Racist Buffoon Brent Bozell Predictably Buffooning Around New Job As Ambassador To South Africa
Barely off the plane and already pissing off his hosts.
Brent Bozell, a racist Furby who looks like Santa Claus after he fell on hard times, spent several years drinking rotgut and sleeping in Union Missions, found Jesus, got sober, and now works as a substance abuse counselor in between church testimonials, needed all of two weeks to start fucking up his new job as America’s ambassador to South Africa.
Two weeks! The only way he could have beaten that record is if he walked into the South African president’s office wearing a Klan hood his first day on the job.
Bozell spoke at a meeting of South African business leaders this past Tuesday. It was his first public speech since he officially became the ambassador on February 23, exactly two weeks prior. And in the spirit of being new to the country and wanting to get off on the right foot with his host government, he kept it simple. He touched on the historic relationship between America and South Africa, and expressed his hope that stronger business ties between the two nations could lead to prosperity for all their citizens.
Ha ha ha, we kid. Bozell actually hit on some of the more sensitive topics in the country: affirmative action laws allegedly hurting white people, and the wingnut conspiracy theory that white farmers are having their land stolen by the Black-majority government. The way he talked, you’d think he was surprised all the businessmen in front of him weren’t wearing loincloths and bones through their noses.
Bozell said South Africa should change some of its affirmative action laws that were designed to redress the inequalities of South Africa’s decades of racial segregation under apartheid. He compared the laws to race laws that oppressed Black people during apartheid.
America, the world’s largest exporter of both oil and whining about reverse racism. One of those two is an endlessly renewable resource, and it’s not oil.
Bozell also called for changing a land law that allows the South African government to expropriate land without compensation in some circumstances.
Oh Lord, not this codswallop again. It has been an article of faith on the Right that the majority-Black government of South Africa has been chasing white farmers off their land (or murdering them outright) and then seizing it as reparations for apartheid. This belief is so deeply ingrained with the wingnuts that Trump specifically called it out in an Executive Order a year ago that was meant to address the “egregious actions of the Republic of South Africa.”
It is also one of the reasons Trump has cited in bringing a whole bunch of white South Africans to America as “refugees,” even as his administration has closed the refugee admission program to anyone whose skin is a hair darker than Benjamin Moore White Dove.
After Bozell’s comments, the South African government summoned him to explain himself. An ambassador is almost never summoned in this context because the host government wants to award him a medal, unless the medal reads “World’s Biggest Asshole.” If it’s happening, the ambassador or his nation has offended the host country in some galactically stupid way.
In Bozell’s case, South Africa’s foreign minister told reporters that while the nation welcomes “the strengthening of bilateral ties,” they expected Bozell to follow “established diplomatic etiquette and international protocols.” Buddy, did no one tell you the name of the president who appointed Methadone Santa Claus in the first place?
This is why you appoint ambassadors who have experience and training, not racist lunatics whose family’s whole gestalt for 70 years has involved telling white people all the ways the Left, the media, and the Blacks are trying to screw them.
Bozell also got in trouble for condemning the phrase “kill the Boer,” which comes from a 1980s anti-apartheid song and refers to white farmers. Far-left political groups in South Africa will chant it in what sounds to us like the South African Left’s version of American trolling.
South African courts have determined that the phrase does not meet its definition of hate speech. The American government disagrees:
[T]he U.S. had presented five requests to the South African government around a year ago to improve ties: distance itself from Iran, change parts of its affirmative action laws affecting American companies operating in South Africa, outlaw any expropriation of land without compensation, declare rural crime a priority and publicly condemn the “kill the Boer” chant.
Basically, the current US government wants back the South African government it allied with in the 1980s when the rest of the world was sanctioning South Africa over apartheid. And as ever, the Trump administration is damned selective about what it believes to be hate speech. Far-left South Africans chanting “Kill the Boer”? Hate speech. The president accusing Haitian immigrants of stealing and eating people’s pets? Free speech, no matter how racist.
Bozell at least backtracked on his condemnation of “kill the Boer,” saying that the United States “respects the independence and findings” of South African courts. No word on whether the Trump administration will at any point start respecting the independence and findings of American courts, but we can dream.
The irony is that this contretemps comes on the heels of recent news stories about white South Africans who are returning home because they have found that living in the United States is too stressful. Like this guy, who moved to America in 2003 and, like a true American, has grown to wonder what the fuck is going on with this place:
Andrew Veitch left South Africa after being held up at gunpoint in his car. But now he feels there are greater threats in the United States, he said, citing mass shootings in public places as well as violence by U.S. immigration officers.
“People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed,” said the 53-year-old, who moved to California in 2003. “I don’t want to live in a place like this.”
Or this other South African, Naomi Saphire, who spent 20 years in North Carolina. She returned to South Africa when she realized her kids would spend more time outside, the schools are better, and healthcare is affordable:
“My heart is just full of gratefulness to be here,” the 46-year-old said from her home in Plettenberg Bay. “The U.S. has been really good to me (but) I just felt like I was depriving my kids of this life.”
Life? You call affordable healthcare and good schools and children touching grass on the regular a positive lifestyle? Whatever, hippie.
Wonkette survives living in America thanks to the generous support of our readers. Although frankly, South Africa doesn’t sound so bad at the moment.
Oh, great. A pro-apartheid guy working as *ambassador* to one of the most racially sensitive spots on the planet Earth!
Tell me this is a lost Monty Python skit, please? Come on, it has to be?
This guy looks like he should be living at the local bus stop, dressed in trash-bags and screaming at the pigeons.