Georgia lawmaker who dropped pants, screamed racial slurs on Who Is America? resigns

Sacha Baron Cohen has done what the Georgia GOP could not (or, more accurately, would not): As Variety reports, Republican state representative Jason Spencer will resign from office at the end of the month. His resignation comes under intense public outcry, after Spencer performed an offensive impression of a “Chinese tourist,” repeatedly screamed a racial slur, and dropped his pants to “intimidate ISIS” by threatening them with homosexuality on an episode of Cohen’s new Showtime series Who Is America?.

You’ve probably heard about, and perhaps have already seen, the clip, but just in case:

Dedicated white supremacy-watchers may recall Spencer from such hits as threatening a Black female lawyer that she and others who attempt to remove Confederate monuments in the state “will go missing in the Okefenokee,” and introducing a bill that would have prohibited Muslim women from wearing religious garb in public in Georgia. As you might expect, Spencer’s Republican colleagues were silent then, and only spoke up after he made an ass of them (pun, as always, intended) on TV.

This is a reversal of Spencer’s defiant attitude earlier in the week, when he released a self-pitying statement to local news station WTOC saying that “Sacha Baron Cohen and his associates took advantage of my paralyzing fear that my family would be attacked” in the wake of the “countless death threats” he claims to have received over “my introduction of legislation involving the wearing of masks.” (That’s one way to phrase it.)

It’s also worth noting that Spencer, who was reportedly deeply disliked in Georgia politics even before all this happened, had already been crushed in the Republican primary by a 24-year-old newcomer, Steven Sainz, and so was on his way out anyway. This simply means that Spencer will be gone at the end of the month, rather than in November. The fucker still got four terms in office, though, which should give all of us pause.