How Badly Did They Want to Say the N-Word? RNC, Day 1

Your nightly guide to racism at the Republican National Convention.

Tonight was the “I’m not racist, and my Black friend says so” portion of the RNC, featuring speeches from Tim Scott and Herschel Walker, among others, and a lot of predictable talk about “opportunity zones” and the Democratic “plantation.” For the hard stuff, we turn to the undercard. Here’s Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis “gun couple” who famously mounted an armed defense of their topiary from Black Lives Matters protesters:

Check out Patricia, sounding a dogwhistle immediately discernible to suburban right-wingers (many of them Democrats in California!):

They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs all together by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness, and low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods. President Trump smartly ended this government overreach, but Joe Biden wants to bring it back.

And here’s Mark, pronouncing “Marxist” with a hard “r” at the end.

The Marxist, liberal activist leading the mob to our neighborhood stood outside our home with a bullhorn screaming, “You can’t stop the revolution.” Just weeks later, that same Marxist activist won the Democrat nomination to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives….That Marxist revolutionary is now going to be the congresswoman from the first district of Missouri.

(He’s talking about Cori Bush, by the way.)

Tonight’s RNC message: We love Black people so long as they’re nowhere near our front yard.

How badly did they want to say the n-word? On the strength of the McCloskeys’ appearance, we award Monday’s proceedings 10 out of a possible 10 Atwaters

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate