Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s aides want him to read his way out of trouble.

If you can believe it, the aides' strategy for helping him survive his "blackface scandal" involves assigned reading, including Alex Haley's book Roots and an essay written by the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, according to BuzzFeed News.

It’s the whitest solution to a blackface problem that only the whitest of whites could have devised.

Northam stands credibly accused of having once attended a party in the mid-1980s dressed either in blackface or Ku Klux Klan regalia, according to an old yearbook uncovered first by the right-wing news site Big League Politics.

At first the governor apologized for the yearbook photo. Then he backtracked, after his apology failed to kill the controversy, by denying any involvement in the photo. Northam then held a press conference wherein he maintained he couldn’t possibly be the man in blackface because he “vividly” remembers looking different the one time he dressed in blackface to impersonate Michael Jackson for a dance competition.

So his defense for wearing blackface was that it was a different sort of blackface.

This all really happened, even the part where Northam nearly “moonwalked” for reporters.

Suffice it to say, the governor has had a rough go of it, looking like both a supremely incompetent fool and a baby boomer racist. He has refused his own party's many calls for his resignation, and he has even floated the idea of becoming an independent just so he can stay in office. But if you thought this couldn’t get any more ridiculous, the governor’s staff is here to disabuse you of that notion. Via BuzzFeed News:



His office has begun to explore how it might recalibrate Northam’s legislative agenda to focus closely on race and equity … The move would mark a brazen attempt to hang onto his office by shifting the conversation away from Northam’s admission of having once worn blackface and his denials that he is featured in the racist yearbook photo, either as the person in blackface or the person in a Klan outfit. Northam’s policy team is looking at crafting a set of proposals based on the premise that the governor’s mistakes have rendered him keenly aware of inequity and the lack of justice faced by black Virginians 400 years after the first African people arrived in the Commonwealth, at Point Comfort, in 1619.



The centerpiece proposal is not complete in its scope or in terms of what it will seek to accomplish. But there are many possibilities being considered for a broad platform: increasing resources for affordable housing; setting new, more equitable standards in small business procurement; implementing programs that expand economic opportunity for entrepreneurs; pumping money into public services like education and transportation.



Then comes the really embarrassing detail [emphasis added]:



Northam doesn’t plan to hold any more press conferences any time soon. Advisers are in the midst of negotiations with major networks for a nationally televised interview they hope will humanize him. Additionally, his advisers have assigned the governor homework: He’s begun to read Alex Haley’s “Roots”, and “The Case for Reparations,” the seminal essay in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.



This is like something lifted directly from a “South Park” episode. Northam should just pay an indulgence to Jesse Jackson and get it over with already. This also seems like the lazy man’s way of familiarizing oneself with the black community. (“Isn’t there a book I can just read?")

The amazing thing is: There's no way that we've hit rock bottom with what's happening now in Virginia. It surely will get worse or weirder from here.