Who’s pitiful and predictable again? When failed Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams opened herself up to some richly ...
Who’s pitiful and predictable again?
When failed Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacey Abrams opened herself up to some richly deserved public ridicule last week by posing for a picture without a mask in a room full of masked school children, her staff lashed back by attacking the attackers as Republican racists.
It was as ineffective as it was embarrassing. And when the hits kept coming, even Abrams and her staff figured out that it wasn’t going to fly. So she made things even worse.
And, naturally, she did it on CNN.
In an interview Tuesday night with the reliably biased Erin Burnett, Abrams issued an apology for the photo and blamed it on the fact that she was just so excited to be around all those kids, she just lost her head.
“I approached the podium with my mask on, I followed the protocols. I told the kids I’m taking my mask off because I’m reading to kids who are listening remotely as well, and we were socially distanced — the kids were socially distanced from me,” Abrams told Burnett.
“And then the excitement after I finished because it was so much fun working with those kids, I took a picture, and that was a mistake. Protocols matter, and protecting our kids is the most important thing, and anything that can be perceived as undermining that is a mistake, and I apologize.”
And blah, and blah, and blah.
That would have been a perfectly acceptable response — three days ago, when the now-notorious photo of a beaming Abrams sitting cross-legged in a crowded classroom exploded onto social media, threatening to destroy Abrams’ latest campaign for governor of the Peach State.
But that isn’t at all what Abrams’ campaign came up with.
Instead, Abrams campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo took to Twitter with a statement slamming the critics as “shameful” — and implying the fact that the event took place at an event celebrating Black History Month made it practically blasphemy for anyone to point out the rank hypocrisy involved.
“It is shameful that our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event for Georgia children as the impetus for a false political attack, and it is pitiful and predictable that our opponents continue to look for opportunities to distract from their failed records when it comes to protecting public health during the pandemic,” the statement declared.
“This pathetic, transparent and silly attack is beneath anyone who claims he wants to lead Georgia.”
Oh, really?
It’s funny how Abrams’ obviously insincere apology mentioned nothing about opponents being “pitiful and predictable.” Or that this was a Black History Month event, so it was off-limits to any rational discussion. (Maybe, like Black Lives Matter rallies, Black History Month celebrations are immune to the coronavirus in the liberal mind.)
Or that there was anything “pathetic, transparent and silly” about the whole controversy.
Instead, with the assistance of Burnett, Abrams used the time to extol the “science” behind mask mandates and utterly ignore the fact that her picture was just the latest in a long line of Democratic bold-faced names proving how little they actually believe in masks by showing their faces in public without them.
There were liberals on social media lapping it up. (There always are these days. It wrings the heart, really.)
But there were plenty of users who weren’t buying it.
About the only thing close to approaching journalism in the Burnett interview was when she pointed out that some Democratic governors are lifting mask mandates in schools — exactly the kind of “neanderthal thinking” that got Republican governors like Gregg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida attacked by President Joe Biden less than a year ago.
Abrams answered with the usual Democratic pablum about following the “science” — at least whenever it’s not too inconvenient.
She didn’t play the racism card again, but that doesn’t mean she won’t, even after this embarrassing face plant of political humiliation.
Politicians without workable ideas, morally bankrupt themselves and therefore lacking belief in the fundamental goodness and greatness of the United States and the American people — in short, Democrats — are always going to have to fall back on some variation of the libelous lie of “systemic racism.”
Then, like a boxer who knows the ref is in his corner, they bank on sympathetic media figures like Burnett to carry them through the tough rounds.
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