{"id":10328,"date":"2013-10-25T06:05:36","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T13:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=10328"},"modified":"2013-10-25T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T19:25:27","slug":"my-best-friend-is-black-north-carolina-gop-official-defends-discriminatory-polling-place-photo-id-restrictions-on-the-daily-show-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=10328","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;My Best Friend is Black&#8217;: North Carolina GOP Official Defends Discriminatory Polling Place Photo ID Restrictions on &#8216;The Daily Show&#8217; [Video]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Don Yelton, North Carolina Republican Party Executive Committee Member and GOP Precinct Chair of Buncombe County, NC tried to explain to <i>The Daily Show<\/i> that the state&#8217;s new polling place Photo ID restriction law wasn&#8217;t racist at all, things went from bad to worse.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, the &#8220;bad&#8221; was when he (actually!) claimed that one of his best friends was black! So&#8230;you can only imagine what the &#8220;worse&#8221; was&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe src=\"http:\/\/media.mtvnservices.com\/embed\/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:429896\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Pretty amazing. In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountainx.com\/article\/53751\/Don-Yelton-responds-to-criticism-of-his-controversial-Daily-Show-interview\">interview with <i>Mountain Xpress<\/i><\/a> after the show aired Wednesday night, Yelton said he was pleased with the way the <i>Daily Show<\/i> had edited the conversation. &#8220;The comments that were made, that I said, I stand behind them. I believe them,&#8221; he told the paper. &#8220;To tell you the truth, there were a lot of things I said that they could&#8217;ve made me sound worse than what they put up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But the Republican Party &#8212; currently <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=10280\">fighting in court<\/a> to support the <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=10156\">most restrictive voter suppression law to be passed in the nation<\/a> since the Jim Crow era &#8212; is not quite as pleased. The Buncombe County GOP said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/buncombegop?ref=stream&#038;hc_location=stream\">statement on Facebook<\/a>, that &#8220;Mr. Yelton&#8217;s comments do not reflect the belief or feelings of Buncombe republicans, nor do they mirror any core principle that our party is founded upon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, late Thursday, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/10\/24\/gop_leader_don_yelton_stands_by_racist_comments_in_daily_show_interview\/\">Prachi Gupta at Salon reports<\/a>, despite initially standing behind his comments, Yelton has now stepped down as the GOP precinct chair in Buncombe County:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">Speaking to Pete Kaliner, host of &#8220;The Pete Kaliner Show&#8221; on WWNC 570 AM, Yelton has officially resigned from his position as precinct chair within the Buncombe County Republican Party.<\/p>\n<p>Nathan West, Communications Director of the Buncombe County GOP, told Salon over the phone that he is worried about the &#8220;artificial damage&#8221; Yelton has caused the party. <\/p><\/div>\n<p>Um, <i>artificial<\/i> damage?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/even-the-daily-show-was-shocked-by-this-racist-gop-lead-1451400551\">Gawker reports<\/a> that Yelton has now also stepped down from his state Republican Party leadership position as well. Moral for Republicans: It&#8217;s okay to think it and pass laws based on it, just don&#8217;t say it out loud, please and thanks, and certainly not in front of a TV camera!<\/p>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><\/p>\n<p><i><b>UPDATE:<\/b><\/i> Yelton has a new story. He now says <i>The Daily Show<\/i> took him out of context (in contrast to what he said previously, as seen above), then goes on to use the n-word <em>to defend himself<\/em> and calls his local Republican Party &#8220;gutless&#8221; because says they could have &#8220;turn[ed the interview] into a positive&#8221; by using it to show they accept all points of view. Seriously. <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/nc-goper-who-called-blacks-lazy-uses-n-word-to-defend-himself\">See TPM for more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><center><i><b>* * *<\/b><\/i><\/center><center><b>Please support <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG&#8217;s<\/a> fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system &#8212; <i>now in our TENTH YEAR!<\/i> &#8212;  as available from no other media outlet in the nation&#8230;<\/b><\/p>\n<form action=\"http:\/\/Bradblog.com\/Donate\" method=\"post\" style=\"margin-top:.75em; margin-bottom:2em;text-align:center;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"cmd\" value=\"_s-xclick\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"hosted_button_id\" value=\"LCH965NHAJ5ES\"><input type=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/btn\/btn_donateCC_LG.gif\" border=\"0\" name=\"submit\" alt=\"Make a safe, fast, secure donation to The BRAD BLOG!\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/form>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Don Yelton, North Carolina Republican Party Executive Committee Member and GOP Precinct Chair of Buncombe County, NC tried to explain to The Daily Show that the state&#8217;s new polling place Photo ID restriction law wasn&#8217;t racist at all, things went from bad to worse. Mind you, the &#8220;bad&#8221; was when he (actually!) claimed that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,246,106,28,308,43,172,300,517],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability","category-comedy-central","category-election-fraud","category-election-reform","category-jon-stewart","category-north-carolina","category-photo-id-laws","category-republicans","category-voting-rights-act","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10328"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=10328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}