How diverse can Bailey’s Beach Club be if Sheldon Whitehouse never noticed it? The Senate Democrat from Rhode Island has gotten questioned about the all-white club ever since getting into politics in 2006. It came up again in 2017 with GoLocal Providence, and again last summer in the Free Beacon.

Now Whitehouse claims that the GoLocal Providence reporter sandbagged him when they asked him about Bailey’s Beach Club. The club is actually “diverse” now, and Whitehouse’s mistake was “accepting her premise”:

“I was attending an unrelated event and wasn’t prepared for the question,” he said in the statement. “At the time, I made the mistake of accepting her premise. I then checked the assertion and was assured that, first, the assertion was wrong, there is diversity in the membership and there are non-white club members; and second, that improving diversity remains a priority and an active task for the club’s new board. Today, the club’s board put out a statement to this effect.”

Let’s mull on that for a moment. Whitehouse and his wife have an ownership stake in the club, and its previous exclusive-white status had already been a political issue for the Senate Democrat. Wouldn’t a change have come to his attention already, assuming one took place at all? Why would a part owner of the club have to “accept her premise” at all? For that matter, shouldn’t a club owner know one way or the other about “diversity” just from looking around?

As if the Marion Barry defense wasn’t already embarrassing enough, Whitehouse apparently realized that his other club memberships might finally get a little belated media scrutiny. Whitehouse admitted in the next breath that his yacht club seems to have some systemic racism, too:

Whitehouse stated the recent attention to the issue of his family’s membership to an allegedly all-white beach club has prompted him to assess all of his affiliations and to consider whether any involve inequitable or exclusionary policies.

“While I am not a member of the beach club, I do own a boat and belong to a sailing club in Newport,” he said. “While this club does not have exclusionary rules for membership, it does lack diversity. Failing to address the sailing club’s lack of diversity is squarely on me, and something for which I am sorry.[“]

After Whitehouse’s lectures on destroying systemic racism wherever it exists, this apology is a poster-child example of too little, too late. But what does Whitehouse propose to do about it? Shut down the yacht club? Sue to force “diverse” admissions? Heck, Whitehouse won’t even quit the club:

“I commit to working with the club and the community to build a more inclusive membership and to better connect with the local community.”

The clown show continues, in other words, and Sheldon “Boof Truther” Whitehouse is the king of the hypocritical clowns.