Update: It appears the comments disagree that pansy is a slur against gays, but only applies to "effeminate men." Seems to me, however, that the portrayal of men as effeminate is an effort to question their "manhood" and that each is pretty much the same thing.
This is pretty amazing. Back in October I was pretty tough on Barack Obama for the whole Donnie McClurkin situation, and suggested that Obama had lost my support for much of anything beyond a vote in the general.
But now we get the Governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley, endorsing Hillary Clinton with a gay slur:
Gov. Mike Easley made his endorsement official this morning, saying that Hillary Clinton is a fighter who "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy."
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary there are a couple definitions for "pansy":
1: a garden plant (Viola wittrockiana) derived chiefly from the hybridization of the European Johnny-jump-up (Viola tricolor) with other wild violets; also : its flower
2 a usually disparaging : a weak or effeminate man or boy b usually disparaging : a male homosexual
I'm pretty sure Easley wasn't talking about flowers here.
For all the talk recently about how misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, it's still pretty OK for Governor's of large states to publicly slur gay men and get it printed in Hotline without any editor or reporter saying to themselves, "uh, maybe that's not a good thing to say?"
Now, I'm straight, white, married (only once) and middle class with a good education and a house and nuclear family -- essentially the prototypical so maybe I'm not the one to be talking about this. But it was the first thing I thought when I saw this, and it really kind of pissed me off.
This is not the Democratic Party that I want to belong to.