Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 19, 1993 TAG: 9303190112
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Staff and wire report
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GAYS WANT APOLOGY FOR GOP-ROAST JOKES
Oliver North, the Iran-Contra figure who is exploring a 1994 U.S. Senate race, feigned a lisp to joke about homosexuals in the military at a Republican fund-raising dinner last week, prompting gay leaders to demand apologies.Amid gasps of surprise and uncomfortable groans from some in the audience, North joined a GOP state senator and a prominent campaign consultant in tossing barbs at President Clinton's plan to open the military to gays.
The former Marine joked that he recently was unsuccessful in trying to reach the president by telephone.
"Then I disguised my voice," he said. He then adopted an exaggerated lisp and said, "Excuse me," as if to a switchboard operator, and said his call went through.
Through a spokesman, North refused Thursday to apologize for the remark.
Alicia Herr, a lesbian activist who publishes "Our Own" newspaper in Hampton Roads, denounced North's joke as `insensitive and ignorant."
"It just speaks volumes about his personality," she said. "When you scratch through the surface of a racist, a sexist or a homophobe, you find they're all made of the same insensitivity."
North's joke apparently was typical of the revelry at the dinner, which honored former U.S. Rep. Stan Parris, who is considering a political comeback.
State Sen. Warren Barry, R-Fairfax, another of the evening's speakers, called Clinton's plan the "fags in the foxhole" proposal; and the county GOP chairman, Patrick Mullins, said it gave new meaning to the military warning "watch your rear flank."
Charles Black, a political consultant and former chairman of the national party, said Clinton wanted the Marine Corps hymn to include the lyrics, "Don we now our gay apparel."
Barry, who is white, also referred to the 14th Street bridge linking Northern Virginia with the majority-black District of Columbia as the "Soul Brothers" Causeway." The remark recalled an infamous statement by Parris in the 1970s that the bridge was the longest in the world because it connected Virginia to Africa.
One political analyst said the remarks fueled the perception, encouraged by last year's Republican National Convention, that the party is intolerant of minorities.
"These are the kinds of examples that, in fact, can help create the image that Republicans are losing ground now and losing touch," said W. Avon Drake, head of the African American Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Some of the speakers said the roast was supposed to be funny, and none offered an apology. They said they were picking on Clinton just as comedians such as Jay Leno and David Letterman have done.
"Anybody who's trying to take a roast - an evening when people are assigned to make humorous or nonserious statements - to try to stretch that into a political interpretation is really reaching," Black said. "It's meant to be humor. It's not meant to be attacks on anybody."
The Fairfax County branch of the NAACP called on Barry to apologize for the bridge joke. And Paul Goldman, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said the speakers' refusals to apologize for "using such crude and base appeals to prejudice demonstrates a mindset that will be troubling to all thinking Virginians."
Mark Merritt, a spokesman for North, said his boss' joke had been blown out of proportion. "He was only poking fun at the Clinton administration . . . to read anything else in it is ridiculous," Merritt said.
Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the remarks will not automatically hurt North should he run for Senate next year. "If he plans to debate the merits of allowing gays in the military, it could help him," Holsworth said. "But if he appears intolerant, the issue will cut against him."
Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said North's comments quickly will be forgotten. "While some of the jokes were out of bounds, it's also true that a roast permits a certain license for humor," he said.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.