By now you’ve probably heard that Rick Santorum launched his doomed presidential campaign the other day with a slogan, “Fighting to Make America America Again,” that bears a striking similarity to a Langston Hughes poem, “Let America be America Again.”
How did Rick Santorum react to the news that his campaign slogan was lifted from a black, gay, pro-union, pro-immigration poet?
Two words: gay panic.
Santorum, a Republican, spoke at an “ECON-101″ Town Hall meeting-style event Thursday sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement at New England College. The event is part of a series at the college that brings political candidates to the school to discuss America’s economic future.
Santorum by and large stayed on message but was tripped up a bit when a student asked him if he knew that the choice of his slogan, “Fighting to make America America again,” was borrowed from the “pro-union poem by the gay poet Langston Hughes.”
“No I had nothing to do with that,” Santorum said. “I didn’t know that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn’t inform me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that.”
The student, whose name was not immediately available, was referring to the poem “Let America Be America Again.” When asked a short time later what the campaign slogan meant to him, Santorum said, “well, I’m not too sure that’s my campaign slogan, I think it’s on a web site.”
To which I say: what a dick. It took this dude about three fucking seconds to disavow his own campaign slogan because he was told it sounded gay. This is a grown man, a man who wants to serve as the public face of America, a man who seeks to represent America to a world in which white fundamentalist Christians are the minority, and this is the cowardly, craven manner in which he responds to the news that something he said sorta, kinda sounds like something a – gasp – left-wing homosexual once said? And then to fob it all off as something that’s just “on a website” when you know damn well he spent more cash vetting that slogan than America spends annually on bacon and energy drinks combined. Good lord, Rick, grow a pair.
So let’s rewind and try that again. Rick, for future reference, maybe something like this?
When a student asked Santorum if he knew that his slogan, “Fighting to make America America again,” was borrowed from the “pro-union poem by the gay poet Langston Hughes,” Santorum expressed surprise, but then quickly added, “Obviously, this thought is not new. It expresses a deep yearning by Americans to return to the foundations upon which this great nation was built. While I don’t personally agree with the political beliefs that underlay Mr. Hughes’ poetry, I celebrate the vibrant diversity of this great nation, which not only made his writing possible but also leaves room for my disagreement.”
Santorum then added, “And whatever you do, don’t Google my name.”
