Trump ally apologises for 'cotton-picking' comment about black strategist
Source: Guardian
Citizens United president David Bossie posts public apology for using racially charged term on Fox & Friends
Edward Helmore
Sun 24 Jun 2018 16.53 EDT
David Bossie, a close ally and supporter of Donald Trump, apologised on Sunday for using a racially charged term when he said a black Democratic strategist was out of his cotton-picking mind.
Now president of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, Bossie was a deputy campaign manager for Trump in the 2016 election. He is co-author with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of a book about the campaign, Let Trump Be Trump.
Lewandowski attracted controversy this week in his own appearance on Fox, when he appeared to mock the plight of a girl with Downs syndrome who was said to have been caught up in the Trump administrations zero tolerance immigration policy. On Saturday the two men accompanied Trump on a trip to Nevada.
On Sunday, Bossie appeared Fox & Friends the presidents favoured show for a discussion about liberal reactions to Trumps immigration policy.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/24/trump-ally-apologises-for-cotton-picking-comment-about-black-strategist
BumRushDaShow
(129,143 posts)Stream of consciousness racism. The "apologies" are fake.
jpak
(41,758 posts)You knew what you were doing
yup
calimary
(81,332 posts)David Bossie is Mr. Citizens United. The font of all evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bossie
bearsfootball516
(6,377 posts)He spewed the equivalent to a racial slur on live television. No apology can make up for that.
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)Sounds like he was thinking "...Don't say the N-word. Don't say the N-word...", so this came out instead.
catrose
(5,068 posts)but not from a Bostonian's mouth
Cold War Spook
(1,279 posts)My neighborhood was half Jewish and half Black. I remember the term from back then, but I don't remember it being racist since both used the term. I do not know in what context it was used.
flotsam
(3,268 posts)...I honestly think this could have been inadvertent...."Are you out of your cotton picking mind?" may have at one time been denigration or coded language. I've seen a lot of shit directed at race but I honestly believe most people picked up the phrase from Bugs Bunny who popularized it in the 50's and early 60's. Google the term and Bugs Bunny takes the rap...
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,586 posts)never.
flibbitygiblets
(7,220 posts)Side note, at first glance, I thought the headline said "Trump apologized for..." and I did a shocked double-take. Of COURSE that's not what it said, Trump is too much of a thin-skinned snowflake to ever admit he did anything wrong. And when someone calls him on something he CLEARLY fucked up, he doubles down and gaslights the messenger. "NO PUPPET! NO PUPPET! YOU'RE THE PUPPET."
ThoughtCriminal
(14,047 posts)Was one I heard often in my Alabama childhood. Always assumed that in that context, it had to do with the fact that picking cotton is brutal and unpleasant. The "longest" minute would be one that was spent picking cotton (Did that once on a field trip when I was young and yes - it's horrible).
appalachiablue
(41,149 posts)'Ya'll jist wait a gol-dawn-cottin-pickin-minit'-- that's so funny the way you wrote it (spoke)!
Growing up I never heard that expression except maybe in some old movies by actors like Walter Brennan or something.
As a boy Johnny Cash and his family picked and bagged cotton in Arkansas.
My MIL and husband picked it in southern Va. in the 1950s.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)The farmers in the area were poor whites. I've heard the expression occasionally growing up...and in movies & cartoons. There were lots of poor white farmers, like in the movie "Pieces of the Heart" with Sally Fields.
It's a substitute for cursing "God-damned." You're out of your "God-damned mind" becomes "you're out of your cotton pickin' mind."
But it's old fashioned and not used much, anymore. And you don't use in the way this man used it, with a black person...because of the history there and the connotation.
It never crossed my mind growing up that that expression had anything to do with race. No one intended it to, that I could tell.
But it's old fashioned. Like saying, "Wow...that's the cat's meow!"
teenagebambam
(1,592 posts)And I'd be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I've used that phrase. Might be my age (early 50's) but yeah I'd be willing to blame this on Bugs Bunny. Seems like something my Northern Ohio elders said a lot.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I grew up in the south, so heard it. It wasn't racial in intention, that I could tell. But it's an OLD expression. No one says it, anymore, except for the old fogies.
It's in lieu of cussing...."God-damned." "Wait a Cotton pickin' minute, will ya?"
Chemisse
(30,813 posts)I'm in my 60s and it was one of the many old-fashioned phrases that still roam around in my mind.
I agree it's was not meant to be racial, but I can see how it could be construed as that when it comes from the lips of a racist person as part of an insult to a black person.
Kind of Blue
(8,709 posts)that the phrase is relegated to the past. History is still alive and it's why Bossier apologized quickly. People may have innocently picked it up from Bugs Bunny but that does not make the phrase less charged coming from a spokesperson of an unapologetically racist administration.
I think that I'm about 10 years older than Jay-Z, see his video from last year, The Story of O, and you cannot miss all of the references to picking cotton. My point is that he as a young black boy watched a myriad of racism in cartooning in the '80s as I as a black girl in the '70s. So it's disappointing the phrase is so invisible to you to the point where you write it "may have been" when it definitely was and still is.
Just this past April, using the phrase got a sports announcer suspended. And I remember back in 2010, a CNN host had to apologize for saying the same thing of Pres. Obama.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/04/12/thunder-condemns-announcers-cotton-picking-comment-about-russell-westbrook/?utm_term=.501cd41e1b14
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/30/rick-sanchez-calls-obama-_n_699616.html
RobinA
(9,894 posts)the phrase, but I had no idea it was considered racial. Im from PA. You dont hear it much these days, its been pretty much supplanted by f*cking. As in, Hes out of his f*cking mind.
appalachiablue
(41,149 posts)mocking a 10-year old girl with Down Syndrome torn from her mother at the US/Mexico border. Shameful.
RVN VET71
(2,692 posts)Payne's over-reacted. Bossie wasn't slurring anyone. He was using an expression that my father used on us when we asked for money and permission to do something he didn't like, as in "You're out of your cotton pickin' mind if you think I'm gonna let you use my car to take your dumbass friends out on a goddam beer run." "Cotton pickin'" was supposed to replace "goddam", but my father never missed a justifiable chance to cuss.
Now if Bossie had addressed Payne -- or any black man or woman -- as a "cotton picker", he'd be outing himself as a racist fool, no question about it. But he didn't. He blurted out a familiar expression. Payne took umbrage because, well, maybe Bossie deserves umbrage. But, IMHO, it was a misdirected and overly dramatic reaction.
Am I missing something here?
7962
(11,841 posts)just like you said, it replaced a curse out in public!
Judi Lynn
(160,554 posts)It didn't suit their manner of behavior, their personalities, their characters.
7962
(11,841 posts)growing up I never heard it used by anyone for anything other than emphasis; as the previous poster said "to replace the use of GD" Black & white folks used it regularly.
But I doubt anyone in New York ever did. I never heard of "busting your balls" till I was grown because thats a Northern expression.
angstlessk
(11,862 posts)included a person of color?
We all got over it...ceptin certain racists....
Just cause you daddy did it don't make it right!
Igel
(35,320 posts)It's like what happened with "picnic" in the '90s: It accreted a historical derogatory sense it never had. Now, for some, it has a negative connotation, but apparently only among certain perceivers.
Abductive logic isn't really logic.
RVN VET71
(2,692 posts)But "out of your cotton picking' mind" was never intended in any way, shape, or use, to refer to black people. Never.
Trumpdumper
(171 posts)My white California father used the phrase too, all the time, and I'm sure he had no idea of its racial significance. I'm nearly 60, fairly well educated, and only learned of the phrase's bad undertones a few years ago.
Momgonepostal
(2,872 posts)Bothh my white, California raised parents used this phrase with us, as in get your cotton-pickin hands out of the cookie jar, its almost time for dinner. It never occurred to me until much later that there was a racial angle to the phrase. If my parents were alive today, theyd be in their 80s and 90s, so would likely get more of a pass than this guy will get. Hes young enough to know better, and then to say it to a black man is doubly stupid.
Snellius
(6,881 posts)If you watch this encounter closely you can tell that Bossie had been scripted to use this phrase. He gradually starts to say it three times, each time getting closer and closer, not spelling it out explicitly, waiting for the right moment, when the debate gets heated enough that he thinks he can slip it in without being noticed. Note too how nervous he is before and how he keeps clearing his throat. This was a calculated rhetorical sneak attack.
thbobby
(1,474 posts)In fact, it is how they met. I am white. I can understand how the term can be used and not be a slur. Sometimes who says it must be taken into consideration. It probably did have racial overtones, but may be unwise to chastise Bossie over because he can claim it did not. I am from North Texas and have heard the expression many times in my life, but have never taken it to be racial. Cotton picking was good work for many Americans. I do not mean to discount the slavery angle, but slaves were forced to do many things and cotton picking was a job many whites also did.
Scruffy1
(3,256 posts)It's been a common expression and part of language all my life and I never thought of it being racist. I knew a lot of white folks who picked cotton, too. Carl Perkins comes to mind.
Snellius
(6,881 posts)Bossie knew exactly what he was saying. He's been spewing that shit more years.
Will be interesting to see what FOX does. Believe it or not there's been a definite change in their tone in the last couple of days. Not so much in their commentary but in the stories they cover and in the reactions in the comments. Some kind of internal crisis may be going on.
TTheStruggleisReal
(14 posts)He needs to be fired.
Judi Lynn
(160,554 posts)Why Was Cotton King?
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Originally posted on The Root
Its beautiful bolls,
And bales of rich value, the Master controls.
Of mud-stills he prates, and would haughtily bring
The world to acknowledge that Cotton is King.
The Gospel of Slavery, by Iron Gray, [Abel C. Thomas] 1864.
The most commonly used phrase describing the growth of the American economy in the 1830s and 1840s was Cotton Is King. We think of this slogan today as describing the plantation economy of the slavery states in the Deep South, which led to the creation of the second Middle Passage. But it is important to understand that this was not simply a Southern phenomenon. Cotton was one of the worlds first luxury commodities, after sugar and tobacco, and was also the commodity whose production most dramatically turned millions of black human beings in the United States themselves into commodities. Cotton became the first mass consumer commodity.
Understanding both how extraordinarily profitable cotton was and how interconnected and overlapping were the economies of the cotton plantation, the Northern banking industry, New England textile factories and a huge proportion of the economy of Great Britain helps us to understand why it was something of a miracle that slavery was finally abolished in this country at all.
Let me try to break this down quickly, since it is so fascinating:
Lets start with the value of the slave population. Steven Deyle shows that in 1860, the value of the slaves was roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks, and it was equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, twelve times the value of the entire U.S. cotton crop and forty-eight times the total expenditure of the federal government that year. As mentioned here in a previous column, the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased the productivity of cotton harvesting by slaves. This resulted in dramatically higher profits for planters, which in turn led to a seemingly insatiable increase in the demand for more slaves, in a savage, brutal and vicious cycle.
Now, the value of cotton: Slave-produced cotton brought commercial ascendancy to New York City, was the driving force for territorial expansion in the Old Southwest and fostered trade between Europe and the United States, according to Gene Dattel. In fact, cotton productivity, no doubt due to the sharecropping system that replaced slavery, remained central to the American economy for a very long time: Cotton was the leading American export from 1803 to 1937.
More:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/
Slaves toiling over the white owners' cotton was even memorialized on the confederate money:
/800/0
They even loved to take photographs of "their" slaves picking cotton in the fields for every day of their lives after being enslaved:
As you can see they forced children to pick "their" cotton, too. Was it a "rite of passage" when a child got so tall,
he or she was given his or her own shoulder bag, so he/she could join the parents in the field, picking cotton? Jesus.
This is NOTHING I would want to celebrate, don't know about you.....
I hope the slavers will NEVER be forgiven, using the lives of human beings to support themselves in a lavish life-style,
wearing the clothes their prisoners made possible by struggling, suffering their entire lives for NOTHING, living in fear
the "owners" might get angry at them if they made a mistake, and lash them with whips, or worse, then even kill them,
after sending out the militia to capture them, if they dared to try to escape, to make an example of them to the others.
Kind of Blue
(8,709 posts)sandensea
(21,639 posts)Possibly the most evil individual in America today, with the possible exception of Cheney.
In a way I'm glad he blurted that out, as it shows his true colors.
Judi Lynn
(160,554 posts)Here's a supporting article, which only barely scratches the surface:
Meet David Bossie, Donald Trumps New Master of Dirty Tricks
President George H.W. Bush once accused him of the kind of sleaze that diminishes the political process
Itay Hod | September 7, 2016 @ 9:46 AM
Last Updated: September 7, 2016 @ 10:44 AM
Bossie did not respond to our requests for comment. But here are seven things to know about Trumps latest hire:
1. He operated a phone sex line. No, really.
Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus reports that in 1992, Bossie worked on an anti-Clinton effort that included a phone line in which callers could pay $4.99 to hear supposed sex tapes between Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. According to a 1999 article by PoliticalResearch.org, a non-profit research group, the incident was so distasteful the Bush/Quayle campaign was forced to condemn it. The president called it the kind of sleaze that diminishes the political process right before filing a Federal Election Commission complaint.
2. He once harassed the mother of a woman who committed suicide.
A 1992 CBS News investigative piece called Dirty Tricks said Bossie harassed of friends and family of a woman by the name of Susan Coleman. Coleman had committed suicide 15 years earlier while seven months pregnant. Bossie was investigating whether Coleman shot herself after having an affair with her law professor, Bill Clinton, and getting pregnant.
The family and friends of Susan Coleman have been forced to relive this tragedy as political agents threaten to drag her name through the mud, the CBS piece said, calling it an unusually brazen dirty tricks operation run by an independent committee that supports George Bush for president.
CBS said Bossie and another investigator followed Colemans mother to an Army hospital where her husband was being treated for a stroke. Here the two men burst into the sick mans room, and began questioning the shaken mother about her daughters suicide, the CBS report went on to say.
More:
https://www.thewrap.com/meet-david-bossie-donald-trumps-new-master-of-dirty-tricks/