David Patterson turns himself into the punch line of a joke

I guess for the next three and a half years, I’ll keep having to trot out this joke when I link to articles containing ridiculous claims of racism made to cover for incompetence and other personal failings.  First, the joke (which you’ve heard before and I can guarantee you’ll hear again):

Two men met on the street.  One looked very angry.

“What’s the problem?” asked the first man of his friend.

“I’m r-r-really a-a-ngry,” he stuttered.  “I ap-ap-applied for a j-j-job as an a-a-announcer at th-th-the r-r-r-radio s-s-station and they t-t-turned me-me-me d-d-d-down.”

This statement was followed by a long pause, after which the stutter reached his own conclusions about what had happened:

“D-d-d-damned a-a-antisemites!”

Okay, now for a news story about New York Governor David Paterson, in which his self-exculpatory statements for his myriad job troubles read precisely like the joke (okay, not precisely, but substantively):

“And I submit that the same kind of treatment that Deval Patrick is receiving right now in Massachusetts, and I’m receiving; the way in which the New York State Senate was written about, calling them a bunch of people with thick necks — they’re talking about Malcolm Smith and John Sampson — that we’re not in the post-racial period.”

“And the reality is that the next victim on the list and you see it coming is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than try to reform a health care system that’s not 10 percent of GDP and will be 20 percent of GDP in the next four years only because he’s trying to make change.”