Candy Carson and Benjamin Carson (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

I’ve tried very, very, very hard over these past few years, but I just can’t muster much anger toward Ben Carson for the ridiculous and dangerous things he says. Perhaps because he carries himself like a man who goes to Home Depot for the ambience and spends his days saying things like, “I have a wide foot, so I usually go up an extra shoe size to accommodate my disproportionately wide feet” and “Candy, did you take the mulch out of the trunk? Because I can’t find the mulch. I never know where the mulch is.” And when he speaks, all I can think about is pot roast, peas and adult pajamas.


And maybe that’s his trick. Maybe everything he’s done since becoming a political figure—encouraging his wife (whose voice exists somewhere between “bless her heart” and “hold my beer”) to sing the national anthem, allowing the world to see that he possesses a painting of him and Black Klingon Jesus hanging out in a YMCA sauna, refusing to open his eyes in public, etc.—is an intentional ruse to get our guards down, allowing the bizarre and stupid and patently false things he says to slide.

Like, for instance, his Facebook post Wednesday responding to President Trump’s response to Charlottesville:

Regarding all of the racial and political strife emanating from the events in Charlottesville last weekend, let me relate a story. Several years ago we bought a farm in rural Maryland. One of the neighbors immediately put up a Confederate flag. A friend of ours who is an African-American three-star general was coming to visit and immediately turned around concluding that he was in the wrong place. Interestingly, all the other neighbors immediately put up American flags shaming the other neighbor who took down the Confederate flag. More recently our home in Virginia along with that of a neighbor was vandalized by people who also wrote hateful rhetoric about President Trump. We were out of town, but other kind, embarrassed neighbors cleaned up most of the mess before we returned. In both instances, less than kind behavior was met by people taking the high road. We could all learn from these examples. Hatred and bigotry unfortunately still exists in our country and we must all continue to fight it, but let’s use the right tools. By the way, that neighbor who put up the Confederate flag subsequently became friendly. That is the likely outcome if we just learn to be neighborly and to get to know each other.


Just think about 1) how terrible this fucking story is and 2) how delusional Narcoleptic Shaft must be to think that it’s inspiring or engaging or uplifting or anything other than proof that this nigga needs to move. His neighbor put up a gotdamn Confederate flag—America’s most unambiguous symbol of hate—and Carson’s response was that you beat racism by throwing American flags at it. This is not a man who needs to be holding public office. Or private office. Or even needs to be in any building that contains an office. Please, someone find a La-Z-Boy, strap him to it, place a bowl of pretzels in front of him and make him watch a Burn Notice marathon until he forgets that he has a job.