Ralph Breaks the Internet (And His Own Political Career)

Ralph Northam, the until-recently esteemed Democratic governor of Virginia, was in enough trouble last week when he backed a bill in the Virginia state legislature allowing for abortions all the way up to the third trimester of a pregnancy.  A pediatric neurologist, Northam went on the radio to explain the bill from a medical standpoint as a way of defending it, but he failed to convince abortion opponents and any pro-choice person who's squeamish over late-term procedures of his argument.  Right now, he probably wishes he were still discussing the issue, thanks to his entry in the 1984 yearbook from Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Yes, one of the pictures in his yearbook entry is a picture of two guys in what seems to be a promotional picture for a student production of a stage version of Birth Of a Nation - one guy in blackface, the other in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.  After conceding that he might be one of the guys in that photo, Northam reversed course and said he was absolutely certain that neither one of them was him.

The guy posing in front of the Corvette, on the other hand, is clearly Northam himself.

This yearbook entry raises some obvious questions.  If neither one of those two guys is Northam, why is the picture in his yearbook entry?  Why was a racist burlesque considered normal in mid-eighties Virginia?  And why do medical schools have yearbooks?

But a more important question than that is why Northam thinks anyone would buy his argument that he's not one of those masked men in the racist photo and that the photo was placed there by mistake. I'm surprised he didn't try to say that it's really a picture of a costume party in which the guy on the left is dressed as Marcel Marceau and the guy on the right is dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come . . . and what we're looking at here is actually the negative!

Northam delivered an oddly surreal statement at a press conference on Saturday in which he tried to defuse the scandal and insisted that he is not now the person he was in his youth (what sort of person was he, then?) and that he will continue to work hard against racism and strive to regain the trust of the people of Virginia.  He might as well have read a chapter of "Trout Fishing In America," or maybe the owner's manual from that old Corvette, for all of the good it did him.  And in an effort to show just how candid he is, he admitted to darkening his face when he dressed up like Michael Jackson to enter a dance contest that he ultimately won.  

Because he did such a great moonwalk.

And Northam's suggestion that the photo was someone else's, placed on his yearbook page due to a yearbook editor's mistake?  Right.  Listen, I worked on my yearbook in college (though a piece I wrote about jazz music on campus was dropped), and I know the difference between a mistake and a disaster.  In my senior yearbook from 1988, a feature looking back at the events of the time erroneously identified Democratic presidential candidate Bruce Babbitt as a U.S. Senator from Arizona; he was in fact the state's former governor.  That was a mistake.  However, I know of no picture from one student that got placed in the yearbook entry of another.  Northam's comments sound more like an excuse than an explanation, and an excuse that does not ring true at that.

I give Northam a week at best before he is forced to resign, as Virginians of both parties are calling him to do.  He is constitutionally limited to one term, and there is no higher office for him to seek in 2021 or 2022, but he still has a lot to lose by staying in office.  So do Virginia Democrats and Democrats nationwide, who would rather be talking about health care and infrastructure than this.  Instead of focusing on the Mueller investigation or the abrupt cancellation of the IMF treaty, the press is discussing a Democratic governor's racist past.  It's no surprise that Terry McAuliffe, Northam's predecessor as governor of Virginia and a possible presidential candidate for 2020, has been among the most vocal of those demanding his resignation.  In fact, a week may be too generous; Northam may have already resigned by the time you read this. 

I think there are lessons to be learned here.  First of all, blackface is offensive in any context.  Second, you shouldn't make a bad situation worse by changing your story.  Third, if you're a white male who enters a dance contest and wants to dress like a contemporary celebrity known for dancing, John Travolta is a much better choice than Michael Jackson.

And no moonwalking.

Nice Corvette, though.