Maine governor slip of the tongue may require therapy

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Gov. Paul LePage of Maine Says Racial Comment Was a “Slip-Up”

“Brain didn’t keep up with mouth”  

The New York Times reported today that Maine Governor Paul R. LePage, who has a history of making regretful remarks, made another regretful remark this week, this one with racial overtones.

In speaking about the heroin crisis that is overwhelming this generally under-the-radar state, LePage on Wednesday said out-of-state drug dealers come to Maine and before leaving, “impregnate a young white girl.” Specifically, LePage, while discussing the crisis at a town-hall style meeting said,  “These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty — these types of guys. They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue that we’ve got to deal with down the road.”

But, in a completely uncharacteristic move on Friday, LePage walked back his statement in a televised news conference, calling it a slip of the tongue and saying, ““I made one slip-up. I made a one-word slip-up. I might have made many slip-ups. I was going impromptu, and my brain didn’t catch up to my mouth. Instead of saying ‘Maine women,’ I said ‘white women.’ I’m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that, because if you go to Maine, you’ll see that we’re essentially 95 percent white.”

In another apparent slip of the tongue, LePage, after saying he would not apologize, did just that by saying, “So if I slipped up and used the wrong word, I apologize to all Maine women.”

After this second slip of the tongue in less than a week, a spokesman for the governor, Moose Muhlenberg, said that the governor will be checking in to the Bush Family Slip of the Tongue Rehab Institute in Kennebunkport where he will receive extensive slip of the tongue therapy.

A tongue therapist at the institute, Linda Lingua, said that the institute’s success rate is nearly 90%, saying that if therapy is unsuccessful, the only other treatment short of a tongue-ectomy is to apply anti-slip tongue balm to the tongue every hour for the rest of the patient’s life.