Lesson: Racial slurs are totally fine, so long as they're in a joke

Noted this morning in the Morning Constitutional:

“We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” said State Sen. Jake Knotts, of South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley. Knotts backs Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in a four-way Republican primary race.

Today, Knotts “apologized.” By “apologized,” of course, I mean, he’s sorry nobody got the joke:

Unfortunately, the show was not recorded as was intended. If it had been recorded, the public would be able to hear firsthand that my “raghead” comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from.

Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize.

I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur.

So, excellent. Now we know, it’s totally fine to call people ethnic slurs, just as long as everybody knows you’re joking.

Maybe we should actually listen to the Saturday Night Live sketch: “Please refrain from using ethnic slurs.”