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(Feb. 2) -- Some people simply don't know when to leave well enough alone.
Just when the country got over its knee-jerk overreaction to a politically incorrect statement in light of more important news, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has decided to give the country another chance to reignite conversation over his bouts with idiocies.
Reid has come under fire for penning an op-ed pegged to Black History Month in which he touched on his efforts to integrate home state industries.
In the piece, the supposed great integrator and not-so-smooth communicator wrote: "I worked hard during my time in local politics in Nevada to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry."
But as AOL News reported, there seems to be an issue of "fuzzy math" as it relates to Reid's claims.
Joe Neal, a former Democratic state senator who is an unquestioned key figure of the civil rights movement in Nevada, doesn't seem to recall a then 20-year-old Reid taking part in NAACP meetings that resulted in the integration of Vegas casinos.
A spokesman for Reid offered a short and sweet response reaffirming the senator's claims, although his role can only generously be summed up as: Maybe he was around, but he had no pull, no power and thus did little to advance the cause.
This now leaves Reid with the potential to be greeted with another round of bad press in the coming weeks. On top of battling perceptions that his views on racial politics are archaic, he will have to contend with a credibility issue in a re-election campaign where he's already suffering.
All of which would have been easily avoided had Reid been advised to do one thing: Stop trying so hard.
As Neal explained to AOL News, "Reid's record on diversity is impressive."
Reid doesn't need to go back in time and remix history in an effort to sound more committed to the cause of helping subside racial inequalities in this country. He can just point to his voting record.
If Reid hung around an office, library and courtroom and offered a "go, team, go" gesture to those who played a greater role in integrating casinos 40 years ago, that's wonderful.
But as a young voter, I'm increasingly unimpressed with any politician who continuously harkens back to keywords like "civil rights movement," "Brown v. Board of Education" and "integration" to try to earn their keep with minority voters.
As the sitting majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Reid would be better served by offering plans to tackle today's issues, of which there is no shortage – black male imprisonment being at an all-time high, black child poverty rates soaring, black high school dropout ratings growing, inequalities in health care coverage and mortgage companies implementing racist lending practices that spawn high foreclosure rates, along with the other multitude of problems currently crippling Americans overall but disproportionally hurting blacks.
I imagine not many other blacks truly care whether Reid may or may not have been helping out way back when, but it certainly doesn't help to find out he might be lying about it.
The more pressing question Reid needs to answer, and a whole lot more earnestly, is: What have you done for us lately?
Just when the country got over its knee-jerk overreaction to a politically incorrect statement in light of more important news, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has decided to give the country another chance to reignite conversation over his bouts with idiocies.
Reid has come under fire for penning an op-ed pegged to Black History Month in which he touched on his efforts to integrate home state industries.
In the piece, the supposed great integrator and not-so-smooth communicator wrote: "I worked hard during my time in local politics in Nevada to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry."
But as AOL News reported, there seems to be an issue of "fuzzy math" as it relates to Reid's claims.
Joe Neal, a former Democratic state senator who is an unquestioned key figure of the civil rights movement in Nevada, doesn't seem to recall a then 20-year-old Reid taking part in NAACP meetings that resulted in the integration of Vegas casinos.
A spokesman for Reid offered a short and sweet response reaffirming the senator's claims, although his role can only generously be summed up as: Maybe he was around, but he had no pull, no power and thus did little to advance the cause.
This now leaves Reid with the potential to be greeted with another round of bad press in the coming weeks. On top of battling perceptions that his views on racial politics are archaic, he will have to contend with a credibility issue in a re-election campaign where he's already suffering.
All of which would have been easily avoided had Reid been advised to do one thing: Stop trying so hard.
As Neal explained to AOL News, "Reid's record on diversity is impressive."
Reid doesn't need to go back in time and remix history in an effort to sound more committed to the cause of helping subside racial inequalities in this country. He can just point to his voting record.
If Reid hung around an office, library and courtroom and offered a "go, team, go" gesture to those who played a greater role in integrating casinos 40 years ago, that's wonderful.
But as a young voter, I'm increasingly unimpressed with any politician who continuously harkens back to keywords like "civil rights movement," "Brown v. Board of Education" and "integration" to try to earn their keep with minority voters.
As the sitting majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Reid would be better served by offering plans to tackle today's issues, of which there is no shortage – black male imprisonment being at an all-time high, black child poverty rates soaring, black high school dropout ratings growing, inequalities in health care coverage and mortgage companies implementing racist lending practices that spawn high foreclosure rates, along with the other multitude of problems currently crippling Americans overall but disproportionally hurting blacks.
I imagine not many other blacks truly care whether Reid may or may not have been helping out way back when, but it certainly doesn't help to find out he might be lying about it.
The more pressing question Reid needs to answer, and a whole lot more earnestly, is: What have you done for us lately?
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