Rob Fox
Who’s the dumbest person you know? Do you have an uncle who short-circuited his pacemaker microwaving a burrito? Do you know a mom who got drunk and left her baby at a Dave and Busters? Leavenworth County commissioner Louis Klemp of Kansas probably tops them.
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Klemp recently got in not nearly enough trouble for informing a black woman who was presenting to him at a public meeting, on behalf of an architectural firm, that he was white, and therefore part of the master race. Here’s the full quote.
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m picking on you. Because we are part of the master race. You have a gap in your teeth. We are part of the master race, don’t you forget that.”
So why is Klemp the dumbest man alive? For being an insane racist. For openly expressing his insane racist views? For openly expressing his insane racist views directly to a black woman? For openly expressing his insane racist views directly to a black woman who is almost certainly more accomplished than him? For openly expressing his insane racist views to a black woman who is almost certainly more accomplished than him while acting as a government official?
It’s all those reasons, actually. (Also for living in Kansas.)
Somehow Klemp, who is an appointed official and not an elected one, hasn’t been fired yet. (Not sure what the Leavenworth County Republicans who appointed him are waiting on, really.) He’s been asked to apologize, but he hasn’t, though. He told KSHB-TV that the whole master race gap tooth thing was a joke, so no apology is needed. (Obviously, the best place for a joke about a black woman’s appearance and the superiority of whites is during a public meeting. From a county official. So there’s no apology needed for that, even.)
This is the bullshit. This is the bullshit we allow to go unpunished that has us to the point we’re at now, where people are so fed up that even the most inane, unimportant of perceived slights — wearing a sombrero, a white girl in an Asian prom dress — now receives the same indignation as something as actually heinous as this. They don’t care anymore, and why should they? Not appropriately policing people like this asshole is one of the reasons the national discourse is where it’s at.
All Leavenworth County commissioner Bob Holland offered up in response to Klemp’s comments were some impotent concerns about people thinking Leavenworth County is racist, which is ironic because the way to prevent people from thinking Leavenworth County is racist is by firing Klemp. You do that and people will just think Klemp is a racist. If you keep this turd employed then they’ll think your whole stupid county is backwards.
This isn’t the first time Klemp has gone full moron at a county commission meeting. Last year he spent a portion of his official speaking time boasting about his great-great-grandfather owned a slave and fellating the memory of noted American traitor Robert E. Lee. He deserves to be fired for his nakedly, aggressively racist comments. Immediately. And admonished and shamed until he apologizes with sincerity.
This is how things got broken. Stuff like this.
