Fresh off of “joking” about public hangings while running against a black man in Mississippi, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is now saying she was also joking when she suggested it should be harder for liberal people to vote—something that’s still relevant for 2018 in Mississippi because Hyde-Smith is in a run-off election with Democrat Mike Espy.
A video tweeted Thursday afternoon shows Hyde-Smith telling a small crowd in Starkville, Miss., that “they remind me that there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea."
Some jokes, of course, tell us a lot about the people making them. Such as that they have no meaningful sense of humor except when it’s mean-spirited and that they think “hey, I was joking” is the best defense every time they get caught being a little too truthful.
It would also sound a lot more plausible as a joke if keeping liberal people—like college students, as in this example, or people of color—from voting wasn’t a key Republican electoral strategy that they’ve been putting in place everywhere they can. “Let’s do a little more of the thing we’re already doing” does not really play as a joke, even if you wink and say “ha ha ha” at the same time.
Whether it’s giving college areas or areas with lots of people of color fewer early or Election Day voting locations, making it harder to register to vote, long lines at polling locations where probable Democrats will vote … Republicans have been enthusiastically pursuing it. Which means that if we believe Hyde-Smith was joking, the humor came not from the improbability of what she was suggesting, but from the fact that it already happened. And that brings us full circle to how some people have no sense of humor outside of the mean-spirited and think “I was joking” is a solid defense to any appalling thing they say. Cindy Hyde-Smith to a T.
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