VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Ralph Northam Not Familiar with Birth of a Nation?

BuzzFeed News first reported that advisers had pushed Northam to read “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’ seminal essay in the Atlantic, and Roots by Alex Haley. Since he began reading those texts, Northam has also been urged by his advisers to watch parts of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, which shook the country with its racist and disturbing view of black Americans after the Civil War. (Northam was not previously familiar with the racist depictions in the film, an adviser said.) The actors lampooning black people were played by white actors wearing blackface.

You’d think Northam would be more up to speed on the favorite film of a pioneering “Progressive.”