Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240250
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
NORTH APOLOGIZES FOR TELLING GAY JOKE
Oliver North said he was sorry if a joke he told at a recent GOP event offended some homosexuals, but was even sorrier that his remarks gave the media ammunition against him.At a March 12 roast honoring former Rep. Stan Parris, North joked that he had trouble getting through to the White House until he used an exaggerated lisp to tell the operator, "Excuse me . . .
"That remark was a serious mistake on my part," North, a possible Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, told a Henrico County audience Monday night.
"Not because of its intended target . . . the Clinton administration, which for some reason does not appear open to calls from anything but special-interest groups. . . . It allowed The Washington Post and the assembled media, for the next four days, to make of me personally - [and] the conservative Republicans I was with, generally - less than what I know us to be."
The former Marine lieutenant colonel said that if anyone was personally hurt by the joke, then it was wrong for him to have told it.
State Sen. Warren Barry of Fairfax County also has apologized for remarks he made at the gathering.
"The jokes made that evening were not meant to attack individuals, nor were they intended to come across as being intolerant of blacks or gays," Barry said.
At the roast, Barry called President Clinton's plan to lift the ban on gays in the military as the "fags in the foxhole" proposal. He also said Parris once tried to rename the 14th Street Bridge between Virginia and Washington, D.C., the "Soul Brothers Causeway."
Barry said the media blew his comments out of proportion.
Critics say they weren't sure that Barry was truly sorry for the comments.
"I'm still not convinced that he understands that what he did and said was wrong," said the Rev. Kenny Smith, president of the Fairfax chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who attended the roast, said in a statement that the remarks were "clearly out of line."
In a letter sent Monday to Linda Byrd-Harden, executive director of the state NAACP, GOP state party Chairman Patrick McSweeney said: "We, as Republican leaders in the General Assembly and of our state party, will continue to exhort everyone speaking for a Republican entity not to make statements that are insensitive or in poor taste. Common courtesy demands no less. . . .
"Simple common sense also demands that we do everything possible to make all people feel comfortable in our midst."