Poor Jakie Knots. All he was doing was being his regular, redneck self and he catches all kinds of flack. We tend to agree with Jakie that his Lexington County GOP persecutors wouldn't be flogging him publicly if he had limited his "raghead" slur to the President and not included Nikki "Boom Boom" Haley.But being hip-deep in the Governor's race ain't enough for Jakie. No, sir...it seems he's been drug smack-dab into the middle of the Attorney General's race as well. Seems Alan Wilson was a little slow to take Jakie off his list of endorsers. Wilson's camp sent out an email the same day Jakie decided to be Jakie on the internets radio. Yet despite the national press coverage, it took Wilson 8 days to address the issue. Wilson tried to explain the delay by saying he's "very busy" with "traveling the state" and "being with the people of South Carolina." Uh...that's lame.
Unless Wilson was sucked into a black hole, he knew about those comments within 24 hours. More importantly, Wilson should have known people would look to see how he responded given his family's relationship with Jakie. More importantly, you would think the Wilson family would know a little something about the need to effectively deal with stupid statements made in public. But just what is the Knotts-Wilson history? Well, that's the subject of quite a bit of blogosphere conversation. Some say Alan's mother is Jakie's campaign manager. Is that true? We have no idea. Much like the travel habits of one PFC William T. Santiago, we are unfamiliar with the inner-workings of the Lexington Country political machine. However, we do know that according to a State article by Clif LeBlanc from 2007 titled "GOP Women Yield Their Political Might," the two seem pretty damn close.
Sen. Jake Knotts' public persona is of an unapologetic Bubba, a gruff guy who dishes out more guff than he takes. But this Alpha male starts each day with a 5 a.m. phone call to his closest confidant and political adviser -- one of Lexington County's staunchest and toughest GOP divas -- Roxanne Wilson.So...what's the what? Apparently no one from the Wilson camp has ever watched Clear & Present Danger. This is how it should have gone:
Reporter: Mr. Wilson, why did it take you so long to condemn the remarks and
reject Sen. Knotts endorsement?
Wilson: Well...listen. I heard the
remarks and I found them personally offensive.
Reporter: Is it true that
Sen. Knotts is a friend of your family?
Wilson: Jakie has been a
lifelong friend of my family. Heck...he almost is family. And that's why, while
I found his remarks ignorant and offensive, I didn't right away come out and
pile on Sen. Knotts. You don't do that to family. Even if they say something
that's just shameful.
See how easy that was? Done and done. But instead, Wilson offered up some limp-ass excuse for why it took him over a week to address the issue and he made a story out of it. There's a full-out blogoshpere battle being waged over whether or not Jakie and Roxanne are still close and Wilson's camp has no one to blame for it other than themselves. Not to pile on Alan here either, but we also thought his first public comments in response to his dad's "You lie" outburst was pretty weak as well, especially considering the fact he had the whole night to come up with something.
We don't have a dog in this hunt. We know Alan. He's a nice guy. We don't know Lord, but he is thought of in the bar as a very bright guy, plus he has the most magnificent mane of any 2010 candidate. Truthfully, we don't know much about Matthew Richardson on the Democrat side either, other than he too has a very high reputation amongst the bar. All that being said, let this Jakie-Roxanne battle be a lesson to all political candidates: don't run from your associations and whenever possible, embrace them. This is the South. We've all got racist, ignorant uncles. It's a fact of life. We still like to go hunting and fishing with them. Some of us just realize they shouldn't be charting our State's course up at the Statehouse.
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