Republican Chairman Steele Sharing Republican Values

Michael Steele, the recently appointed chairman of the Republican party, made a curious comment during a recent interview. Referencing the film Slumdog Millionare, the interviewer asked if Steel had any "Slum Love" for Bobby Jindal. (Image: Huffington Post) In case you missed my post yesterday, Bobby Jindal is the Republican Governor of Louisiana who has been viewed as a front-runner for 2012 presidential nomination. What's the connection between Jindal and Slumdog Millionare? From what I can tell, only that he is of Indian descent.

Let's be clear though, as Bobby said in the video in my post yesterday, he was born in America to immigrant parents. Jindal is not from the Mumbai slums, the area which is referenced in the title of the film. He is not even from India, yet Steele got quite a kick out of the reference and sent "slum love" to Jindal.

Below is a transcript of the interview along with an audio clip. Both come by way of Huffington Post that got the tip from Politico:

SLIWA: Now, using a little bit of that street terminology, are you giving him any Slum love, Michael?

STEELE: (laughter)

SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that's the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.

STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) ... some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin' awesome job in his state. He's really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff ... the easy stuff.

This is the latest in the campaign of Chairman Steele that is being referred to as "street talk" by the media. That alone I think is ridiculous, especially since Steele embraces and uses the term himself, but he continues to play into it more and more.

Just yesterday, Steele's campaign had two other similar "street talk" incidents. First, Steele admitted Republican mistakes with the statement, "We know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad." After this, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann told Steele, "You be da man!"

What do you guys think of this? I really don't know what to make of it. I may be reading it wrong, but is Steele parodying tolerance? I can't understand why else he would be continuing with this.