Cain’s Perry Problem- Big Issue or Over Reacting?

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain attacked fellow candidate Rick Perry Sunday because of the former name of a hunting lease the Perry family formerly leased. The former name of the hunting camp was “niggerhead”.

Yes, Cain was correct about the former name being offensive, but is Cain over reacting?

The Perry campaign released a statement stating that upon an early visit to the hunting camp, Rick Perry requested his father paint over the offensive name on the rock. According to Perry, this all occurred in the early to mid-1980’s when his father leased the hunting rights on the property.

“My mother and father went to the lease and painted the rock in either 1983 or 1984. This occurred after I paid a visit to the property with a friend and saw the rock with the offensive word. After my visit I called my folks and mentioned it to them, and they painted it over during their next visit.”

According to his spokesperson, Perry has not been to the hunting camp since December 2006.

Is the former name of a hunting camp that the Perry family formerly leased an issue? Is Cain just slinging mud? As much as I like and respect Cain, I think he might be over reacting on this one. There would be a legitimate problem if the hunting camp was owned and named by Perry, but to attack Perry over the former name of a property that was only leased by the Perry family is just political mudslinging.

For those of you that are not hunters or do not understand hunting in the state of Texas, I will shed a little light on it for you. For most serious hunters of land based game, the name of the camp does not matter. It is about the quality of the hunt. I know some folks that wouldn’t care if the name of the camp was a personal insult to their mother as long as the quality of the hunting experience was good. (For those of you that understand what our mothers mean to us down here in Texas, that should say it all.) Whether it be deer, quail or any of the other wild game that we hunt, it is also one of our passions.

The last thing I would like to do in this article is to challenge not only the candidates, but also all of our readers to look at the whole story on everything that comes up. We will have our differences, but that is what makes us human. It is also part of what makes us Americans.