Washington: Republican Doug Lamborn of Colorado and commentator Pat Buchanan, a former candidate for the president, have both apologised for using racially charged terms to describe President Barack Obama.
Both Lamborn and Buchanan had called Obama, the first African-American president, alternately a “tar baby” and “boy”, giving new fuel to speculation that underneath much of the criticism of the president and his policies, lurks the shadow of racism.
Lamborn had made his comment on a Denver talk radio show on Tuesday. Referring to Obama, he said that it was like touching “a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you're a part of the problem now and you can’t get away”.
The term tar baby comes from the 19th century Uncle Remus stories, where B'rer Fox uses a doll made of a lump of tar to trap B'rer Rabbit, who gets more stuck the more he pummels and kicks the tar baby. In more recent parlance, tar baby is widely considered racial slur.
Former GOP presidential candidate and MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan, in a tête-à-tête with the Rev Al Sharpton, referred to Obama as “your boy”. “My what?” Sharpton shot back. “My president, Barack Obama? What did you say?”
Buchanan hinted that he was using a boxing analogy, replying that the president was “your boy in the ring”. Lamborn, who apologised to Obama in a letter, said in a separate statement on Wednesday that he shouldn’t have used a term “that some find insensitive”.
“Some folks took what I said as some kind of a slur,” Buchanan said on Wednesday. He added: “None was meant, none was intended, none was delivered.”
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