The idiocy of these people is something you have to see on a daily basis to believe.

Last night, we received this exercise in whiny passive-aggressive “peacemaking”…

Scott–

You’ve also spilled way too much ink over me, and I realize that I am partially to blame for not at least attempting to reach out to you like an adult (though I have tried via Twitter).

I am not a terrible, mean, or unreasonable person, and although I don’t know you, I assume you aren’t either. I am friends with a ton of conservatives, including several people who read your work.

We obviously disagree on politics, and that said, I don’t intend on spending a single additional ounce of my energy responding to the stuff you write about me. It’s been increasingly nasty and personal, and it seems completely unprofessional and bizarre.

I am hoping that we can agree to have a more professional relationship- less personal, less acrimonious, less ad hominem. I don’t know what your ultimate vision for your website is- or if you even treat the enterprise as a profession, but I am not your liberal enemy any more. I don’t care to be, and I can’t engage with someone who has spent so much time and energy essentially defaming me every time he gets the chance. You can continue writing your posts about me being a terrible lying liberal, and as long as you stay away from the people I love in my life, I will have no need to pay you any attention.

But I am hoping we can just bury the hatchet. Life’s too short to be consumed with trivialities. You have bigger fish to fry, and so do I.

I am open and willing to talk any time.

All the best,

Lamar

Our problem with this individual is not a personal one, though we would have plenty enough justification were we to consider it that given the things he has said and the conduct of his fan base on social media.

No, our problem is that what Lamar White represents – shameless hackery, cultural Marxism and calumnious smears disguised as punditry or journalism – is obnoxious to our political discourse.

And White’s latest endeavor – using an obvious lie to smear a man even those who disagree with him politically call a good man without a racist bone in his body as a white supremacist – is beyond the pale.

Steve Scalise, it’s apparent to anyone willing to recognize the plain truth, didn’t speak to a conference of white supremacists. He spoke to a local civic association about state tax matters. That is the statement of the man who booked the venue both for the conference and the civic group meeting, and it’s a statement that was corroborated by the former girlfriend of that “associate of David Duke.”

The girlfriend’s corroboration is what makes this obvious. If Barbara Noble had contradicted Kenny Knight and said “Oh, no. Scalise spoke to the EURO conference,” she would have had her 15 minutes of fame. She would have been booked on every news show in America and probably could have picked up a check or two for her trouble. It would have been in her interest to “rat” on Scalise. She didn’t do it, and has thus been ignored by everybody but the Slate writer who debunked this story a week ago.

But anybody who looks at this thing objectively has to recognize the insanity of the story Lamar White and the Reeds have been selling.

Why would an “international” conference of white supremacists, who came from all over America, be interested in Steve Scalise’s stump speech about the Stelly Plan? Isn’t it much more likely that a local civic association in his state legislative district would be interested in his speech?

Is that not a far more ordinary and believable explanation than that Steve Scalise, who spent the 1990’s coaching youth basketball to black kids in New Orleans, is secretly a white supremacist who traffics with David Duke’s minions and a grand conspiracy has been uncovered?

Not according to Lamar White, who is doubling down on his smears by alleging a “cover-up.”

We’ll spare you the need to read through the interminable screed the Lafayette Independent published from White today, though if you want to put yourself through it you can do so here. It doesn’t fundamentally differ from a far shorter screed White’s source, the unhinged former Scalise electoral opponent Gilda Reed, published at the Daily Kos over the weekend.

Among the elements are these:

1. The Stelly Plan didn’t pass until later in 2002, so Scalise couldn’t have been speaking against it. Apparently, nobody in the legislature ever takes a position on legislation which hasn’t actually been introduced. And because no organized opposition to Stelly emerged until August, when Stelly was slated to be on the ballot that November, it’s not plausible that Scalise would be speaking against it in March.

2. Scalise was actually railing, White says, against the Rural and Urban Development Fund, a corrupt legislative slush fund set up when Edwin Edwards was governor, and that fits with a white supremacist agenda because all that money was to be taken away from poor black people and what Scalise wanted to do was use it to lure the Hornets to New Orleans (thus, ironically, luring a number of rich black people to the city). This somehow would have been a big hit for the EURO attendees. White knows this because that’s what posts at Stormfront from 12 years ago say.

3. Kenny Knight is a scumbag (No, Really! David Duke’s former campaign manager is a scumbag!) and can’t be trusted, and the Jefferson Heights Civic Association never existed because it wasn’t registered at the Secretary of State. Because all civic associations register at the Secretary of State’s office or else they don’t exist.

4. Kenny Knight didn’t even live in Jefferson Heights, but rather made his residence not far away at his girlfriend’s house. We know this, according to Lamar, because there was a court case arising from Knight’s 1999 attempt to run for Jefferson Parish Council using a Jefferson Heights address as his residence and his claiming homestead exemption at that address where he previously lived. So he couldn’t possibly be the president of the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which doesn’t exist because the Secretary of State’s office has never heard of it. So White says.

5. Cameron Henry, who used to be Scalise’s legislative aide and now holds the state House seat Scalise was in at the time, is the guy who convinced Scalise to speak to the David Duke conference. So now we’re going to smear a current state legislator along with a former one. Henry hasn’t said anything about this scandal yet; something tells us we’re about to see that change. Brian Trascher, the political consultant Knight retained to handle the media crush that descended upon him last week, told us tonight, per the horse’s mouth, that Knight arranged Scalise’s appearance with Scalise and Henry had nothing to do with it – and that Knight barely knows who Henry is now, much less who he was 12 years ago.

From this, we have a “cover-up” of what Scalise REALLY did.

The whole thing is such ridiculous garbage as to beggar belief, but of course Lamar is completely invested in keeping his accusations against Scalise alive – and with them the leftist narrative that inside every Republican or conservative is a white supremacist just begging to get out.

But he says he wants to “bury the hatchet.” Where he wants to bury it is obvious.

Here’s our proposal to Lamar. If he wants peace, he can drop his little crusade, repudiate his accusations against Scalise and apologize for attempting to smear him. Steve Scalise has done nothing wrong other than to agree to speak to a civic association about local political matters, which every politician does as a matter of course, at a venue which turned out to be politically inconvenient. And for that sin, thanks to Lamar and his pals, a good man that even Edwin Edwards, Cedric Richmond and Jeff Arnold have defended as categorically not being a racist will forever be known as “that white supremacist guy.”

That is deeply offensive. It’s ugly and it’s tragic. And it damn well ought to have consequences for the individual who caused it.