The Senator Burns was caught on tape referring to his house painter as “a nice little Guatemalan man” and suggesting that he might be in America illegally.
"The other day, the little fella who does our maintenance work around the house, he's from Guatemala, and I said, 'Could I see your green card?'" Burns said at a June meeting recorded by Democrats. "And Hugo says, 'No.' I said, 'Oh gosh.'"Hugo, of course, is here legally. Burns’ spokesman asserts that Burns was just “telling an anecdotal story about a time he took the extra step to make sure a worker was legal.” Then, last week:
Burns is seen interrupting his own stump speech at a campaign event to take a cell phone call and then appears to speak to the painter.What is the point of all this? I’ll be damned if I can figure out why he would interrupt his speech to talk to his painter, only to then refer to his ethnicity in a way befitting a southern white granny, prompting laughter from his idiot supporters, and wind up going on about how great the guy is—two months after questioning the guy’s legal status to work in the US. It’s just…bizarre. It’s like he was worried his adorable little anecdote about demanding to see Hugo’s green card might come back to haunt him (especially after fellow GOP Senator Allen’s macaca outburst), so he tried to prove that he really likes the “nice little Guatemalan man” by taking a call from him during his speech. I don’t know. Racists are utterly perplexing. I guess it kind of reminds me of those earnest white people who have a special sort of “extra-nice” demeanor they save for people of color, which is really a mix of nervous laughter, anxiety, and condescension, because no matter how much they try, they can’t see past color—and in trying to prove they’re not racists, they come off like total boobs.
"Hugo is a nice little Guatemalan man who is doing some painting for me ... in Virginia," Burns told the audience, to laughter, after hanging up on the call. "No, he's terrific, love him."
In any case, it’s a step up from when Burns had to apologize for referring to Arabs as “rag heads” a few years ago during a speech.
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