A tarbaby is not a black person. It's a little "baby" looking creature made out of tar, and yes, tar happens to be black. But the story is that people passing by this little creature would get mad at it for not talking to them, and start punching it, and of course their hands and feet would stick to the tar and they'd be unable to get loose.
Up until probably 20 years ago, everyone would have known exactly what a tarbaby was - no racial connotation at all - and very few people would have known what a quagmire was. After all, this is the American education system we're talking about.
Now, 20 years later, the only thing anyone knows about "tarbaby" is that it features something that's black and a baby, so obviously it's got to be racist. And I bet most people still don't know what a quagmire is.
Anyway, Doug Lanborn didn't tell people to get a grip, a couple of weeks ago, when he was criticized for comparing Obama to a tar baby (not calling him a tar baby, comparing him to one). Instead he accepted the blame and the guilt and said yeah, he should have said "Quagmire" instead of "tarbaby."
I do wish people would stop apologizing for these types of things, and stand up for themselves when they clearly didn't mean to give offense and never thought what they were referring to could give offense. (For example, what politician now will dare to call our economy a "black hole" now, although that's exactly what it is, John Wiley Price not withstanding.)
Republican Congressman Apologizes For Calling President Obama A ‘Tar Baby’
August 2nd, 2011
Somewhere in the formidable daily pile of snail mail to the White House today, President Obama received an apology from a Republican Congressman– and no, it had nothing to do with the debt ceiling debate. Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn excused himself in writing today for comments on a Colorado AM radio show where he said he was afraid of associating with the President because he was a “tar baby.” He claims it’s not what it sounds like.
Rep. Lamborn was, in fact, talking about the economy on AM 630 [update this post originally stated the clip was from David Sirota on AM 730, as he uploaded the clip to his site and was the first to criticize the interview-- but it is from Colorado's AM 630] and arguing that to be associated with the President would do harm to any politicians image. He used an unfortunate idiom to call the President a pariah:
“Even if some people say, ‘Well, the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t want to even have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get, you get it, you know, you get in and you are stuck and you are part of the problem now and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people. Look at the economic numbers.”
According to CNN, Rep. Lamborn’s office has released a statement saying the Congressman has sent a letter to the White House apologizing for the epithet and explaining why he used it. “Lamborn was attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the President’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces,” the statement notes, and that while the Congressman regrets the choice of words, he is “confident” the President will accept the apology. He notes he should have used the term “quagmire” instead of “tar baby,” which is a bit of a grammatical stretch, but an improvement.
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