C-Ville Weekly is the talk of every politico in the nation, thanks to their article about Rep. Virgil Goode. Earlysville resident John Cruickshank received a letter from Goode in which Goode spoke plainly about newly-elected Rep. Keith Ellison, who happens to be Muslim. Cruickshank passed that letter onto C-Ville, who published it in this week’s issue. In the letter, Goode complains that “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran,” and that he “fear[s] that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States,” which is his roundabout way of saying that Rep. Ellison is unfit to hold office and contributing to the end of society as we know it by being sworn into office with his hand on the Quran.
The story ricocheted around political blogs on Tuesday and Wednesday. The AP picked up the story mid-afternoon on Wednesday. NPR’s All Things Considered covered it that night. By yesterday variations of the story had been published in hundreds of newspapers across the nation, NBC’s Nightly News covered it, and Goode’s refusal to apologize or backtrack had earned him the ire of organizations like The Anti-Defamation League. Many of these stories have traced back the origins of this letter, naming C-Ville as the source.
Rep. Ellison has proved the gentlemen in the whole affair, merely pointing out that what Goode doesn’t know about Islam is a lot. Goode, on the other hand, has reacted angrily, unwilling or unable to accept that he has constituents that believe that somebody’s religion has nothing to do with their ability to serve. If Goode represents Christians in this dispute, and Ellison Muslims, looks like it’s Muhammad 1, Christ 0.
Not exactly proving me wrong here, are we waldo?
Who are you and what are you talking about?
What is up with Virginia and its biggots seeking and holding office. Can you imagine if Allen had won and then Goode did this, man what would be next David Duke for Gov.
Giving Goode the benefit of the doubt, he is just an idiot. Or, he is a mean spirited racist xenophobe. This wing of the party on the right is turning Virginia into a late night comics dream.
President Gilmore anyone?
Well, the Weed campaign sure could have used this in, say, October.
The sad truth is, Virgil will likely be helped by this more than hurt; in all likelyhood, he’s parroting back invective he’s getting in mail from his constituents. The Charlottesville area is a major outlier (not at all representative) of the VA-5th district. The ‘southside’ area which makes up most of the 5th is the absolute heartland of the Confederacy – moreso than Richmond for sure. Hate-radio has been spouting off about Ellison’s selection of the Koran for at least a week before this incident – plenty of time to rile up the xenophobic rednecks (this is a familiar political cycle/animal in american politics, since at least the 1840s when they were called nativists) who are a majority of the VA-5th. Virgil is a chameleon – he as ‘Clintonesque’ as they come in terms of following the prevailing winds. I’m equally sure this will not hurt him as much as help him, in the 5th. Weed did damn well, considering that he advocates equal civil rights for homosexuals and doesn’t advocate enacting a theocracy by sub-ordinating the Secular United States Constitution to the Bible.
Agreed