I look forward to the day when a conservative is caught saying something racially offensive and does not respond by claiming it was taken “out of context.”
But that day’s apparently not today, per this report from HuffPost’s Sandra Chereb:
A Nevada assemblyman came under fire Monday after a YouTube video surfaced in which he told a Republican gathering he would vote to allow slavery if that is what his constituents wanted him to do.
“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose … they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah,” Assemblyman Jim Wheeler told members of the Storey County Republican Party at a meeting in August….
Wheeler, a freshman lawmaker representing District 39, said his remarks were taken out of context and that he was trying to make a point that he was elected to represent his constituents.
Uh….yeah, but I do believe people are objecting because Wheeler made it clear his desire to represent constituents did not stop at the gates of delirium or the borderlands of decency.
Reached late Monday, Wheeler said he was falsely being portrayed as a bigot.
“Anyone who knows me knows that I could never vote for something like that,” he said of slavery. “It’s disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.”
He added, “There is absolutely no room in my life for any bigotry.”
Unless his constituents ask for it. That’s the “context” in which Wheeler made his remarks, and he’s just going to have to live with it.
