Midnight Meme Of The Day

-by Noah

If you watch and listen to Rrepublicans long enough, you come to realize that those who have chosen the Rrepublican lifestyle are often walkin', talkin' memes all by themselves. Case in point, one Kimberley Paige Barnette, proud Republican candidate for Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her flyer is a natural, if unwitting, meme, as is.

I know Charlotte well enough to know that I would never want to live there. In my time as a music business executive, I spent enough time in a very nice recording studio and other places there. The city has some nice clubs, restaurants, and retail locations of all kinds. But, I don't think that I have ever seen a town where both the class and political divide is more physically obvious. That is not to say, Charlotte is the only one. It's just that it's so blatant.

Rightly or wrongly, this is the impression I got from Charlotte. At one end of town, there are normal, outgoing, friendly people. At the other end are very, very well-to-do homes inhabited by very well-to-do Republicans, and not just any Republicans. What I witnessed were full-blown Tucker Carlson types, bowties, figuratively and literally, snobbery as an art form. Unlike other places, I didn't see a gradual transition as I drove along the main drags. Instead, there might as well have been a Berlin-style wall.

I want to stress that there are plenty of great people in Charlotte. Among other things, it is a good college town. But, oh, that cold and creepy rich whites-only section. That is where Kimberley Paige Barnette hopes to gain enough votes to put her in office. It is with that in mind, that Ms. Barnette has selected "Republican & Smart, White, Traditional" as her campaign slogan. That's "traditional" in the way that people like Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, or any of the FOX "News" and White House staff would use the word, i. e. white. You know, like "traditional values" or "Santa Clause is white," "Jesus is white." In that sense, Barnette's use of "traditional" is extremely redundant, but that's her point. She wants to emphasize the whiteness of herself, her party, and her campaign just like she wants to imply that Republicans are the smart people, not "others."

Barnette's campaign slogan naturally, has caused some consternation in Charlotte, NC. North Carolina already has taken quite a hit in it's reputation at the hands of the Republican extremists who are in power there. It's to be expected that normal people who live there find Barnette to be not just a tremendous embarrassment but a throw back to the old Jim Crow segregation days of the 1960s and before when the local news stations promoted local KKK rallies (I witness that, personally, too). Back then, it was the southern Democrats that were the engine of racism. Now it's Barnette's party and her party has issued the usual perfunctory "We're not all like this" and "Views like this have no place in the Republican Party" statements. It seems that we get these statements from Republican Party officials across the nation on an hourly basis. Me thinks they protest too much. The fact that they have to issue such lies on an hourly basis means that Barnette chose the party where she belonged and felt at home, just like the rest of them.