. The history of white settlement in this area is complicated and predates the purchase of FL by the US. In fact the Reconstruction era history is more interesting. White supremacy came in and destroyed all of that, and didn’t let up. Not to this day. Using terrorism, misuse of the legal system, voter suppression tricks.
Because if I were hearing a lot of that I would probably have gotten fired a few times over for offering up a bag of lightly salted poisoned rat dicks.
Jebediah, RBG
@gbear:
This Raw Story piece must be about the guy you are referring to. He seems like a thoughtful fellow.
JGabriel
ThinkProgress:
So, Ira Hansen wants Black people to be grateful to him for eliminating slavery while Hansen himself remains proud of the South’s fight to retain it?
Logic and consistency aren’t this guy’s strong points.
JustRuss
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I’m about Hansen’s age, and as a child I remember the term Negro as pretty benign. By the time I was in high school(late-1970s), it was out of fashion, I don’t think I heard anyone use it. The fact that Hansen still insists on using it is quite a tell. He knows it’s not acceptable, and for some reason that bothers him.
Calouste
@Seanly: Democracy works. What America has isn’t a democracy.
AMinNC
@Mike in NC: My mom is old and white, and so are all of her friends, and they all worked (and continue to work) hard to get Democrats elected. Of course, we’re in the Triangle, so your mileage may vary in other parts of our fair state.
One thing almost all of the liberal volunteers and I noticed was how few men seem to volunteer. And it’s not because the women are all at home during the day while the men are out working. These are either retirees (but still young enough that the men haven’t all died off) or women who work full-time. Dudes, what’s up with that?
SRW2
@JGabriel:
Maybe not. But you gotta admit that his knowledge of ‘speeling’ and especially ‘punktjuation’ more than make up for these minor deficits.
Tree With Water
Hansen reminds me of the Las Vegas politico-cowboy who triggered Robert De Niro’s fall in Casino, but minus the affable charm of the movie politico-cowboy. He is also vicious bigot; the movie cowboy is a soft spoken one. Come to think of it, except for the Nevada angle, he doesn’t remind me of the guy in the movie at all. My father was raised in Ely, and would just shake his head when talking about reality in Nevada. Rather, he would shake his head and not even bother to try, which was just as well as I probably wouldn’t have understood. I remember he acknowledged Hunter Thompson writing that rule #1 in Las Vegas is, “don’t mess with the locals”. It applied that to the entire state, I think was his point. Unless your name is Corleone, of course.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s pretty cute how a state with legalized prostitution and the gambling capital of the Union presents itself as the keepers of true American values.