Virginia First Lady's "Cotton Situation" Deliberately Misrepresented?

In a prior post, I took a Washington Post story to task for its apparent aim at creating sensation and fanning racial strife in Virginia.  The articles author, a former food editor, seemed to hear only what she wanted from what transpired with an obvious goal of harming the reputation of Pam Northam, First Lady of Virginia. In my view, it is part of a larger effort by some in Virginia's black community, the Legislative Black Caucus and some in the leadership of the Virginia Democrat Party (and, yes, I can name names) to drive Ralph Northam from office through any means so that they can install Justin Fairfax as the state's second black governor.  Now, as the Virginian Pilot is reporting, other legislative pages and their parents are disputing the claims of a state employee and her daughter who seem to be part of this plot to stir racial discord and disparage the governor and his wife.  Shame on the Washington Post - which is now being sued over its similarly botched reporting of the Covington Catholic students - and other news outlets that never bothered to get the full story.  Here highlights from the Pilot:

Virginia first lady Pam Northam did not focus on black students as she handed out raw cotton during several back-to-back presentations on slavery at the Executive Mansion, several participants and their parents said in interviews Friday.

"Nobody was singled out," said state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, whose teenage son took a tour of the mansion with others serving as pages in  Virginia Genaral Assemnly.

Petersen was reacting to allegations made this week by a state employee whose daughter was in the page program. She alleged in a letter that Northam singled out three black students in a group of about 20 as she handed out cotton bolls and talked about imagining slavery.

In all, 10 pages gave their accounts to The Washington Post, either directly or through their parents, most of whom did not permit their 13- and 14-year-olds to be interviewed because of their age. In four of those cases, the pages were in the same tour group as Walker's daughter. The other six visited the kitchen with different groups on the same day.

In all 10 cases, the pages or their parents insisted that the first lady - a former science teacher - conducted their tours with sensitivity and with no special focus on the black pages.

"She didn't pick out anything or anybody," said Celina Harris, 13, of Chesapeake, a page who was in a different tour group from Walker's daughter.

Celina, who is African-American, said Northam passed around raw cotton bolls and tobacco leaves for the whole tour group to touch. In the case of her tour - one of perhaps four Northam led for pages that day - the first lady handed the cotton to a white page.

"When it came to the cotton part, she handed it to the nearest page and passed it around the room to everybody, and explained that the slaves had to pick cotton, and it was difficult for them because it was sharp," Celina said. "She asked us to feel around the cotton. It wasn't normal cotton balls that we use today. It was hard and prickly. . . . It was interesting. I didn't see any problem with it at all. I don't think learning about our history should be counted as offensive in any way. And it's not like she purposely looked at me while talking about it, or any of the other black pages in the room."

Resisting calls to resign over the blackface controversy, Gov. Northam has pledged to focus on racial reconciliation in his remaining three years in office. But the criticism over the first lady's presentation about the house's slave history - something she has long highlighted - shows what a minefield that territory can be.

"Traditionally, you'd give a tour of the mansion and say, 'Look at this beautiful upholstery.' And now they try to give a full historical tour, 'This was built by slaves,' " Petersen said. "It's kind of like damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you try and incorporate alternative voices, suddenly you're triggering someone. As opposed to if you're breezing through like Better Homes and Gardens and you're being oblivious or privileged."

Sen. William Stanley, Jr., R-Franklin, said that his daughter was in the tour with Walker's and that no one was targeted.

"The first lady's intent was to show the horrors of slavery and to make sure everyone felt the pain they felt in some small measure," Stanley said.

Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said his daughter, also a page, gave a similar account, although she was in a different tour group.

"I have also spoken to witnesses who were present and the *cotton situation* during the Page Governor's Mansion tours did not happen at all the way it's been portrayed in the press," Surovell wrote on Facebook.

Sadly, don't expect the Post and others to retract their false accounts of what transpired. Generating controversy and page views is all that matters. 

Vladimir Putin Thinks it's Still 1985

Like the nutcases at NOM, Vladimir Putin has a hard time grasping the reality that the world has changed and objective reality has changed from the preferred period in time in which he is psychologically locked.  With NOM, Brian Brown and others want to roll time back to the 1950's.  With Putin, he wants time reversed back to the days before the Soviet dictatorship and its "empire" held hostage by the Soviet army all collapsed.  One must never forget that Putin first rose to power through the KGB, not exactly an institution that cares about the rights of the asses.  Its ultimate sole goal was to keep the dictators in power and living well.  An article in CNN notes that this is perhaps why Putin still thinks he is living in 1985 or before.  Sadly, the Russian people have yet to realize that Putin is the true source of most of their nation's troubles.  Here are article highlights:

The first frosts of winter have already dusted the spectacular city of St. Petersburg with a powder of glistening ice. The air outside feels sharp and crisp. Russians hurry along the elegant boulevards, wrapped up tight against the biting cold. Russia's winter, its annual deep freeze, has begun.

But this year there's more than just a bitter chill in the air. For the past nine months relations with the West have become decidedly frosty too. 

On the face of it the problem is Ukraine.  The West backed a popular uprising there in March, which toppled a Kremlin-friendly government.

Infuriated, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, annexed the strategic Crimean Peninsula, where it has a key naval base.

One fascinating explanation for the failure of Western sanctions and rebukes to change this vast country's behavior may be in the mindset, the world view, of its strongman president.

I'm one of the few Western journalists to have sat down with Vladimir Putin. . . . I asked him back then if he could guarantee that Russian troops would not invade other former Soviet states, like Ukraine.

He reacted quite angrily, saying he objected to my question. It was Russians, he said, who should be given guarantees that no one attacks us.

The comment sheds light, I think, on how Vladimir Putin sees the world outside the walls of the Kremlin.

For him, Russia is under constant threat from the West. NATO expansion into former Eastern Bloc nations has eroded Russia's security. The prospect of Georgia joining the western military alliance, let alone Ukraine, is unthinkable for him.

The Cold War, from this perspective, has never really ended; we're still living in the 1980s.

The West, in particular the United States, still strives to "subjugate" Russia. President Putin repeated this just a few days ago in Moscow.

From a Western perspective, this seems like a cynical distortion of the facts, a Kremlin ploy to confuse and obfuscate.

But it may help explain why Russia is doing what it is doing, and why sanctions are not changing -- and may never change -- Kremlin policy.

It may also help to explain why, at a time of growing economic hardship, Russia's president remains so utterly popular at home.

His world view is theirs too. Like the harsh cold of the coming Russian winter, confrontation with the West is inevitable and must be endured.

Just as an insane Adolph Hitler led Germany to disaster by playing on German nationalism and sense of grievance, so too, Putin will be the downfall of Russia.  One hopes the Russian people come to recognize this sooner as opposed to later.