Yeah, Mr Blunt — your values are being challenged. Not the values you think are being challenged by America’s desire to get the rapacious health insurance industry off our backs. Not the values you think are being challenged by America’s desire to help the least among us, the destitute, the halt, the lame, the sick, the young, the old. Not even the values you think are being challenged by Americans wanting to live in a cleaner world, a safer world where our nation is respected by its allies and understood by its enemies, a predictable, sane America that operates on the world stage rationally and clearly.

No, Mr Blunt, if I may be blunt also: The values America challenged last November, and the values Americans continue to challenge every day, are the values that allow the GOP’s number-two man in the US House of Representatives and its candidate for Senate from Missouri to start a sentence in a speech with the word: "Monkeys…." and get an approving reaction from Values Voters. Just enough laughter, just enough approval from this friendly audience to let you know they encourage anything you might have to say about monkeys in the current political climate.

Do go on, sir.

The values Americans are challenging are the values that prompt you to say, with a twinkle in your eye as you build to the conclusion of your "joke" about the difficulty English golfers had in India with monkeys: "I could go into great and long detail about how many things they did to try to eliminate the monkey problem but they never got it done."

Americans do indeed challenge your values, Congressman Blunt. We challenge the values that permit you to say, to roars of approval from the audience, "You have to play the ball where the monkey throws it." No gasps of horror, no sharp intakes of breath, no boos or hisses from this audience of American Values Voters, and that’s what the rest of America challenges, sir. That you can laugh and then say, "And that is the rule in Washington all the time, you know."

The value you hold, Mr Blunt, that the rest of America challenges? That value is called stone-cold racism, sir. You, sir, are a stone-cold racist, and Americans challenge that. And if that makes you uncomfortable and more likely to tell stories about how the rule in Washington is all about playing the ball where the monkey throws it, then probably you will always be able to find some Americans masquerading as "values voters" who will applaud your monkey-in-Washington jokes.

But thankfully for our nation, your audience is dwindling. And the rest of us will just shake our heads in sorrow as we watch you fling your poo. Because while you may think jokes about monkeys throwing balls on golf courses are slick dog-whistles that go over the head of the liberal coastal elites, the rest of America gets that shit, sir.

America doesn’t want to be the country that laughs at that joke. Americans don’t want to be people who laugh at that joke.

There’s nothing funny about it now that there’s a black man in the White House — and there was nothing even remotely funny about it before a black man was in the White House. Telling it would have made no sense until January 20th of this year, and now that you’re telling it? We know what you are.

And the values of those voters who laughed the moment you said "Monkeys…" and continued to express their approval of your joke? America challenges those values, we reject those values, we condemn those values.

Vote those values if you choose to, Tony Perkins’ Values Voters. But know this: you are a dwindling minority in an America that chooses other, better, stronger values.


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