Virginia's Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, a.k.a., "Coonman," has been exonerated by the Washington Post's editorial page, ten months after they called on him to resign. Back then, he was being blasted for his medical school yearbook page, which featured a photo of two figures, one wearing minstrelly blackface getup, and the other in a full hooded Ku Klux Klan costume. We still don't know which one Northam was in that picture, he has yet to say, nor has he let us in on who his pal was, nor even told us where on earth he managed to get hold of a Klan suit.

It's now a-O.K., according to the Post's editorial page, they've issued their absolution, he's free to go about the state now, he has their imprimatur, which is kind of disgusting.

Here's the gag-inducing exoneration:

THE HISTORY of U.S. politics is full of second chances — of scandal-scarred, disgraced and irredeemable public figures staging improbable comebacks — but few back-from-the-dead narratives have been as swift and sure-footed as the one Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has managed this year.

Since Feb. 1, when the discovery of a racist photo on his medical school yearbook page dealt what seemed a lethal blow to his political career, Mr. Northam has refocused his governorship on racial equity and reconciliation in what amounted to an extended act of public contrition and atonement. It has been astonishingly effective not just in terms of his own political rehabilitation — his poll numbers climbed from the depths — but also in setting a clear theme for his four-year term in office, delimited by Virginia’s prohibition on governors succeeding themselves.

In the process, Mr. Northam, a Democrat, persuaded many Virginians to allow him a season of penitence. Not least among them are African Americans who were stunned when the governor first admitted, then denied, appearing in the photo in which one figure is in blackface and another is in a Ku Klux Klan costume, while adding that he did don blackface, appearing as Michael Jackson at a dance contest, the same year the yearbook was published.

Back in February, they were writing stuff like this:

GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D) can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia who elected him. His shifting and credulity-shredding explanations for the racist photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and the silence into which he then succumbed for days — after initially promising to do “the hard work” of atonement and apology to restore his standing with Virginians — is simply too much.

 Which is quite a contrast. 

What could be behind this farcical turnaround from a politically correct organ like the Post? I'll venture three guesses:

One, Northam has swung to the political far-left and with a leftist legislature, embraced a far left agenda, particularly the business of gun grabs and deplorables control, reportedly hiring more jailers to prepare for his gun grabs on the deplorables out in the hinterlands. That's got to please the hearts of the Post. Those aren't the only leftwing things he's done, but that business stands out. The Post's talk about Northam being all in for racial reconciliation is by contrast mere cake frosting. Northam's gone full left and that warms the cockles of the Post's heart.

Two, wearing blackface (like sex harassment) is turning out to be a pretty common thing among leftists. The prime minister of Canada repeatedly did it. The two leftists below Northam in rank in Virginia had sex-harassing and blackface histories of their own. Multiple other leftists have been caught doing it, These outrages are leftist phenomena, you don't see many righties involved in either of them, they illustrate that leftists view themselves as above the rules, even the social rules.

Three, the howls for resignation were typical leftist efforts to virtue-signal, to claim one wouldn't dream of doing such things oneself, when in fact, lefties do this stuff all the time. The WaPo wouldn't dream of supporting a racist, because they are so very very politically correct and above reproach. They also notice that black audiences kind of have an iron stomach for this sort of stuff, given that they didn't say much about Northam, and they also tolerate an amazing amount of racist statements from Joe Biden. The howls for Northam's resignation were a bid by whites to distance themselves from Northam's behavior, to virtue-signal their purity to black people to prove that they're nothing like Northam. When Northam refused to resign, and black people seemed to tolerate the Northam past, the WaPo decided to dispense with the rules instead.

Now they're exonerating the guy, something they'd never do if Northam were a Republican. Can you imagine if President Trump were the miscreant? Not a chance in hell they'd exonerate him, despite his record-high job creation for black people, something that goes well beyond the symbolic acts to atone by Northam. Call it hypocrisy piled on top of hypocrisy. Is the WaPo going to look before it leaps next time? Only if the next miscreant is a Democrat. It's always O.K. if the Democrat does it. Maybe they should take a good look at their standards instead.

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