Another Senator seeks details over Myers' blackface debacle

The ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, a Republican, has launched an investigation into the behavior of ICE director Julie Myers, a recess appointee who gave a prize to an employee in blackface and prison garb at a DHS Halloween party:

A key Senate Republican has launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding a controversial Halloween party at the Homeland Security Department, in which an agency director approved of a racially insensitive costume.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday she asked her staff to question Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Julie Myers over the incident.

Myers, whose confirmation is pending in the Senate, had judged an employee's costume of dreadlocks, dark makeup and prison stripes as the most original at an ICE party last week and even posed for photographs with the worker. [GovExec]

The issue is that Myers embarrassed DHS by publicly indulging a racist joke. The guy who wore the costume has been suspended. If wearing the costume was enough to get a relatively junior employee suspended, it seems like the senior officials who gave him a prize (and therefore sparked the national scandal) deserve to face consequences at least as serious as those that befell the underlying they shoved into the spotlight.

Second, it seems as if there may be some kind of attempt to hide the evidence from the public. An official spokesperson claimed that the pictures of the costume, and Myers posing with the guy, were "discarded." If so, when, and by whom? If Myers or her colleagues at DHS are misleading the public, that's a serious matter in and of itself.

The spokeswoman told reporters that it was impossible to tell that the guy was wearing blackface. Let's see the pictures. I'm sure it's still possible to recover them, unless someone made a very concerted effort to destroy the evidence.

Furthermore, Myers' public behavior undercuts the efficacy of the organization that she was entrusted to run. ICE must do everything possible to enhance its reputation as an impartial law enforcement agency. Their job is to arrest and detain foreigners. Myers treated that mission like it was all a big joke.

Comments

[PhoenixRising]

This is almost never the case, but it's worse than you're saying.

ICE is charged with enforcing immigration law, yes. There is a policing function there, yes. But as you know, the main duty of ICE is to push papers to help legal immigrants, residents and visa-holding visitors stay legal, and to examine whether the applicants for those visas are good candidates to come into our country.

'We think an ethnicity is part of a prisoner costume' is a message that deeply damages their credibility as evenhanded enforcers of laws that are inherently racist. Our friends and colleagues in India, East Asia, and Mexico need no reinforcement for the notion that entering this country is likely to be a humiliating experience that is more trouble than it's worth.

Mere words cannot express how deeply I loathe the incompetence with which they have afflicted this nation. I thought living with their policies, properly implemented, would be bad; I never imagined that they would set out to restock every job in government with people who prove the maxim, Government can't solve problems.

[Corey Hall]

while, i think julie myers is a fraud and should have never been nominated, much less recess appointed, i'll be curious to see if this gets more run than u. penn president, amy gutman, posing with a "suicide bomber" at a halloween party last year.

/it's only racist when the right does it.

[Paul A'Barge]

I'm searching your archives for evidence of moral outrage over the DHIMMIcrat blackface incident involving Sen Lieberman. I can't seem to find it.

I also can't seem to find evidence that the Myers case is Blackface and not satire based on Gitmo (see the "prison garb").

Hypocrites are bad, but Liberal hypocrites without humor are the worst.

[actor212]

Chew on this, Paula...and remember, Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat. He quit the party, or did you ignore that little fact, little boy?

[actor212]

Oh...and what part of "dreadlocks" is Muslim?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, none? Cuz it's Rastafarian? You know, an African religion????? African? Black? HullllllllLOOOOOOOOOOO??????

[B-Money]

Where is the outrage over the photo in the link posted by actor212? Why is Bill Clinton not being told to apologize for being a racist? Oh wait, that's right, he is a Democrat and dems can NEVER be racist. His participation in this blackface photo was just a joke and he is forgiven. Now there is your double standard...

[Dock Miles]

Get a clue, McMoney -- it was a photoshopped picture that appeared in a blog. It was a stupid and careless move. All the more offensive because it was supposedly done to attack racial pandering.

But it's no more parallel to the DHS party incident than the Eddie Murphy stuff cited earlier.

However, you are expending so much time and energy denouncing the reaction to blackface that it's convincing me the issue may be more important than I imagined.

[B-Money]

Oh Dick, what it the big deal is the attention it is being given by the left. Get over it! As a man of color, I am not offended. Yet you whiteys are? How does that work.

As for the photoshopped pic, it was posted as evidence and I referenced it. If it is fake, so be it. But the blackface incident did in fact occur at a Lieberman function and it was not given the attention this little incident has garnered.

[Dock Miles]

>As a man of color, I am not offended. Yet you whiteys are? How does that work.

Well, I happen to be of the oddly not-universal persuasion that a single member of a group does not represent all other members of that group.

Here's a variant on an example I've used before -- your position is not unlike if I was to put up a big poster of a Nazi swastika on my lawn because I thought it was such a cool design. Then, when the outraged neighbors show up, I should be able to fix everything just by saying "Hey, I don't find this offensive and that's all that matters. What's your problem?"

[B-Money]

Point taken DM. Pretty good example. But this is a much lesser issue. It is bad taste, not blatant hatred like your example uses. The real issue, as has been pointed out by myself and others, is Myers incompetance and bad judgment. My whole point is that is is really sad that it took an incident like this to realize she was a goof. That should have been known from the get go. But like I also said, a person like Myers in a position of power is not surprising for this administration. Only 14 months left. Thank goodness.

[Dock Miles]

>But the blackface incident did in fact occur at a Lieberman function and it was not given the attention this little incident has garnered.

I guess not. I can't find any reference to it anywhere. Somebody got information on this?

[Paul A' Barge]

Umm, actor212 ... I'm looking in archives at Magic Thighs. Not Google.

There has been plenty of Blackface outrage in the right-o-sphere, but precious little in the left-o-sphere.

Still looking.

[parse]

actor212, I don't believe that Rastafarianism is an African religion.

[B-Money]

Parse, it is. Gooole it, wiki it, ask.com it, whatever you like. It derives from African Orthodoxy and Ethiopia.

[janet]

I find claims and counter-claims about who is showing outrage over what incredibly tedious. I am not equally aware of every potentially controversial incident involving a public official; nobody is. And I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in spending my time making sure I'm being equally outraged at all the things there are to be outraged about. My outrage-o-meter gets too much of a workout as it is.

Just curious: Do the folks who post here specifically to pounce on Lindsay's supposed hypocrisy spend equal amounts of time policing right-wing blogs for signs of hypocrisy?

[B-Money]

"Just curious: Do the folks who post here specifically to pounce on Lindsay's supposed hypocrisy spend equal amounts of time policing right-wing blogs for signs of hypocrisy?"

Janet, I do not. For one reason, I already know the hypocracy that exists on Right-wing blog sites, having frequented them in the past. I do not frequent those site any longer for there is no chance of engaging in a legit discussion and actually learning something. I may not agree with everything I read here, but I come here to get the oppossing viewpoint and hopefully broaden my viewpoint, or at the very least, understand where others are coming from.

[janet]

B-Money, you have more fortitude than I. I can barely stand to read any political blogs, even those with viewpoints I more or less agree with. The comments here (up until the comment of yours I'm replying to) are an example of why I rarely read political blogs any more -- things so quickly seem to devolve into claims and counterclaims, and various kinds of one-upsmanship. And not just the political blogs, either -- I spent part of last week in a snit over an argument on a food blog. I wish there was a way to talk about controversial issues without driving each other up a wall.

[Dock Miles]

Well, issues don't get to be known as "controversial" if they mostly inspire hearts-and-flowers discussions. And actually following through on (sane) "claims and counterclaims" is a way to establish facts. For instance, I'm still interested if anybody can point me to an account of Sen. Lieberman (or somebody at a Lieberman event) actually wearing blackface.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Let me get this straight: Joe Lieberman invited someone up to the podium to praise their blackface costume?! News to me.

If anyone ever showed up at a Lieberman event in blackface, I never heard tell of it.

There was a Lieberman supporter who showed up in a banana costume and caused a ruckus during the CT Senate primary. But that wasn't a racial incident. The guy wanted to drive home the message that Ned Lamont and Wal-Mart were "bananas."

[paul a'barge]

Here you go Linsay and actor212:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blackface+site%3Amajikthise.typepad.com&btnG=Google+Search

all the incidents of blacface at Magic Thighs.

Note the selective outrage.

Hypocrite.

[digitalbutterfly]

B: Why not just read the sites and ignore the comments? I avoid comments/forums like the frakkin' plague, especially on political sites. These aren't well thought out discussions, they're rants and raves, stream of thought, unedited emotional spewing.

But makes for good entertainment when I'm bored at work from time to time. You guys are all great. Let's get angry about more crap these bozos and criminals are up to - both sides, honey, both sides...