News flash: Virginia is an "Old South" state.

It's nickname is "Old Dominion" for a reason. Several of its most famous historical figures owned slaves and led Confederate forces. Hell, it was the seat of the Confederacy for a while.

I've lived here for a quarter century, now. "Northern Virginia" was a near pejorative for "real" Virginians when I first moved here.

I still remember how stark the difference between the 703 area code was from the rest of the state. It defined not just your dialing rates/locality but a noticable mind-set difference. Just beyond the 703, where you now find tech companies and  huge tractsA-friendly neighborhoods McMansions, you used to see farms and rustic stores Hawking souvenirs from "the War of Northern Aggression".

My point is, discovering that a politician that was born, raised and attended college in "Old South" Virginia before the 90s ever participated in black-face is utterly unsurprising. Not excusing it. Just pointing out some unfortunate reality. There's likely a lot of skeletons in the closets of a significant chunk of the Virginia state government's office-holders. It's likely to be another 15-20 years before that's no longer the case.

It's not just a Virginia thing, either. Hell, it's not even just a "South" problem. I grew up in what, as an adult, I refer to as Pennsyltucky. The vast majority of the state is/was rural ...and its main cities were never (on average) something you'd have confused for "cosmopolitan", "sophisticated" or particularly "progressive". I knew plenty of people my age that, even 20 years ago, would say things that might leave you gawping or scratching your head and wondering, "did you really just say that?" And if you were talking people a generation or two older than me? Fuuuuuck. I loved my grandmother dearly, but I don't have enough fingers to count the number of times she would use "the coloreds" or similar terminology in her speech. It wasn't meant in a particularly-racist way - it was normal for her generation and class - but would still leave me sometimes speechless.

I used to travel extensively, for work. I can tell you that Pennsylvania is not alone in this respect among Northern states.

So, yeah, the current news cycle about what's going on in Richmond is pretty fucking gross. However, as alluded to above, given the current composition of the elected body, summarily cashiering people who've had skeletons might not be the smartest thing. The replacements could easily be worse people. It's even likely that the people that dug those skeletons up have the same damned skeletons (that they think are burried a bit better than those of the recently-exposed) but also have something to gain by digging others' up.

I dunno. It sucks. Doesn't feel like there's a lot of good options inside the next decade or so. That said, I'd still probably prefer someone that claims repentance over someone still wearing a MAGA hat.