Ugh! "But he was making those types of references is what I remember."

Oh, dear. This is so inconsequential and yet it seems a representation of the national dialogue. An inverse morality tale. In the sense that both parties appear kind of repugnant to ordinary people, and bad actors. I saw this story blossoming over the past couple of days and wanted to ignore it but there is something socially fundamental that seems to make it like cognitive corn stuck between the neural teeth.

Georgia State Rep. Erica Thomas, who represents District 39 in the Georgia House, and Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus, puts out a video with a series of racially charged claims about how she was treated in a local Publix by a white male in the store. Her claim was that this occurred in response to her taking a place in the ten-items or less express checkout even though she had more than ten items (fifteen according to her and twenty according to him.) It came down to a white man telling her to go back where she came from, clearly riffing off of last weeks controversy. After the confrontation, she immediately made an emotional and charged video relaying her representation of what had happened and posted it to Facebook.

State Rep. Erica Thomas, who represents District 39, recorded an emotional Facebook Live video detailing what she says happened at a Publix in Mableton on Friday.

Thomas said she was waiting in the express lane with her daughter when a man became angry over the number of items she had.

"This white man comes up to me and says, 'You lazy son of [expletive]. You need to go back where you came from,'" the lawmaker said in her Facebook video. "Sir, you don't even know me. I'm not lazy. I'm nine months pregnant."

Thomas did not record the incident on her phone, but Channel 2's Chris Jose was told there is surveillance video and police are investigating. Channel 2 Action News is working to get the surveillance video.

Of course, as intended, it went viral with virulent moral outrage.

But bearing out the constantly reinforced adage that you should wait 48 hours before being concerned about racial bigotry claims, this did not play according to the desired script.

The New York Times, bereft of editors or even of people with common sense, went immediately with ‘The Hate Is Real’: Black Georgia Lawmaker Says She Was Berated at Supermarket.

The local mainstream media, alert as ever to try and breath life into the fiction of a racially riven America, was on this like a duck on a June bug. Representative Thomas met with the media in front of the Publix where this racial outrage occurred.

And then, with the cameras rolling, things went sideways.

On Saturday afternoon, Channel 2's Christian Jennings went to interview Thomas about the incident. While she was there, the man Thomas accused of verbally attacking her, Eric Sparkes, also showed up outside the Publix.

Thomas and Sparkes got into a second heated conversation as news cameras rolled.

Sparkes claims he never said anything racist, although he did admit to cursing at Thomas for having too many items in the express checkout lane.

"I'm a liar about what?" Thomas asked Sparkes.

"Everything that happened," Sparkes said. "Me telling you to 'Go back where you came from. Did I say that? Is it on video?"

"Are you serious? What did you say to me then," Thomas asked.

"I called you a lazy (expletive)," Sparkes said to Thomas. "That's the worst thing I said."

"Yeah, that makes you look better to say that," Thomas said.

And then it went fifth-dimensionways.

Sparkes told Jennings he is a Democrat and of Cuban nationality and claimed Thomas was just accusing him to help her political career.

"This woman is playing the victim for political purposes because she is a state legislator," Sparkes said. "I'm a Democrat and will vote Democrat for the rest of my life, so call me whatever you want to believe. For her political purposes, make it black, white, brown, whatever. It is untrue."

And then into ever higher dimensions.

When Jennings talked to Thomas after the confrontation, she tried to clarify if Sparkes really told Thomas to "go back where you came from."

"I don't want to say he said, 'Go back to your country,' or 'Go back to where you came from,'" Thomas said. "But he was making those types of references is what I remember."

So she made it all up.

Sparkes has a long twitter history of his boisterous enthusiasm for the Democratic Party, which appears beyond question. Apparently as is his Cuban heritage.

It is a little hard to keep track of the many levels of intersectional outrage and victimhood going on here. And the rest of normal America are looking on and thinking "They deserve each other." If you do not subscribe to postmodernist intersectional social justice, this just looks like idiot children calling each other names.

On the Erica Thomas side you have the privilege of being a State Representative, African-American, Pregnant (though in fairness to Sparkes, hers is not a figure that makes it obvious she is pregnant), size (she is materially taller and larger than Sparkes), and perhaps motherhood.

For Eric Sparkes you have the privilege of Hispanic, steadfast party loyalty, emigre status, and the fact that Thomas clearly violated social norms by taking advantage of the express check-out when she did not qualify.

So who wins the victimhood sweepstakes? Who cares?

Erica Thomas seems clearly in the wrong. She appears to have made racial assumptions (assuming an Hispanic emigre was a white man) based solely on his skin color. She clearly was violating the social norm of sticking by the rules for checkout lanes. Worse, she appears to have attempted to fan racial division by blowing a minor public spat into something it was not. It is repellant that when she discovers there are store videos of the confrontation she starts walking back her version. She appears to have deliberately lied.

Nobody likes a rule-breaking, grifting, line-cutting, lying, cry-bully. They especially don't like it when it is a government official interacting with an ordinary citizen.

On the other hand, Sparkes. Most normal people roll their eyes at such norm breaking. Nobody likes it. Everyone complains about it, telling dramatized stories at home of the person who cut the line, cut you off in traffic, the bicyclist who blew through the red light, etc. Norm breakers are the free riders on everyone else, the lowest of the low without, usually, breaking the law. They take advantage of everyone else in order to make their own lives easier.

But to make a big scene out of a woman taking 20 items through the 10 item express line? You grin and bear it. Making a scene over it is also a violation of social norms.

It appears nobody did anything illegal here (unless Rep. Thomas's physical intimidation passed a minimum which it does not appear it did or whether her public conduct violated her role as a state representative.) Both parties behaved like middle school brats.

And all of us hard working, tax paying, family supporting, volunteering, church-going, community serving citizens look on in dismay. These are the people supposedly making legislative decisions and fueling political campaigns?

Ugh!

And the ironic cherry on this bitter dish? Erica Thomas is apparently a big fan of Jussie Smollett. Yet another Mandarin Class grifter who sought to fan racial divide through a hoax in order to serve his personal objectives.

And New York Times - quit falling for racial hoaxes.

UPDATE: This gets more and more twisted. From Witness in police report: State Rep. Erica Thomas told Eric Sparkes, ‘Go back where you came from’ in the AJC.

A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state Rep. Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn’t hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report.

A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas “continuously tell Eric Sparkes to ‘Go back where you came from!’” but did not hear Sparkes utter those words to Thomas.

[snip]

A Publix surveillance video of the incident released Wednesday showed a confrontation that lasted roughly 45 seconds. It did not include audio, so it provided no conclusive evidence of what was said, but it showed Sparkes walk up to Thomas as she was checking out in the express lane and apparently point to the sign. He quickly retreated as Thomas responded and took a step in his direction. She then followed him a few more steps as he walked away, pointing a finger at him.

The officer who reviewed the tape wrote that Sparkes “did not appear to be irate” or to have approached her with “clenched fists,” as Thomas asserted to the officer. He also wrote that Thomas’ 9-year-old daughter was seen “smiling shortly after.”

So nothing in her account appears to have been true.

Initially this looked like perhaps Thomas was simply trying to get some limelight with yet another race-hoax.

I wonder now whether she quickly realized her behavior had been damagingly inappropriate and her own facebook post was an attempt to get in front of a bad story. A bad decision, incompetently executed but perhaps the most rational explanation for an otherwise inexplicable course of action. Or, as always, a noxious stew of privilege, incompetence, and ignorance.

And as Matt Whitlock points out in this thread, there is the peculiar irony of Thomas wearing a garish neon pink Planned Parenthood t-shirt while nine months pregnant. This multi-dimensional oddity of bad behaviors is making my brain hurt.

Now an eyewitness says Erica Thomas was the one who said "go back where you came from" after going viral saying a man had said that to her.

You can't make this stuff up.

Curious how the Dem Presidential candidates will respond to this twist.https://t.co/Jm1QU0dncu pic.twitter.com/77Z0MrAiyM

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) July 24, 2019

Click for thread.