Some lessons from the Northam mess - I am sure there are more...these came to mind this AM

[NRaleighLiberal]

please feel free to add other lessons out of this. I don't know why it is so hard for our species to learn, but it really does seem to be.

1. Some of us likely think we've come a long way, but when this like this arise it is clear that we've not. Some things get pushed into the background or go into the background, or deeply out of sight...but they are there. Obama's 8 years should have made that clear.

2. When events like this happen, they are hard to process and end up creating more divisions. They are hard to talk about, and the impacted groups have every right to call out those who are not directly impacted. We all feel something, we are all appalled, but few find just the right words to use.

3. The news happens too fast, there are knee jerk conclusions and reactions everywhere and it becomes bewildering. Social networking often becomes an even more damaging tool.

4. Liberals - Democrats - are under attack. We've known that for a long time, but the attackers are even more emboldened, because there is little apparent consequences for any number of offenses.

5. We as a country and culture (a complex varied culture) are in trouble - we are being dragged backwards, at the peril of the entire planet. When we get a statement like "God wanted trump to be president", it is hard to even know what to do with that level of ignorance.

As I am finding it hard to be very hopeful at the moment about so many things - I have to grab on to those things around me that I love...as I type this, I have a cat on my lap, one is near me on a chair, and our two pups are upstairs with my quilting wife. Music is playing....it is going to exceed 60 here in Raleigh. Those things give me comfort....but it is getting rougher and rougher "out there".

[Iggo]

1. Another lesson: Cop to your shit.

Don't wait.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Yes, exactly. I was going to put something about how many politicians just

fail to do the right thing at the right time in matters like these, but my words sounded clumsy - I like your concise approach

[sarcasmo]

3. Vetting candidates, have both sides ignored vetting? How was that yearbook photo missed?

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. thanks - good addition.

[dsc]

5. I assume he didn't tell his campaign about the photo

I have to admit it wouldn't have occurred to me that a medical school had a yearbook let alone that he would have appeared within it in blackface.

[Ms. Toad]

8. He didn't buy a yearbook, and hadn't seen that page until Friday.

So - no, he didn't tell his campaign.

Pretty much the scenario I laid out before he confirmed my suspicions in his press conference - back then, yearbooks were their own little world. I was a photographer for mine - we just took photos, the editors decided which to include, no consents were obtained, and if you didn't buy one you'd never know what photos of you were included.

Nowadays, no one would dream of publishing without photo releases - but it never crossed our minds back then.

[dsc]

12. I find it beyond hard to believe that anyone would have published that without him giving it to them

given that he was unrecognizable in that picture.

[Ms. Toad]

13. I can tell you that is exactly what happened in 1974-76 in the college I attended.

I was a yearbook photographer - and that is exactly the way it happened in ours.

The editors, or editors in consultation with photographers, believe they recognize people in the photos, and tag them In this yearbook apparently people had their own pages. In ours, the identification was in an index at the back. I could probably go back through my yearbooks and find mis-identified people (or at least I might have been able to 40 years ago when the faces and names were fresher in my memory).

And - since the photo is not actually of him - don't you think that if they did show it to him 35 years ago when his memory was fresher he would have said, Hey - that's not me. Don't put that on my page."? In that case, it wouldn't be there - and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[dsc]

14. assuming he is telling the truth

which may be the case but may not be as well. I can certainly see them putting in a photo that looked like him but wasn't him but this was a photo that could have been anyone.

[Ms. Toad]

15. The photographer may have believed it to be him -

and submitted his hame connected to the photo.

On the yearbook I worked on, some information came from the photographers (and generally wasn't checked for accuracy), and some came from the editors.

[dsc]

16. based on what?

Here is the photo who could be literally anyone and let's just say it is Northam. That makes no sense.

[Ms. Toad]

17. If you're a yearbook photographer at a party taking pictures for the yearbook,

you are actually seeing people - not just photos. You jot down notes about who you think is in the photo as you take them (I kept mine in a small notebook, by photo number, with whatever notes I had about who was in the photo, date, circumstances. If I was taking a posed group shot I was much more careful about recording names than when I was taking casual shots that caught my interest.)

Usually you get the people right, sometimes not. But those photographer notes would be based on being face-to-face in the party - or on checking in with the photographed person or others around. Not on looking at a photo and trying to figure out who it is - that would be more similar to the role of editor (who was likely not present at the party).

I'm sure you've had the experience of looking at photos and trying to figure out who is in them - likely even passed them around a pack of buddies to try to sort it out. I certainly have - and even when we were pretty sure who was in the photo, occasionally the real person in the photo came along later and blew our identification out of the water.

[procon]

6. Wonder how much pot stirring can be attributed

to Russian trolls pitting both sides against each other? Same as they did before, create decension and animosity to distract from the bigger and seriously more consequential matters related to Trump's efforts to make this country a subservient vassal state of Putin's growing Russian hegemony.

[Iggo]

18. Trolls didn't make him paint his face black and pose smiling next to a guiy in a klan getup.

EDIT: I do get your point, though. Just 'cause they didn't build the merry-go-round, it doesn't mean they're not spinning it.

[procon]

19. Missed the whole point;

which I guess validates what I intended to point out. Remarkable.

[Iggo]

20. Here, "stirring the pot" and "spinning the merry-go-round" are the exact same fucking thing.

Seriously, what's the point you were making that I missed?

[Smilo]

7. This may be unpopular

but it really chaps my hide that Democrats are piling on Northam (and I don't condone what he did for one minute), but where are they when it comes to such as Steven King IA. Yes a few spoke out, but no where near the number that are speaking against Northam.

This reminds me of how Democrats piled on Al Franken getting him to resign.

Instead of knee jerk reactions, especially when the GOP is behind something and calling for resignations (notice not for republicans) - I would ask that Democrats research, even if it takes a while, ask questions and then come up with a decision. The Dems relish eating their own, the GOP "build a wall" around their own.

Look at how the Covington kids video went viral but only showed part of the story and the GOP laughed and laughed at the Dems. I still think the Covington kids are entitled little jerks.

The "when they go low, we go high" sentiment is, sadly, a thing of the past - Eric Holder was right "When they go low, we kick them".

[Ms. Toad]

9. This.

3. The news happens too fast, there are knee jerk conclusions and reactions everywhere and it becomes bewildering. Social networking often becomes an even more damaging tool.

Northam saw the photo for the first time on Friday evening (according to the press conference). He issued an apology amost immediately. Less than 24 hours later several local and national groups were calling for his resignation.

Some of the confusion (that many are classifing as lying) could have been avoided if Northam had felt he could take 24 hours before responding - in which case he could have done the checking in with friends from that era before making a public statement and not issued confusing statements about whether it was him in the photo, and the explanation that he couldn't have disclosed the photo ahead of time would have been part of the conversation, rather than feeling like a lame excuse after the fact.

None of this changes his shameful behavior - but being able to take a breath before responding would have allowed everyone a more thorough view of all of the details to reach a conclusion based on the entire picture, rather than forming entrenched views based on snippets of what happened. Once views are entrenched (and especially when publically spoken) they are very hard to back off of.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

10. I dunno, I'd remember if I dressed up in blackface and a buddy dressed as a klansman at a party.

It’s a pretty deliberate (and even shocking by 1984 standards) act.

[Ms. Toad]

11. He did remember dressing in blackface -

that is why he initially acknowledged it was him in the photo. He knew he had behaved in that manner, so when he saw the photo for the first time on Friday attributed to him, he assumed the attribution was accureate because he had worn blackface in that era, so he acknowledged it, and apologized for it.

As for the Klansman - I was around medical students in roughly the same era. Some of the parties involved quite a bit of alcohol. While one might clearly remember donning blackface, that doesn't necessarily translate into remembering the costumes of others around (especially if the alcohol flowed as freely as it did at some of the med school parties I attended late the previous decade). Apparently there are multiple photos of students in blackface in the yearbook - I haven't heard of other KKK robes, but the prevalance of blackface suggests to me that a KKK robe might not stand out, especially to someone who - at the time - decided it was appropriate to don blackface.

Again - not excusing the behavior. I just see very clearly how the viral outrage and the pressure to get out in front of it lead to misstatements that are hard to correct without seeming disingenuous.