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What's the worst thing you can call someone?
Napoleon?
The Anti-Christ?
Hitler?
How about all three in one quick "joke".
As first reported by Liz Benjamin in the New York Daily News this morning, Erie County Executive and Gubernatorial candidate-in-waiting Chris Collins tried to make a funny last night
Collins referenced famed French seer Nostradamus' prediction that there would be three anti-Christs before the Apocalypse.
He said it's generally accepted the first was Napoleon and the second Hitler.
He said he was "pretty sure" the third is [Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver, a Manhattan Democrat
Apparently Collins was speaking to a room full of decent people, because the response was, well, muted:
"No one clapped. No one cheered. No one laughed," said a Western New York Republican who was at the event. "I know I didn't. I thought it was a little harsh to be calling someone an anti-Christ." (New York Daily News) One of those attending Saturday's dinner called the statement "unbelievable."
"It was staggering," said the Republican, who asked not to be identified. "It took my breath away. You just don't say something like that." (The Buffalo News)
Note: that was the response from a room full of Republicans.
Collins is State Republican Chairman Edward Cox's handpicked candidate for Governor next year, meaning that if Paterson runs, he will probably be the governor in 15 months.
I personally have a lot of trouble relating to or coming to the defense of Sheldon Silver, but no one deserves to be called the Anti-Christ, and it is especially inappropriate to compare a Jewish man to the single most offensive anti-semite in history. Collins has been apologizing profusely all day, calling the joke "a mistake", but it rings hollow - if the joke is so clearly a mistake, why tell it in the first place? Did he think it was okay because he was among friends? |
