Thursday, October 9, 2008

Sambo? Not Her Style.

Charley James, a self-described "American journalist, author and essayist who lives in Toronto" (an expatriate! I'm dubious already), claims Governor Palin described Barack Obama's hard fought victory of Hillary Clinton in a manner worthy of note to Alaskan locals at a diner:

"So Sambo beat the bitch!" This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama's win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat's primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

The article connects Palin with other racial epithets such as the very colorful "Artic Arabs" (very Disney-sounding) describing Alaska's aboriginal population or opting for a more classically bawdy tact, lumping in a number of folks as "f**king Eskimos."

Sambo? I don't think so. I mean wouldn't you fancy Palin as more of a "N" word type of gal? Sambo shows a bit too much keen hate-mongering, able to delineate Obama's constituent parts - the word "Sambo" extracted from the 1899 page turner Little Black Sambo depicting an indian boy's triumph over a pack of ravenous tigers and used in bigoted circles to denote a person of mixed African and Amerindian heritage. Of course, Sambo now pretty much conflates all African-Americans into one lump of dark-skinned people. Perhaps Palin is cognizant of such nuances and said "fair game on that Sambo there, also, you betcha he is a Sambo and I'm going to talk straight to those folks on main street about Sambo too as well."

Most telling: only James has reported this diner exchange in his article published more than a month ago. The mainstream media is not exactly blowing on these embers.

Conclusion: Unsubstantiated. Likely false.

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