He Said What?!?!?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/64926.html

What's been on Rick Perry's mind these last few days? How the heck he's going to make the latest headlines about his family's old hunting camp name disappear.

The Washington Post put out an article this week concerning the racially insensitive old name of the Perry family hunting camp. The camp, once called "Niggerhead," has suddenly drawn a lot of unwanted attention for Rick Perry as well as unwanted criticism. African American Presidential candidate Herman Cain was understandably offended by this news and was eager to express his thoughts on a recent Fox News appearance. Cain commented that, he couldn't think of "a more vile, negative word than the N word," and that, "For him to leave it there as long as he did before, I hear, that they finally painted over it, is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country."

Clearly Cain was upset, just as most were who heard the story. It certainly is not the image Perry wants to conjure right now, especially after our last Texan Republican president was constantly referred to as a "cowboy." Although the Perry camp is getting a lot of flack right now they are trying to defend themselves as best they can. For instance, Perry claims that his family painted over the rock with the vulgar word in the 1980s, and some sources do back that claim, just not all of them. Ray Sullivan, the campaign communications direction, said, "{Mr. Cain is} right the word written by others long ago is insensitive and offensive," he just isn't right about how long it took to get rid of it, according to Sullivan.
Perry's camp also reiterrates his record of inclusion of all races and backgrounds when appointing positions in his own state including, "Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, his former chief of staff and general counsels, university regents, parks and wildlife commissioner."

In any case, just as this article says, this is an extremely uncomfortable topic for Perry and his camp and it would be in his best interest to try and sweep over it as quickly as possibly. With two other African American candidates in the race a story like this may have just completely eliminated any chance of Perry winning the African American vote, or that of any other minority for that matter.