Gov. Susanna Martinez

Jack’s Anti-Political Correctness, Political Bloodsport and Contrived Offense Crusade: Progress Report

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

As I noted earlier, I am in New Mexico talking to journalists here about the Pat Rogers affair. You can sample one of the fruits of my labors here, a story in the Santa Fe New Mexican. It’s pretty accurate, as press interviews go, though the last quote was botched. I didn’t say that I was a “Greek American conservative Democrat with an anti-war war hero father,” but that my diverse views were the product of “a Greek American conservative Democrat mother and  an anti-war war hero father.” [ UPDATE: This has been corrected.]

If you’ve missed the various posts on this issue, you can find them here, here and here.

One odd note: during my meeting with several reporters from the paper, one of them suggested that making a joke about Custer’s Last Stand was like making a joke about the Holocaust. I let it pass, but the comment seems bizarre to me. Custer, after all, got himself and his men killed, and it was his opposition that was the object of genocide, not the cavalry. Why would ridiculing Custer offend Native Americans?

E-Mail Ethics Train Wreck in New Mexico

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is how things spin out of control.

This really has nothing to do with anything.

In New Mexico, Gov. Susanna Martinez, a Republican, attended a summit of the tribal leaders in the state. For reasons known only to himself, this inspired Pat Rogers, a member of the Republican National Committee and a partner at the prestigious law firm Modrall Sperling, to send a bizarre e-mail to Gov. Martinez’s staff that read,

“Quislings, French surrender monkeys. … The state is going to hell. Col. Weh would not have dishonored Col. Custer in this manner.”

Quisling was the Nazi puppet head of Norway during World War II, and his name has become a term for “traitor.” “French surrender monkeys” is a quote from “The Simpsons.” Col. Weh, a Marine, was Martinez’s opposition in the GOP primary for governor. Taking all of this together along with the fact that this was New Mexico, Custer’s last stand was in what is now Montana, and occurred in 1876, I think it is obvious that Rogers intended the e-mail as a joke, a tongue in cheek remark satirizing the kind of wacky complaints that a Republican Governor probably gets on a regular basis. Either it was a joke, or Rogers is insane. I don’t think he’s insane. Continue reading →