Video After The Jump
Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn is catching flack for likening President Obama to a "tar baby" during a radio interview Friday, while discussing his budget policies.
"Even if some people say, well, the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that, they will hold the president responsible," Lamborn said during the interview. "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 are stuck and you are part of the problem now, and you can't get away,"
Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines the term as "something from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself." But within the African American community, it is widely viewed as offensive racist slang used by whites to describe people of color.
Lamborn has since issued an apology.
"When I said 'tar baby' I was talking about the economic quagmire that our country is finding ourselves in because of poor economic policy from the White House, but I could have used a better term," Lamborn told News13.
Despite the apology, many are still upset that the term was used at all.
Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP, told the Colorado Springs Gazette that Lamborn should have known better.
"The world already views (El Paso County) as ultra conservative, ultra right wing, Tea-Party-loving, gay bashing, an epicenter of hate. With two vitriolic words, our own Congressman again sealed our fate," she said.
Diane Allen-Philips, president of the Urban League of the Pikes Peak Region, was equally critical of the Congressman.
"I don’t think you can just toss that phrase out and not have it associated with the past," said Allen-Philips. "If Barack Obama was not African American, would he have used the same terminology?"
This isn't the first time a Republican has had to apologize for using the term.
In 2007, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney used it to describe a construction site in Boston.
And in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also used the term while discussing divorces.
Do you buy Lamborn's excuse that he didn't mean it in a derogatory way?
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