Keep It Classy, GOP

After a solid week of hearing about David Letterman's incredibly tasteless joke about a Palin daughter, we've got more bad comedy to talk about, and all of it involves race. Moreover, all of it came forth from Republicans. Anyway...

Mike Green, a GOP political operative in South Carolina, decided to Tweet a racist Obama joke over the weekend (the "aspirin" joke, which is kind of tiresome). TPM asked Green about the joke, and he's admitted he'd written it (and he's apologized).

Meanwhile, another South Carolina Republican, Rusty DePass, responded to "a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, [. . .] DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."

Oh, that's clever, DePass. The New York Daily News adds:

DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

Then he added, "The comment was hers, not mine," claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.

Can anyone point to any comments Michelle Obama has made on evolution? No? Okay, a cheap (and lazy) attempt to cover his arse (and appeal doubly to a certain crowd?) via Darwin.

Third, we've got Sherri Goforth, a senior staffer for a TN state senator, who thought it wise to send out an that "depicts the Presidents of the United States with President Barack Obama as a pair of eyes in a black background" (NIT).

It turns out that Goforth sent the image to the wrong group of people, which she regrets.

No, the GOP isn't itself racist, but here we've got three GOPers passing along racist material on Twitter, Facebook, and regular old email; that they're distributing this juvenile nonsense is disconcerting, but that they're doing it so sloppily is especially troubling--is this stuff so acceptable to them that they needn't even think about what they're doing?