Well, the oppo research had to pay off eventually. Once Mayor Pete Buttigieg began rising in the polls and even taking the lead in some early states, people were obviously going to be digging harder to find some dirt on him. That showed up this week when Out Magazine revealed some disturbing pictures of him clearly showing that he was involved with a very questionable organization in the past.
So what was so horrible? Did he belong to some sort of white supremacist or neo-Nazi organization? (Wait… do they even accept gay members?) Perhaps a confederate reenactment society? No, it’s even worse than that. Pete Buttigieg regularly participated in events put on by… the Salvation Army.
Yes, yes… you’re shocked. I know. So am I. Who could have imagined? But it’s true. Mayor Pete was seen out in public dressed in Salvation Army garb and ringing a bell in front of a kettle full of cash donations. (Washington Times)
Pete Buttigieg has been outed — as someone who has worked with the Salvation Army.
According to a report Tuesday in Out magazine, the South Bend mayor has several times participated in Red Kettle Ring Off for the Christmas season in the Indiana city.
Out linked to reports of the annual charity in local South Bend media from 2015 and 2017, and at least one other photo from 2016 surfaced on Twitter. In 2018, he held the annual Mayor’s Night Out — an open-listening event to let residents quiz city officials — at a Salvation Army community center.
It used to be that you had to have pictures of yourself in blackface surface before your political career was in trouble. (Checks notes and looks to see who is still the Governor of Virginia. Okay… I guess that’s not the best example.) But ringing a bell and collecting donations for the Salvation Army is clearly a bridge too far.
What’s even worse, as you’ll see in the tweeted picture below, is that he was doing the volunteer schtick standing alongside an African-American volunteer dressed the same way.
Lol fuckin dumbass pic.twitter.com/k7LkGbEpDz
— DJ ACCIDENT REPORT (@eric_shorey) December 3, 2019
The Out Magazine article described the Salvation army as being characterized by “decades of persecution and intolerance justified by religion.”
Even famously homophobic chicken peddlers Chick-fil-A recently severed its relationship with the Salvation Army, and when you’re gay and less sensitive about anti-queerness than Chick-fil-A, that’s pretty bleak.
Maybe Pete Buttigieg should have supported an organization that was created to cater to the needs of queer people — there’s plenty of them!
So I guess that’s about it for Pete, eh? His support with Black primary voters remains firmly fixed at right about zero. And now he’s taking fire from the gay community. Can he win the nomination and the general election with only the support of straight white Democrats? Hey, wait a minute… isn’t that pretty much what Hillary tried to do?
We’ll close with one more less-than-charitable contribution from the gay Twitter community. What do you call the gay equivalent of an Uncle Tom? It’s apparently a subject of heated debate.
https://twitter.com/RiderOfKarma/status/1201946458531995649
