Not kidding. Obama is now embracing a guy who beats up women. And not just a guy who beat up a woman once (as if that would be okay). No, the guy Obama is using in Nevada, Floyd Mayweather Jr., has repeatedly beaten up women for years.
In 2004, Mayweather was convicted on two counts of battery for punching two women at a Las Vegas nightclub the previous year. He was given suspended prison sentences, $1,000 in fines and ordered to complete impulse control counseling.
Mayweather in 2002 pleaded guilty to two counts of domestic violence in one case and battery in another. In 2005, a jury acquitted him of a third domestic violence charge, a felony, after his accuser changed her story. He reportedly was convicted of battery in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich., and he has also been the subject of civil lawsuits accusing him of battery.
An Obama spokesman called the guy's wife-beating "mistakes." (The campaign is now trying to downplay this guy's role, he's "just a supporter" - well, he was the title and subject of a press release they sent our earlier this week, so he's clearly not just some supporter like your or me.) Mistakes? Yeah, I'd say. And he keeps making em. But Obama's spokesman says the guy has paid for his mistakes, so it's okay for them to use his as one of their mascots. But just to be sure, did Obama's spokesman mean the guy had paid for his 2002 two counts of domestic violence and battery, did she mean his two counts of battery in 2004 when he punched two women, did she mean the reports of his battery conviction back home in Michigan, or the various civil lawsuits? It's so hard to keep track with these Obama celebrities - if they're not beating the crap out of women, they're busy trying to eradicate the world of gay people.
Yes, never a dull moment in Obama-land.
On a more serious, it's one thing to want to win so bad you can taste it. It's another to want to win so bad that you tolerate gay-bashing and wife-beating simply because the guy is famous. At some point the real Barack Obama needs to show his face, or there are going to be very few reasons left to vote for this man now or in the future.
CORRECTION: A few friends alerted me to the fact that one of the sentences in my closing paragraph sounded as if I was implying that there was a wife-beater constituency in the black community (or elsewhere). I don't think any such thing, have never heard of such a thing, certainly didn't intend to imply it, and I apologize for giving that impression. Rather than rework the sentence, I deleted it outright to avoid even the appearance of such a suggestion. What I was trying to say, and I think the rest of the paragraph explains clearly enough, is that there's a growing pattern of Obama embracing celebrities that are just downright nasty people, and worse, once he finds out how nasty they are, he continues to embrace them because they're celebrities and can help him reach their fans. And I think that stinks.
