Washington Post Now Literally Looking Under Rocks in West Texas to Find Dirt on Perry
Seriously. Here’s the Post story, which once you get past all the history they try packing into it that has nothing at all to do with Rick Perry, is about a hunting lease that Gov. Perry’s family used, and which once had an offensive name that his family did not give it, but which was unfortunately somewhat common once upon a time. Once Perry’s family leased it, they painted over a rock with the offensive name on it to cover it up, and eventually turned the rock over to cover it further. So the Post has devoted its resources and space to tell the world about…a rock way out in West Texas.
Perry’s campaign disputes much of the detail in the Post story.
“A number of claims made in the story are incorrect, inconsistent, and anonymous, including the implication that Rick Perry brought groups to the lease when the word on the rock was still visible,” Sullivan said. “The one consistent fact in the story is that the word on a rock was painted over and obscured many years ago.
“Perry’s father painted over offensive language on a rock soon after leasing the 1,000-acre parcel in the early 1980s. When Governor Perry was party to the hunting lease from 1997 to 2007, the property was described as northern pasture. He has not been to the property since 2006.”
Sullivan also specified that the family has never “owned, controlled or managed” the property.
Just so we’re all clear, a hunting lease isn’t property you own or really have any meaningful control over. You lease it for hunting, and only visit it periodically. For hunting.
The Post knows all too well how this game is played. The original story will get major play, and while the follow up and its own climbdown will attract less attention, a lot of dust gets stirred up and most of it ends up on the Post’s target, in this case, Perry. What’s left in the mind of those who don’t follow the facts is that Perry is somehow associated with racism.
The Post, which ran dozens of stories over a single word in 2006 to sink George Allen, can be expected to stretch out this non-story about an old rock for the next year and a half. Just when Perry starts making a move in the polls or lands a solid punch on Obama, out will come some new revelation about the stupid rock in West Texas. It’s what they do.
One thing that is missing from every account of this story is the owner.
The owner of the property is the Hendrick Home for Children. It’s a place to provide a home for children who either can’t live in their own home or are genuinely homless.
Al Sharpton eats Cracker Jacks.
In public.
In front of kids.
I agree with you, Bryan, this is the Macaca story all over again. Indeed, it’s worse, because it’s based on nothing the candidate did or said. It’s an out-and-out smear. Apparently, every white Southerner is still presumed racist, until proven otherwise; the accent alone is enough to indict. WaPo and all the other elite media organs act as if the South has stood still for the past 40 years, that it’s preserved in amber sometime around 1972. WaPo’s editors are engaged in something truly evil here: they know what they’re doing is wrong — making scurrilous accusations of racism by association — and yet they go right ahead and do it anyway. I cannot tell you how much I hate this.
I find it very unsettling that any decent American will rent/lease a property named with an injurious offensive slur (as many locals openly claim this is what this property of referred to).
It will be foolish to dismiss this story as a “gotcha” because it call Perry’s judgement–not character– into question.
Sure. Why not get after Pelosi and Brown for going to events in SQUAW Valley, while you’re at it. /sarc
Just because “the locals” had a colorful name for the place DOESN’T mean the Perry’s were aware of it before leasing the land. It would appear that the actual owners of the property, the Hendrick Home for Children was even aware of what “the locals” called it. If anyone’s judgement is going to be called into question, I think it’s yours.
Good God. You actually are an idiot, aren’t you?
John Williams, are you aware the offensive nickname for an area of the hunting grounds is not the official name — as in, not the name on the lease?
Don’t look now, but somebody just committed a “John Williams,” and it stinks around here.
Weak.
I want to mention something else. Herman Cain owes Rick Perry an apology. He sat before Chris Wallace and declared the Governor grossly insensitive based on the WaPo’s story. My God, doesn’t he realize the devastating effect this comment from a black man has upon both Perry’s reputation and his candidacy? I like Cain immensely, I consider him a magnetic candidate and truly decent person. And I know he’s no fool. But surely he must have sensed the stink coming off the WaPo story. Couldn’t he simply have withheld comment until he knew more about this story? Doesn’t he realize that he’ll be used as a foil by the media to damage and maybe even destroy Perry’s candidacy and perhaps even Romney’s? Seriously, what is Cain, as minister of the gospel, going to pop off with when asked about Romney’s Mormon faith?
This exactly.
This is one of my problems with Cain. He simply is not sufficiently informed. He does not know how a hunting lease works. He did not question as to whether the Perry’s had any control over the situation. He did not question the timeline.
Cain got told something, and reacted to it as if it were the truth. His response was exactly the same as Obama’s comment about the Cambridge police acting stupidly. He assumed the racism without checking the facts.
I dunno. Maybe it’s a Black thing, seeing racism when there is none. I wonder if we will ever get past this nonsense. I doubt it, as long as there are people who can profit by promulgating such ignorance.
http://teapartybrew.com/opinion/2011/10/rick-perry-is-not-a-racist/
Cain is an idiot. We put a racebaiting liar in the White House in 2008, and we won’t do it again. This whole experience of the GOP Primary process has embarrassed conservatives to no end. Perry Derangement Syndrome has now taken over Palin Derangement Syndrome. It’s deranged. Perry is the best we have. If we take him out, we deserve Mitt Romney-care, another big government DEMOCRAT.
It reflects Cain’s thin political experience. But knowledge about hunting lodges is not what he lacked. The knowledge he lacked, but will probably learn, is that anybody in the MSM, like WAPO, or a network news interviewer (other than possibly FOX), is that the MSM is out to get repubs any way they can, and will lie to do it. Therefore any time an interview references any damaging story about any repub and asks Cain about it, he must assume first that the question might well contain a lie, and act accordingly. That is what he failed to do with the offensive rock question. He should have conceded that the such words on a rock would be offensive, but that he could not comment further on that particular story until he found out more, and had heard Perry’s side of things, on when Perry knew about the rock and what he then did about it. If the interviewer them supplied more details to suppliment the story, he should again assume they might be lies, and say that he has not presonally checked out the story, and when he has the facts to his satisfaction he will comment. This unfortunately makes many experienced politicos look like trimmers, but it is far better than allowing some MSM weasel to get you to endorse a bunch of lying dem talking points.
Huntsman did a similar thing once when a network interviewer asked a whole series of questions incorporating dem attack points against repubs, and Huntsman naievely agreed with all of them. Gingrich also did it once, when an MSM interviewer recited dem attacking points about the Ryan plan, and Gingrich agreed with them. Gingrich learned his lesson, and now regularly disputes the premise of any MSM question that he suspects might contain dem attack talking points. Cain needs to learn the same lesson. It is hard for him because he is honest and forthright, and wants to find common ground with whoever he is talking to. But he must realize that when dealing with the MSM, they are not being forthright or truthful, they are out to get him, and all repubs, by passing on baldfaced lies if necesary, and he must parse his answers accordingly.
Chris Wallace was doing his usual gotcha interview based on a WaPo story that I hadn’t heard of and still haven’t read, so the apology needs to come from Wallace for promoting this rumor, not Cain.
I will say that Cain could have handled it better. Just because someone asks you a loaded question doesn’t mean you have to answer with anything more than a confession that it’s the first you’ve heard of it and a promise to find out more about it and get back to the questioner.
Cain did the same thing with the question about the Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ question back in May, which is significantly more important than the scribblings on a rock 30 years ago. But tried to fake his way through it offering a poor answer, when the best answer would have been to admit that he wasn’t familiar with the issue.
I would blame nobody who didn’t know what WaPo is writing about. I never visit their site unless it’s linked by someone I actually read. Call it a character flaw but I don’t suffer fools well. It’s the same reason I never watch MSNBC.
But the land was leased for hunting, which means that people were on the land with guns. And if they fired the guns, that means they were pulling the tregroes.
Or something.
“Washington Post Now Literally Looking Under Rocks…”
Hey, maybe they’ll get lucky and find the one liberalism crawled out from under.
Anyone who quotes the typical WaPo political smear article, such as the one under discussion about Perry, should realize that its kind has roughly equal credibility with its global warming scare stories.
They pay talented writers to create garbage like this. Mercy
The area I live in was once called ‘Negro Foot’ back in the 1800s. There go my presidential opportunities. Nuts.
This takes the cake doesn’t it? Even Pajamas Media will post an article about an old idiomatic term that has been unjustly applied as a racial slur to a candidate for the presidency, Rick Perry, without even the courage to name what that alleged racial slur is. We need to have read about it somewhere else to know what all the fuss is about. Pajamas media is just too squeaky clean to even once print the word that the Washington Post fairly trumpeted to the world. You, Mr Saddleburr, at least are willing not to mince words. The word in question is “niggerhead”. It no longer is used, understandibly, but it once had a meaning, the knowledge of which meaning might shed some light on how such a word appeared on the bottom of a flat rock on the west Texas prairie. I have spent the better part of my life of over six decades as a geologist in the Southern Appalachian region. It is this region from which the early settlers of Texas emmigrated, by way of Tennessee and Alabama in the mid-ninteenth century. The term “niggerhead” at one time referred to a particular type of more or less spherical, black boulder, with a pitted surface. Its composition is/was basalitic or gabbroic. The boulders were, and still are, found scattered on the tops of hills and mountains in the region where-ever that particular rock type occurs, because they are resistant to weathering. Their occurance is significant because they are sometimes associated with other rock types that have commercial value, such as soapstone, which has been quarried for floor tile and furnace brick; and even rubies and sapphires can be associated with the spherical black boulders. Thus the name “Niggerhead Mountain” or “Nigger Hill” was once common in the region. The inhabitants of this region are well known for their colorful and, yes, irreverent language. Place names such as Frog Level, Lickskillet, Lickspittle,Possum Trot, and Rough Butt Bald dot the countryside. There is a mountain near the border of North and South Carolina known as Picken’s Nose, in the memory, if not the honor, of General Andrew Pickens, a Revolutionary War hero. Are the descendants of General Pickens properly scandalized by the backwoods humor at his expense? The real scandal is not just that a man years ago painted over a word and buried it under a flat rock on the Texas prairie, only to have it disenterred for use as a political smear. No, the real scandal is that Pajamas Media is afraid even to print the word.
Bigfoot, I agree. My ancestors came to Texas through North Carolina, Tennesse and Arkansas in the 1830′s, mostly as surveyors, but after settling there many became geologists or ranchers. The term has long described particular formations as you so aptly pointed out.
Bigfoot: +1
Excellent response, sir!
What else are we going to find out about Perry?
I don’t believe Perry has any racist bone in his body, but I do believe he lacks the judgement to be the republican nominee.
He’s lied or stretched the truth on many occassions (including being lobbied by a cervical cancer victim, loudly opposing bush-era medicare reforms and denying favoring states-run medicare as detailed in his book.)
I fear this latest Perry-gate scandal will prove one more lie–his probably false claim the family took off the offensive slur in 1980′s vs 2008 (as the locals say).
And there are even more shocking claims I will not repeat here about Perry’s sexuality, that will come out to haunt him.
I hope Chris Christie is learning from Perry’s mistakes–running for president of the US is not to be taken lightly. Its serious business!
The editors of and many of the contributors to the WAPO and the New York Times are neither honest nor decent people; a situation that has not changed in many decades. What surprises me is that so many conservatives seem to expect accurate reporting from these partisan rags.
John Williams your post is simply disgusting.
Barack Obama parked his backside in the “church” of Rev. “God damn America” Wright for twenty years. After that, a rock on somebody else’s property is simply not important.
This needs to be part of the automatic response to any of the smear questions this stupid old rock brings up. The rock has nothing to do with Perry (as Ann Althouse pointed out, the WaPo didn’t even bother to post a photo of said rock or a photo of Perry having anything to do with the rock), he didn’t put the word there, and it wasn’t directed by or at him.
However, Barack Obama sat in a church for twenty years listening to and supporting a preacher who routinely ranted anti-semitism and hate and somehow he’s escaped all association.
This smear needs to be countered productively by shining the light back on Obama’s anti-American activities over the years. When it starts becoming a liability, the Democrat fanatics will drop this stupid smear.
This WaPo story is pure desperation at work.
After the Tucson shootings can any sane and aware person think the MSM can’t sink to any depth?
Every Conservative pundit and personality out there should name that rock on air, in print, and on line.
Shove this crap back into the faces of the Left.
Stop saying Washington Post. Stephanie McCrummen is the author. Let’s give her the proper discredit for her fictional hit piece.
There is good reason to believe that Barack Obama gave the keynote speech at a 2003 retirement party for a notorious eliminationist Jew-hater named Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times even has a videotape of the event, which they refuse to release. Until I hear about the likes of the Washington Post expending this much effort to dig into the details of that episode, I will consider them enemy interlopers in my country, and pray for their utter destruction.
Aleena/11: I figured John Williams was in sarc mode. Inept but still sarc. Weren’t you, John? Hello?
The WaPo found an old rock. Whoopdedoo. Now let’s see them find Obama’s senior paper from Occidental. Or his grades… from anywhere.
Funny how there was ZERO energy put into finding anything at all about Barack Obama’s background and haunts.
I seethes as good news. The Wapo has looked at Perry and has decided he is a real threat to the Libralworld. That is one of te best endorsements he could get.
Alinsky Rules #…
Cain supports tarp, Cain supported bank Bailouts. Why do people take this opportunist serious. He pulled the race card just like the liberals. It makes no sense at all. Perry is a true conservative, who knows what it means to face the slash and burn media, but Cain has not been tested, he makes gaffes with no one even trying to trip him up. We nominate this dude, we will be sorry. Cain is being just like the liberals, but he runs on being proof the race card does not work. He is a joke, and I signed up on his site the day he announced, so do not give me no I am a troll stuff. I am in the battle for conservative causes all the time. I am a student, who whole goal is to get my journalism and mass com degree to help conservative causes, but Cain deserves none of this. I thought I was going to support him. No way now.
Re ‘macaca’ — the Post won’t need any new “revelations” about the rock. They’ll just print more stories about the story — someone’s response to it, a recap, a denial, an opinion piece, etc., until Perry is declared guilty by association.
So next they will read Wikipedia and see that Cain went to Moorehouse College, ” a private, all-male, liberal arts, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia…..one of three remaining “traditional men’s” colleges in the United States.”…
So we are then to assume Cain is not only racist but sexist too…give me a break! Where do they get this stuff? Off of some Six-grader’s blog? (applogies to all six-graders!)
The rock must be a geode. They are probably unusual in Texas. The old colloquial name for them is what was painted on it, so people would know what it was. I’ve known some elderly folks who have never known this rock by any other name.
When talking about reasons for liking or disliking a particular candidate, relevant truths should be listed. The hypocrisy and disingenuousness of this article tells me that Stephanie McCrummen and the WaPo are afraid to reveal the real reasons they dislike Perry. They cannot tell the American people the genuine reasons without outing themselves and destroying their credibility. ( I am not sure why they have any credibility now.)
So Ricardo Perry loves Mexicans (illegal ones at least) and hates Blacks. These cancel each other out. Non story.
I see a GOP hack [eg: Karl Rove] behind this
IMHO, McCrummen owes the residents of Throckmorton and Haskell counties an apology for slandering them from over 2000 miles away. I believe the media is about to learn that West Texas won’t be like Crawford and following the WaPo hit piece, out of towners are going to be met with a great deal of suspicion in the future.