Yes. He said it. Indeed.
Trump's rhetoric freed this now ex-fire chief in Pennsylvania to think he could say out loud what he had never stopped thinking. And now he is free! Well, free to look for some employment in the private sector....
In fairness, I suppose, he looks old enough to start his pension, so perhaps he just can sit home and watch FoxNews all day.
For the young'uns out there, what this fellow said is what I used to hear back in New Jersey in the 1960s and 1970s, which is that if the black guy on the football team you rooted for was someone you liked, you called him by his name and honored him as a hero. But the black guy or guys on the other team, or some black guy on the team you revered who spoke out in a way you did not like (Think, oh the late Johnny Sample*), well, the N word was what you called them.
At page 19 of Dan Jenkins' legendary sequel book, "Life Its Own Self" (the sequel to "Semi-Tough"), Jenkins' right wing, white, Southern football player character, T.J. Lambert, says:
"In football, they's niggers and they's blacks. Niggers is what plays for them, blacks is what plays for us."
This passed for enlightened attitudes among racists in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s. And that is where this now ex-fire chief was coming from. Yes, Trump fans. You get to wear this. I know too many people I grew up with who had the same exact attitude as T.J. Lambert who now proudly tell us they are not racist, but they love Trump when he speaks as he did last week in that rally in Alabama.
*Sample's book, "Confessions of a Dirty Ballplayer," is outstanding, and well worth finding and reading. He articulates very clearly what it was like to be a smart, young black man in America playing football during the 1950s and 1960s. Sample's career began with the legendary Baltimore Colts in the late 1950s, and his stories of his run ins with the legendary coaches on that squad, one of whom was Weeb Eubank, who in the late 1960s, gave Sample a chance on the one great New York Jets team that won the Super Bowl over what people thought may have been the greatest Colts team going into that game, show very clearly how personal and institutional racism works.
