Remember Patrick Mercer, the British MP whose antisemitism seemed to be as noticeable as the size of his nostrils and eyebrows?
A British Conservative member of parliament resigned this week, just ahead of a damning report on his behavior, which included saying that a female soldier “looks like a bloody Jew,” the Guardian newspaper reported.
Former MP Patrick Mercer committed one of the worst-ever breaches of parliamentary lobbying rules, the Commons standards committee concluded in its report, which was published on Thursday.
Among Mercer’s other misdemeanors were using his position for paid advocacy and describing a fellow MP as a “crook of the first order.”
The report recommended Mercer’s suspension from parliament for six months, but he had already stepped down by the time it was released. Mercer’s resignation comes only weeks after culture secretary Maria Miller quit following a controversy over her expenses.
Mercer was caught in a sting by an undercover reporter posing as a public affairs consultant for Fiji. During the course of a meeting with the reporter, he told an anecdote about a Fijian soldier in which he described her as looking like a “bloody Jew.”
I will give him this: his excuses were hilarious!
He later apologized for the statement, saying that he had been “very tired at the time,” and admitted it had been a stupid thing to say, the parliamentary report said.
He had added: “I am married to a woman of Jewish extraction. I have lots of friends in the Jewish community, and, yes, I can prostrate myself no further, it’s just a stupid thing to say, and I didn’t even … I accept I said it, and I am conscious that my speech isn’t always as balanced as it should be.”
Married to a woman of “Jewish extraction?” What, her dentist is Jewish?
“Very tired”? At least Mel Gibson was actually drunk.
At least some of his best friends are Jewish.
