5 Terrible Excuses For Racism (That People Keep Using)

5 "Drugs And Alcohol Make Me Racist!"

Earlier this year, Roseanne Barr, star of Roseanne and lover of the stupidest conspiracy theories imaginable, tweeted an insult at former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarret, comparing her to a Planet Of The Apes ape. Given that Jarret is part black and there is a long, storied history of racists likening black people to monkeys, people were naturally pretty pissed. To counter the backlash, Barr claimed that she'd been Tweeting on Ambien at two in the morning. This prompted the makers of Ambien to reply that racism is not a side effect of their medication.

But Barr is in no way the first person to climb aboard the Magic Bigot Bus and claim that they bought their ticket while hammered. In fact, she was only following in the footsteps of racism excuse pioneer Mel Gibson, who once proclaimed to police, apropos of nothing, that Jews started all the wars in the world when he was pulled over for drunk driving. Considering that, fuck no, the Jews didn't, it was a questionable, left-field statement. It was also one Gibson blamed on alcohol.

He also blamed booze for tapes of him dropping the N-word and racial slurs against Latinos. But you know the old saying: Candy is dandy, but liquor ... makes you believe in the genetic and cultural superiority of your race over others.

Eric Clapton, whom you might know for being every baby boomer dad's favorite musician, had one of history's most epic racist breakdowns. In front of an entire concert audience in 1976, Clapton went on a hate-bender, saying England was a white country and needed to send black people back to Africa, all amidst a cornucopia of racial slurs. He later revisited this episode in his life and claimed he regretted being a "semi-racist" -- which must be like semi-sweet chocolate, in that it is fully shitty. He has blamed his issues with alcohol and drug addiction for the outburst, because that sounds more sympathetic than "I had shit in my brains."

4 "It's Just Extremely Subtle Satire!"

Here's a quick tip from a professional comedy writer: If the thing you say is only funny to you and racists, it's not so much a joke as it's just racism. And when called out on it, you can't just say "I'm kidding" and erase the words from memory. For example, former Tea Party dingus Mark Williams attempted this excuse when he tried his hand at comedy and penned a "satirical" letter to Abraham Lincoln from "colored" people. You don't even need to know what it said, beyond the fact that it started with: "Dear Mr. Lincoln. We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing." That line is just a gift that never began giving.

Williams said the post was satire, though he didn't clarify what was being satirized. The Tea Party summarily kicked his ass out, and he presumably flew away on a lily white sheet to some place where Confederate flags serve as table cloths, bibs, and boxer shorts.

California politician Marilyn Davenport shared an email that depicted President Obama as a chimpanzee with two chimp parents, along with a caption about how that accounted for him not having a birth certificate. When people pointed out the pants-shittingly obvious racism, Davenport pulled the joke nugget out of her ass. It couldn't be racist, you see, because people have depicted George Bush as a monkey before too. It's just a joke! That's a one-two punch of birtherism and tone-deaf racism at the same time, if anyone's playing asshole Scrabble and wants the double douche score.

Todd Kincannon, former South Carolina GOP director, is one of those unfiltered Twitter people who just vomits out whatever is festering in their brain as it happens. His racism highlight reel included referring to Trayvon Martin as a "feral animal," and a Middle Eastern person as a "goatfucking terrorist." And how did Kincannon account for his flagrant, almost cartoonish racism? It's all satire and parody, the buzzwords of every shit gibbon caught with their pants down.

3 "I Specifically Target Certain Races For Totally Unrelated, Non-Racist Reasons!"

How do you craftily skirt the issue of being racist without actually walking back anything you've said or done? You try to explain to everyone that what you said didn't have anything to do with race, thus making you not a racist. It's like getting caught jerking off on a bus, but insisting it's not a crime because your masturbation fantasy was totally nonsexual.

Rudy "9/11 Made People Forget That I'm Gollum's Dad" Giuliani accused Barack Obama of not loving America in 2015 because he wasn't brought up "the way you were brought up and I was brought up," a statement that might score him brownie points with the snake people he associates with. People felt this dig at Obama was somewhat prejudicial, so with typical Giuliani good sense, he leapt to his own defense by pointing out that Obama's mom is white. Do you see how that works? Do you see how he has a white mom, and then therefore Giuliani's statement isn't racist? Yeah, you don't see that, because it doesn't make any kind of goddamn sense.

If a meth head kicked you in the face while you were wishing for your snowman to become a real human, that snowman would turn into Don Blankenship, a Senate candidate from West Virginia. Blankenship once ran attack ads against Mitch McConnell, saying his "China family" earned him millions of dollars.

Blankenship, who has the personality of fungus that someone beat into a stupor, said the line in an actual campaign commercial, not some off-the-cuff rant on social media. He then defended it by saying it wasn't racist because he never mentioned a race. In fact, he went so far as to say "races are negro, white Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian ... I've never used a race word."

Iowa Representative and noted dick niblet Steve King proclaimed he wanted the U.S. to be "so homogeneous that we look a lot the same." Then he explained that this was not racist because "it's the culture, not the blood." See, it's not the genes of minorities he hates; it's everything they do. Really, only a fool wouldn't see the difference.

But if you want racism that goes to the next level, there was a British politician who referred to Africa as "Bongo Bongo Land," and then doubled down by saying that it was a reference to an antelope. You see, if you look up the definition of "bongo," you'll see antelope there, which clearly keeps this from being the most awkward, teaspoon-in-the-ass British racism you could imagine.

2 "I Can't Be Racist, I Kind Of Know Some Minorities!"

Scott Taylor is a congressthing from Virginia who got caught up in the racist furor around Corey Stewart, a man who desperately misses the Confederacy. Taylor refused to distance himself from Stewart and fellow scumwader Paul Nehlen, but also claimed he can't be a racist because his son is named after a black guy. That's not shit I made up, that's shit this guy said. Out loud. In English. Around people.

The various forms of "I have a black friend" never cease to be embarrassing. The chair of the Maine GOP equated black people voting with outright fraud -- he said there were dozens of black people voting on election day in 2012, and that must have been voter fraud, because no one in town knows that many black people. But don't worry, it's cool because he's not racist. He plays basketball every Sunday with a black guy. (Just between you and me, no he doesn't.)

In 2013, a GOP official from North Carolina had to resign after Aasif Mandvi interviewed him for The Daily Show and he went on a full-fledged roller coaster ride through Bigotville. Not only did this guy say the N-word, lament how black people can say it but he can't, and how he's been called a bigot before, but he also said that he supported voter suppression laws meant to hurt "lazy blacks." The fetid cherry on top of his asinine sundae was that yes, one of his best friends is black. (Just between you and me, no he's not.)

Now, you can't talk about bad excuses for racist behavior without mentioning Donald Trump, who has a whole team of enablers trying to justify the things he says and does. But if you need a highlight from that shit show, look no further than Ed Martin, the former GOP official who came to Trump's aid on CNN by stating that Trump kisses black babies. Can't kiss a black baby if you're racist -- that's a fact printed on page one of the "I'm Not a Racist, But ..." handbook.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr., who legend has it is possessed by the angry spirit of the ventriloquist who crafted him, claims his dad isn't a racist because he knows a lot of rappers. So yeah, he called African nations "shitholes" and Mexicans rapists, and steals babies from asylum seekers and shit, but dude took a picture with Snoop Dogg. So who's the racist now?

1 "Some Evil Racist Must Have Secretly Posted These Things Under My Name!"

The best way to get away with something in life is to not be the person who actually did it. But if you did do it -- with "it" being, oh, I don't know, insanely racist stuff -- the next best option is to claim you were framed. And the frame-up was done so expertly that they left no evidence behind. Devious!

Ron Paul, who spends most of his time delivering promises of small government to the good little libertarians at Christmas, has a weird history of having to explain why he's not racist, despite the racist things with his name on them. This year, he tweeted a cultural Marxism cartoon that featured racist caricatures -- like, full-on Nazi propaganda bullshit. But hey, no harm done because it was posted inadvertently by a staffer! Oh, those staffers! They're always such obscenely xenophobic scamps.

It's like back in the '80s and '90s, when "staffers" produced numerous newsletters, all with Paul's name in the title, that featured statements like "I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." Those slippery little rascals!

Meanwhile, there was one politician in Ontario who leapt clumsily past apologizing for calling someone on Facebook a "fucking raghead" and landed on "I was hacked." Don Cardy said someone hacked his computer one night when he was asleep and made that post. And then, when he discovered it, he destroyed his computer, as one does. People looked into his history and found previous racist posts and shit, but those must have been from hackers too. Those bastards were playing the long game.

Those same shitty hackers hit up politicians in Texas and Georgia as well. The former mayor of Bellmead, Texas dropped the dime on the hackers who apparently made over a half-dozen racist posts in 13 months on his Facebook page. Meanwhile, an Augusta commissioner-elect had a similar history of Facebook racism via awful cartoons and racial slurs, and dropped it squarely in the lap of mystery hackers. Imagine how insidious the hackers of the world are to keep targeting small-town politicians to wage months-long campaigns of inserting racist posts at random times and doing literally nothing else. It's scary, is what it is.

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For more, check out 5 Reasons It's Difficult To Explain Racism To Casual Racists and Some Brief, Friendly Advice About Race And Racism.

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