Hey, Wicker and Bryant: Cindy Hyde-Smith's words aren't the media's fault

Mary Ramsey | The Clarion-Ledger

While speaking at a recent event in Tupelo, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith dropped a saying I’ve never heard in nearly five decades of being a Southerner. After cattle rancher Colin Hutchinson praised her, she joked, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row.” I checked "The A-Z book of Hokey Southern Colloquialisms" to see if it was in there. Nope, not in there.

Now I have heard:

That dog won’t hunt.

A hit dog’ll holler.

Raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock.

He's as happy as if he had good sense.

Well that just dills my pickle. (That may be dirty. If so, I apologize.)

It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

It’s blowin' up a storm.

She was madder than a wet hen.

He's one shingle shy of a roof!

He ain't got the good sense that God gave a goose!

He's as dumb as a box of rocks!

He could start an argument in an empty house.

He's about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

He's got more nerve than Carter has liver pills (probably only used around Dollywood and Cracker Barrels).

I'm finer than a frog hair split four ways!

He was so ugly as a child, his mama had to tie a pork chop around his neck to get the dog to play with him. (Wasn’t this a Rodney Dangerfield joke?)

He's so fat, it takes two dogs to bark at him!

If his lips's movin', he's lyin’.

You lie like a dog.

She could make a freight train take a dirt road.

He's happier than a dead pig in the field.

He couldn't find water if he fell out of a boat!

But I’ve never heard "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row.”

Is it a term of endearment? It’s kind of creepy if it is. I’ve seen people die and I know for certain I wouldn’t want to be on the front row at a public hanging. And public hangings are a part of history we don’t need to go back to. Ever. Especially here in Mississippi.

Lamar White Jr., publisher of Bayou Brief in Louisiana, posted the 10-second video clip on his Twitter Sunday morning of Hyde-Smith making her comment. That afternoon, I tweeted out it was a really, really dumb thing to say. And I still stand by that. Why? Hyde-Smith is running to represent the whole state of Mississippi. That quote hits a nerve. Particularly since Mississippi led the nation in lynching for about 100 years. I also mentioned she could stop by the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and realize why what she said could be interpreted badly.

The next day Hyde-Smith doubled down and said there was nothing negative about her comment. Then she said repeatedly, “I put out a statement yesterday. We stand by that statement and that’s all I’m going to say about it,” when asked about it. I think that’s a new colloquialism, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s like “He's got more nerve than Carter has liver pills asking me that question.”

I don’t know.

The bottom line is this: It was an unforced error. And I don’t care what Sen. Roger Wicker and Gov. Phil Bryant say, the media aren’t to blame. They just reported what she said. It wasn’t a conservative or liberal moment. She said something that left people scratching their heads and left others offended in light of a dark chapter of our state’s history. If she’s going to be a U.S. senator, she needs to be held accountable for what she says. She could’ve said, “I understand our state's history and how my words could be hurtful and apologize if I offended anyone. I look forward to representing the whole state of Mississippi as your senator.”

But she didn’t. And here we are — madder than a wet hen.