The New York Times new story on Ben Carson is delicious, but buries the lede (or one of several potential ledes) way down in the kicker.
“The jump from Erbil and Soviets” to the Chinese “in Damascus is a long leap,” Mr. Clarridge said, using an ethnic slur for the Chinese.
Duane Clarridge is Carson’s national security and intelligence adviser, and in addition to everything else he said on the record to the Times, he’s also apparently comfortable referring to Chinese people as “chinks,” or something similarly offensive, to a reporter. Which means we can’t rule out the possibility that he uses pejoratives when advising Carson, who in turn can’t be counted on not to repeat such slurs in public. As slur-prone Donald Trump might say, What a mess!
Update: The Carson campaign’s response includes this disclaimer, presumably to explain Clarridge’s loose lips and nonchalant Asian slur dropping: “Mr. Clarridge’s input to Dr. Carson is appreciated but he is clearly not one of Dr. Carson’s top advisors. For the New York Times to take advantage of an elderly gentleman and use him as their foil in this story is an affront to good journalistic practices.”
Carson’s top aide, Armstrong Williams, earlier called Clarridge “a mentor for Dr. Carson.”
Second Update: Because of his mysterious anti-asian slur, the fact that Clarridge referred to Russians as Soviets in the same sentence seemed normal by comparison, and managed to completely escape my attention for an hour.