that doesn t represent him. less than 24 hours later, he denied that he was even in the photo at all while admitting he went to a party in blackface as michael jackson and nearly demonstrating his moonwalking, until his wife told him that it was inappropriate. are you still able to moonwalk? uh inappropriate circumstances. my wife says inappropriate circumstances. yup. you know what s inappropriate? blackface. inappropriate, period. and the governor is not the only one under fire for this. he s not even the only one in virginia. the number three official in that state, attorney general mark herring, says that he put on blackface too for a party in 1980 when he and some friends
were publicly revealed. and this is the one chris and i were talking about. this is a photo take a look at it florida state representative anthony sabatini with his face blackened in what he says was a high school prank. he and one of his best friends dressing as each other. the representative s high school friend, who is black, agreed to that, telling the orlando sentinel, quote, every year at high school homecoming week, we had things like 80s days and celebrity days, and we said, i m going to be you, and you re going to be me. i don t know how it got to be seen as racial. that s all it was. he told cnn, quote, i ve known anthony all my life. even after high school, me and anthony still keep in contact. anthony wasn t that kind of guy. asked by the orlando sentinel if he would consider dressing in blackface again, representative sabatini said, quote, are you joking? of course not.
here s the important part that didn t happen in virginia. voters had the chance to see it. they heard sabatini s explanation, and they voted for him anyway. he won his race. that s different than virginia. voters didn t have that choice with the governor. but the fact is, blackface is a problem, even if it s a high school prank, even if you and your friends agree that it s funny. i m going to speak a little bit later on in the show to a prominent historian who will help me explain exactly why to everyone. you want to watch that. and while blackface is the problem for the number one and the number three official in virginia, there s another scandal facing another top official. this is the number two person. this is the lieutenant governor, justin fairfax, denying an allegation of sexual assault. vanessa tyson, a fellow at stanford university and associate professor at scripps college went public today issuing a statement describing
how many others are out there, elected or otherwise, that have this in their past? i ve said there are a lot of people out there who are like, oh, i hope they don t find that photo of me. well, i think you re going to find a lot more people that have this issue, no question about it. i think it s going to come out because it was going on in colleges when we were in school as well as today. i mean, incidents we keep hearing about incidents over the last decade about slave auctions, about people dressing up in blackface on these college campuses. and so because it was so pervasive, because you had, you know, hollywood musicals, even bugs bunny was embracing blackface in his cartoons. so you ve had people growing up with this stuff, and they continue to do it. it s not funny. it s damaging. it s harmful. but it embraces this notion of white supremacy and of black inferiority. yeah. it s problematic, and people need to stand up against it.
but then here comes the big question for me, brother don. what is the right level of zero tolerance? i know that that s oxymoronic. but i m saying how far do the democrats go in insisting that certain things trigger the death sentence politically? there s no one answer for that. you have to look at every case. every case. every case because it s different. i think there s do you think herring has to go, the a.g.? no. i think there s a difference between dressing up like a friend and being silly. that s the republican guy in florida. it s bad. you got to keep your blackface guys straight. if you re going to be michael jackson or a basketball player or whatever you re going to do. and i think the extreme is the kkk costume and blackface in the way that was portrayed by northam. so northam s got to go. herring doesn t have to go, the a.g.? i think it depends on how you respond to it. responding is also important. he gave a lousy response. i had his friend on the