Republican State Representative: Hey, Sorry About the Recorded Racist, Homophobic Statements I Made
I once called an editor an asshole.
I didn’t mean for him to see it. I sent a message over the Washington Post messaging system and, somehow, instead of sending it to the one person I was messaging with, I sent it to the entire newsroom.
I freaked out.
He’d been my editor during an internship that I’d just finished and he’d been super hard on me. But I was new to reporting and new to an editor who wasn’t here for a bunch of my fuckshit. So instead of stepping my game up, I’d made my shortcomings about his editing style and his demeanor.
So, during a conversation with another reporter, I called him an asshole. And hit send and then looked up at everyone staring at me and laughing.
When I went over to apologize to him, he was cool about it. But what sucked at that moment is that he knew how I really felt at that time. The apology wasn’t for saying it, it was for sending it throughout the newsroom.
It was one of those “I’m not sorry for calling you an asshole, I’m sorry you saw it” apologies because had he never seen it, the statement would’ve stood and he and I knew that.
So Rep. Amy Grant, an Illinois freshman Republican state legislator, can miss me with her apology for her racist and homophobic comments when discussing her Democratic challenger in a recorded telephone call with a potential donor.
She meant that shit. She just didn’t mean for the quiet part to get said out loud.
“Illinois House Democrats released snippets of the conversation, but refused to release the full audio of the call or share the exact date of the call or further context around state Rep. Amy Grant’s statements,” Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Democrats have called on Republicans to condemn Grant and her “troubling” comments and some have even called for her to step down.
Because life is messy and 2020 is the Lionel Messi of years, Assistant Majority Leader Will Davis, (D-Hazel Crest) played audio clips of a conversation Grant had a few weeks ago with an unidentified person during a fundraising call in which the Republican bashed her opponent Ken Mejia-Beal, who is Black and gay.
Grant reportedly called Mejia-Beal “just another one of the Cook County people.”
“The only thing we need is another person on the Black Caucus,” Grant said in one clip. “And I’m all for—working across the aisle, and Will Davis is a buddy of mine, and he’s in leadership, and I am a friend of his, and he respects me.”
Grant also claimed that Mejia-Beal is “afraid to come into the district,” maybe because “he’s afraid of the reaction that people might give him.”
“Not because he’s Black, but because of the way he talks—he’s all LGBTQ. He wants to work for the chronically ill. He just gives us like crazy ... and every week it’s a different reason for why he wants to get into the race,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Grant apologized to Mejia-Beal on Monday.
“I deeply regret the comments I made about Ken Mejia-Beal and reached out to apologize to him this morning,” Grant said on her Facebook page, the Sun-Times reports. “These comments do not reflect my heart or my faith.”
Jesus, she done pulled her faith into this.
“I thought—I always hoped we’re better than this, but these days, I guess we’re finding now it’s okay to say out loud the things that people used to just whisper in the shadows,” House Majority Leader Greg Harris said. “Maybe that’s good, because maybe we find out now who people really are.”
Mejia-Beal issued a statement noting that “Grant makes it clear that she sees only the color of my skin and my sexual orientation—and that in her mind disqualifies me as a leader and even disqualifies me as a member of our community,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Nowhere in Representative Grant’s one-line public response or the phone message she left me reading that same message is any acknowledgement that the statements she made so matter-of-factly on those recordings were also a grievous insult to every member of our community,” Mejia-Beal’s statement reads. “Where is Representative Grant’s apology to those who hear her comments and wonder if they fit into her vision of our community?”
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