[UPDATE: Send this to Keith and Rachel -- don't let Jenkins' get away with it -- countdown@msnbc // rachel@msnbc // Thanks!]
As if her comments weren't bad enough -- we now find out she lied:
Jenkins, R-Kan., said Thursday she didn’t know “great white hope” had a negative connotation when she recently used the phrase to describe Republicans’ search for a new leader.
However, the freshman lawmaker supported a resolution that included that exact phrase last month when the House approved by unanimous consent a measure urging President Obama to pardon black U.S. boxer Jack Johnson. Johnson, who died in 1946, was the target of an early 1900s racist plot and convicted in 1913 of transporting a white woman across state lines for immoral reasons.
Within the resolution passed by the House July 29 was a passage that read, “Whereas the victory by Jack Johnson over Tommy Burns prompted a search for a White boxer who could beat Jack Johnson, a recruitment effort that was dubbed the search for the ‘great white hope.’”
This is just begging the question to be asked -- which is worse: Lynn Jenkins' knowing and lieing about her knowledge of the "great white hope" or the potential ignorance of a resolution her spokesperson says she supported. It's pretty bad and this story is just steamrolling out of control for the GOP.
But this isn't the only evidence that Jenkins' should know better. As was reported by Media Matters yesterday, the real "great white hope" who defeated Johnson was actually from Kansas -- and lived less than 30 miles from Lynn Jenkins' home town:
Willard was a resident of St. Clere, which is a mere 27 miles from Jenkins' hometown of Holton and in the same congressional district she represents in Congress.
Not only that, a simple search of wikipedia reveals that when Jack Johnston was arrested in 1915 he was imprisoned in Kansas, at Leavenworth -- which is inside of Jenkins' district! So not only has Lynn Jenkins voted on a resolution about the "great white hope" this summer, she grew up near where the real "great white hope" was from, and she represents the district where Jack Johnson, the target of the "great white hope", was wrongly imprisoned. That doesn't all add up, huh?
Send Lynn Jenkins an email and demand she tell the truth:
lynn.jenkins@mail.house.gov