ISBL Asshat of the Week: It's A Tie ... Georgia Republicans, Tommy Benton and David Ralston

Tommy Benton, a Republican … of course … state representative from Georgia has called efforts to remove the Confederate flag from public places "cultural terrorism," and he wants to stop it, at least in Georgia, and so he’s filed two bills to protect the memory of the Confederacy: 

House Resolution 1179 amends the state constitution to protect the images of the “heroes of the Confederate States of America" and demands the images of Confederate leaders at Stone Mountain "shall never been altered, removed, concealed or obscured in any fashion and shall be preserved and protected for all time as a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the citizens of this state who suffered and died in their cause.”

House Bill 855 would make Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday “public and legal holidays” in Georgia.

Seriously.

Benton went off the deep end shortly after calls for removing the Confederate flag from public places rang throughout the South after that church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina last year, and has compared the idea to ISIS:

“That’s no better than what ISIS is doing, destroying museums and monuments. I feel very strongly about this. I think it has gone far enough. There is some idea out there that certain parts of history out there don’t matter anymore and that’s a bunch of bunk.”

Oh, and Tommy Benton wants y’all to know that he understands African Americans "have a problem with the slavery issue" but he thinks that's just because they haven't been taught the correct history of the Civil War. He also holds fond memories of the Ku Klux Klan, which he sees more as a civic improvement organization than a terror group:

“[The KKK] was not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing, to keep law and order. [They] made a lot of people straighten up.”. 

Uh huh.

Luckily a group of Georgians, Better Georgia, who don’t have their heads in their nether regions, are asking voters to sign a petition asking that House Speaker David Ralston punish Tommy Benton:

"Speaker Ralston: We urge you to denounce Rep. Tommy Benton’s defense of the Ku Klux Klan; block Rep. Benton’s neo-Confederate bills; and remove him from his role as Chair of the Human Relations & Aging committee. Benton’s defense of the KKK and his backwards views on slavery make it clear that he does not represent the people of Georgia.”

So far, Speaker Ralston has been silent on Benton's antics, so maybe we do a two-fer on asshattery …

David Ralston [right] is the ISBL Asshat of the Week for his silence ...

Tommy Benton [left] is the ISBL Asshat of the Week for trying to justify racism and hatred …

NCRM