Look, I have no doubt that Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi believed she was joking when she praised a supporter by saying that "if he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." (She had started her remarks with the bizarrely bloody compliment "I would fight a circle saw for him.") I have no doubt that she never thought twice about the history of lynching of black people in her state. I have no doubt that she saw nothing wrong with what she was saying, that it was one of those things that she's heard and perhaps repeated a few times. We have a lot of phrases and sayings that are based on appalling shit. You wanna know the history of "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo"? The word "gyp"?
Of course, Hyde-Smith, being Southern and white and a Republican, refused to acknowledge there was something fucked up with what she said, aside from the anodyne bullshit of "Sorry if I offended you." She could have quickly come out and made a statement like, "I understand that some of the things we say come from a time when we did terrible things to people. I apologize for saying it, and we all need to learn to do better." But, you know, she didn't. She couldn't. She dug in her heels and said that anyone who thought she was racist was a damn liar.
It was a signal to those Southern, white Republicans who will vote for her that she has their racist, Confederacy-humping backs. "You don't have to move beyond your barbaric prejudices, you dumb fucks," she's telling them. "Your bigotry and ignorance is safe with me."
And thus, their economic anxiety soothed, the white working class went about its business of telling everyone how the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
We have learned since that moment that Cindy Hyde-Smith is not only a racist piece of shit (even if we pretty much knew that prior to the lynching remark) but that she's a shit human all around. For instance, the rest of that little talk in Tupelo on November 2 is filled with stuff that shit humans say.
There's one Planned Parenthood in all of Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, and it doesn't do abortions, but Hyde-Smith still whined, "Planned Parenthood is one of the worst things that has ever happened to us." She praised "distant relative" Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois (now quite gratifyingly dead) for the budget amendment that prevents any federal funds from being used for abortion, except the way she described him: "Many of you may have heard of Sen. Henry Hyde from Oklahoma."
And she's totally willing to use a closer relative for a political prop: "My daughter, on her second birthday, got a lifetime membership to the NRA." Yes, that's what every toddler wants. Fuck Tickle-Me-Elmo with the barrel of a shotgun. Baby loves 2A, motherfuckers.
You throw in the other things we've learned about and heard about Hyde-Smith - like dressing up like a Confederate soldier while visiting Jefferson Davis's house and declaring it "Mississippi history at its best" or "joking" again that there are "liberal folks" at historically black colleges and universities "who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult" to the revelation that she attended an all-white school that was created to get around integration laws (the fucking school mascot was a Confederate officer and that fucking flag of the defeated traitors flew there) to the fact that she sent the aforementioned NRA member daughter there - and she's just fucking awful, with a fucked up, constantly degrading and violent sense of humor, like every heinous stereotype of the dumbass, racist, hateful Southerner wrapped into one cynical package of the polite Southern belle who sounds kind and moral but is secretly poisoning the sweet tea she serves to her husband so she can get the life insurance.
How cynical? As pointed out by a whole bunch of Republicans who wanted her to lose in the primary, she was a Democrat until 2010. Yeah, she won election twice as a Democrat in the state senate in a once-Democratic district. When she decided to run for statewide office, Commissioner of Agriculture, she switched to the GOP. Republicans are so fucking terrible in Mississippi that they accused Hyde-Smith of voting for Hillary Clinton in 2008, a scarlet H that she denied.
But the worst Republican is often a born-again Republican, and Hyde-Smith has embraced the most virulent, hurtful side of the party. Wait...that's the whole party. Anyways, she has essentially become another one of Donald Trump's ass remoras, suctioned on to his corpulent buttocks and hanging on no matter how erratically he moves. Want us to vote against pre-existing condition coverage? Sure, suck, suck, suck. Want me to degrade women by voting for Brett Kavanaugh? You bet, suck, suck, suck. She's just devouring away on Trump's ass, downing dead skin scraps and parasites that she hopes will get her a few more votes.
Jesus fuckballs Christ, tonight's rally with Trump is gonna be a sight, with Hyde-Smith just stuck on Trump's pants as he bitches and preens and yells and does the rest of his tiresome shtick.
C'mon, Mississippi. You don't have to be this anymore. You can step into the goddamn light of the present with Mike Espy. You can follow Alabama, which, at least for one brief election, demonstrated that the past can fucking die. You don't have to vote for a shit human like Cindy Hyde-Smith. You can evolve.
(Note: Don't hold your breath.)
