Guess He Didn’t Get The Memo – But Neither Did Custer

Aug 24, 2012 by HART WILLIAMS, Guest Voice Columnist

It turns out that Republican National Officers are a wee bit tardy on their history.

Paxson: Custer’s Last Stand (detail)

I mean, Europeans have only been “occupying” North America for five hundred years, and you’d think in that time, the 500 nations contained within the US would have been noted as NOT a single monolithic bloc of “indians.” Nope. In an amazing tale of utter cluelessness, TPM Reports:

RNC Official: N.M. Governor ‘Dishonored’ Gen. Custer By Meeting With American Indians
RYAN J. REILLY AUGUST 24, 2012, 5:30 PM 9144

A progressive group called on Republican National Committee leader Pat Rogers to step down on Friday after emails showed him telling New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s staff that meeting with a group of American Indians “dishonored” Gen. George Armstrong Custer, the 19th century commander who killed scores of American Indians.

“The state is going to hell,” Rogers, who is a member of the GOP executive committee and is currently in Tampa for the RNC convention, wrote in a June 8 email released by Progress Now New Mexico. Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Col. Allen Weh “would not have dishonored Col Custer in this manner,” he wrote…

Awww. Isn’t that special?

The sheer idiocy of this statement is magnified by the fact that none of the American Indians being referred to were anywhere near the Little Bighorn, and are mostly urban (Pueblo) Indians, and not the horse tribes of the Great Plains. Add to that the idiocy of defending Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, or what Custer did, or what Custer stood for in the West, and you have the Trifecta of Clueless Intolerance, if not to say actual hate.

Pat Rogers

The story notes:

[Foster Friess backed NM Governor Susana] Martinez is required by law to attend the annual state-tribal leaders summit, according to Progress Now New Mexico, which called for him to step down.

“Such a blatantly racist statement against our native people is offensive from anyone, but to come from a national GOP leader and lobbyist for some of our country’s largest corporations is indefensible,” Progress Now New Mexico’s executive director Pat Davis said in a statement.

Yes. Clueless and indefensible. I’ve written about Martinez before, but I’ve never worried that she might (gasp) meet with INDIANS, nor would I expect the Governor of New Mexico not to know anything about them, as the GOP idjit seems to.

This is ALSO not the first time a Republican has managed an utterly clueless response to American Indians, as I wrote about in 2012′s “Battle of the Little Greenhorn,” as Arizona then-congresscritter J.D. Hayworth marched in the Window Rock, Arizona Navajo parade intoning a Navajo word that didn’t mean what he THOUGHT it meant.

Hilariously.

I guess Hayworth will now have to cede his crown as most clueless GOPper vis a vis Native Americans.

And yes, it IS racist, and idiotic, and indefensible.

But Pat Rogers is a Republican, and the Republicans don’t much seem to mind clueless, racist, idiotic or indefensible.

So don’t hold your breath.

Pat Rogers’ idea of an American Indian? Evidently.

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, an honorary Texan, Clown (ditto) and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

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