Minnesota House Candidate Rolls Out Disgraceful New Campaign Ad, Wants To 'Be Your N*****'
What the heck is going on with politicians in Minnesota? Why is it so bad that they’re now using the n-word in campaign advertisements? And should we look to European soccer for a way to deal with it?
Let’s unpack all of that. For those of you who may have missed it, the Gopher State has been the epicenter of plenty of bad political weirdness these past few months.
First there was Al Franken, who can now count Air America Radio as his second-biggest personal failure. But there were plenty of figures caught up with the #MeToo-mania. That didn’t necessarily impugn the whole state — at least, not yet.
Rep. Keith Ellison, who was awfully close to becoming chairman of the DNC back in 2017, is now facing allegations of physical and emotional abuse and is fighting for his political life. Given that he’s probably the second-most powerful politician in the state nationally, behind Sen. Amy Klobuchar, that’s huge.
Then there’s Richard Painter, who ran for the Democrat Senate nomination in the election for Al Franken’s old seat in a manner we can only assume was a form of performance art.
He lost by a wide margin, but this was a guy who ran an infamous advertisement featuring a dumpster fire during a campaign that was a dumpster fire in the same way Hiroshima was a house fire. I’m not sure whether that’s just coincidence or very avant-garde.
Either way, all of that’s bad enough. But a candidate dropping the n-word in a campaign advertisement? That’s next-level craziness.
So yeah, Kyle Greene is an organic farmer running as an independent in Minnesota House District 18A, according to the The Daily Wire. Not exactly a big deal there; that’s usually the kind of guy who finishes behind Looney Tunes character write-ins when the final tally is released.
However, Greene has a unique strategy to catapult himself ahead of Wile E. Coyote: He wants “to be your n*****.”
We warn you that the campaign video you’re about to see contains racial slurs and is, beyond that, incredibly dispiriting in every manner and will make you lose just a little bit of faith in the power of republican democracy that you’ll never get back. Viewer discretion is advised:
“I want to be your state representative, I want to be your public servant and I want to be your n*****.”
You heard him right. This is real life. I repeat, real life. You’re not watching a Spike Lee movie. This isn’t “Bamboozled.”
The only real issue that Greene seems to care about is judicial reform. Which is just fine but, um, you can’t really hear anything else when someone’s uttering the n-word to try to get your vote. This is 2018 Minnesota, not 1928 Mississippi.
From the standpoint of American electoral politics, it’s a disgrace. From the standpoint of Greene’s campaign, it’s disastrous.
Greene is one of four candidates running for the election, according to Ballotpedia. He’s the only true independent; the remaining three candidates have the support of the Republican, Democrat and Libertarian parties.
What all of them don’t have is a video that has almost 120,000 views on Facebook. Now, most of them are from people looking for bad laughs. But in a state where politics seems to be in a particularly mephitic upside-down at the moment, the odds that this guy ends up as a state legislator aren’t as low as you might think — especially since he’s trying to pass it off as part of his intersectionality (or something).
“We need to unify as a society, and we need to stop dealing with trivial matters,” Greene told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “The word … is part of the American history, regardless of the race. … It’s part of my history being African-American, white and Cherokee Indian.”
Alrighty then. That kind of craziness brings us to European soccer.
For those of you unfamiliar how the other football works over on the Continent, there’s a system called relegation. In essence, if you’re a member of one of the major leagues but you finish at the bottom, you get sent down one league. Meanwhile, the top team in the lower level gets promoted to the major league. It’s sort of like if the Mets were terrible (again) and got sent down to triple-A while the Toledo Mud Hens got promoted to the National League.
After these past few months with Minnesota and the perpetual mess that is California, I’m proposing we give this system a try with states every census year.
If you’re going downhill fast, you get demoted to territorial status. Meanwhile, we promote, say, Puerto Rico and Guam to the top 50. We don’t even have to change the number of stars on the flag or the number of senators. It works out swimmingly, in my opinion.
Sure, implementation would be complicated and would require some serious constitutional rejiggering. But I guarantee you it would stop campaign advertisements featuring creepy dudes and dumpster fires or candidates who say they want to be your racial slur.
All I’m saying is that you’re being put on watch, Minnesota. I think I proved my point quite well and I didn’t even have to mention Jesse Ventura.
As a state, you’re definitely less of a Manchester United and more of a Swansea City. And if you’re wondering what the last one is — well, exactly. They just got relegated.
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