“National Association of Retarded People”
WOW! This took long enough. We figured this would have been the first question asked yesterday when Rudy announced Cousin’ Arthur as a state co-chair. We guess cocaine overshadows those type things, huh?
CNN: Giuliani’s South Carolina adviser has controversial history with NAACP
June 26, 2007
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reaffirmed his ties with a prominent South Carolina family Monday, a week after the son was indicted on federal cocaine charges.
Giuliani’s presidential campaign released a list of regional chairs in South Carolina, which included Arthur Ravenel Jr., who will serve as the Lowcountry chairman.
Ravenel is the father of former South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, who until last week was the state chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Thomas Ravenel stepped down from his post on the Giuliani campaign after the indictment was announced. Gov. Mark Sanford suspended Ravenel from his position in the state government and named an interim treasurer.
Arthur Ravenel, a former U.S. Congressman and state senator, has his own controversial history. A supporter of flying the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds, Ravenel referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as the “National Association for Retarded People” at a flag rally in 2000, according to the Charleston Post and Courier.
Arthur Ravenel later said he inadvertently mixed up his words and apologized to mentally handicapped people for comparing them to members of the NAACP, according to the newspaper.
A Giuliani spokeswoman declined to comment about Arthur Ravenel’s statements and referred to an April 5 statement announcing his role as Lowcountry chairman.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:20 am
Though with understandable anger, the press always fails to recognize the possible reasons behind Ravenel’s slip of the tongue. Ravenel was the co-founder of the National Association for Retarded People, South Carolina chapter, and has a mentally disable child himself. It seems highly unlikely that he would unconsciously consider the NAACP “retarded” because of his sensitivity towards the other association and his own family member. Whatever his true opinion of the NAACP is (who can really know), it is not what the media likes to say it is.