Jul 6, 2009 01:38 PM
57,283
Enter your username and password.
New York, 6:49 AM
Wed Feb 10
56 posts in the last 24 hours
First of all, why is a vice chairwoman of the Young Republicans 38 years old? And secondly, why is she "lol"-ing at racist Facebook comments? Oh, right, because she is a vice chairwoman of the Young Republicans.
Frankly? It is a pretty non-shocking example of the GOP's ability to find humor in the craziest and most racist of places. But here is the magical tale of Audra Shay, Young Republican leader:
Shay posted something dumb about health care, on her Facebook, and one of her friends responded, as anyone would, with an angry string of slurs.
Two minutes later, Piker posted again saying "Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals."
Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker's comments: "You tell em Eric! lol."
Yes. You tell em, Eric! Tell em something insane! And, hah, it got better! Shay only de-friended the people who complained.
Cassie Wallender, a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation, then wrote: "Someone please help a naïve Seattle girl out, is Eric's comment a racist slur?" She answered her own question one minute later: "Okay, why is this okay? I just looked it up. ‘It comes from a term baracoons (a cage) where they used to place Africans who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves.' THIS IS NOT OKAY AND IT'S NOT FUNNY."
This was followed soon after by the chairman of the D.C. Young Republicans, Sean L. Conner, who wrote "I'm really saddened that you would support this type of racial language. ..wow! Thanks Cassie for standing up…"
Shay was silent on this exchange, but soon word started spreading throughout the Young Republican circuit, open to GOP members under 40. Significantly, Shay then "de-friended" Wallender and Conner-in the world of Facebook, that means cutting off relations-after calling her out, but kept Piker as a "friend" (subsequently, it appears their profiles are no longer linked).
The election for chairman of the Young Republicans is next Saturday, guys. Let's see how many embarrassing and permanently archived examples of electronic racism the candidates can rack up in the coming days.
Send an email to Alex Pareene, the author of this post, at alexp@gawker.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion