Like Anthony Weiner, Gov. Paul LePage can’t help exposing himself. The two men share an addiction to media attention and pollute the airwaves with their junk. Drama is the drug of choice for both, but LePage’s case is far worse and more dangerous. Sexting is distasteful. Racism is corrosive.

What makes LePage more and more menacing, in addition to being boorish and leaving voicemail messages too obscene to publish, is his willful and stubborn ignorance. LePage is unaware of and unconcerned about the pain his words cause. By his calculation, the heat of the spotlight and the thrill of the media frenzy is worth it. The governor is indifferent to the shame his foul-mouthed words and vulgarity bring to dinner-table conversations parents have with their children. He won the battle for the Blaine House, and to the victor goes the spoils. All of us must bear the brunt of his wretched childhood and his warped sense of truth-telling, especially when the truth hurts.

Of course LePage is a racist, whether he knows it or not. That’s the truth for people who possess a minimum, basic fundamental understanding of racial sensibility in this country. Sure, the Constitution is beautiful, with its platitudes of equality and opportunity, but anyone struggling under the oppression of discrimination knows it is a document “stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery,” as then-Sen. Barack Obama said before becoming the first black man to occupy the White House. Discrimination is real and it is insidious. The belief, conscious or not, that white skin contains superior stock diminishes dignity and cuts opportunity like a knife for people of color. To be judged by the color of skin instead of the content of character crushes dreams like cement.

It is because he says exactly what’s on his mind that LePage says racist and offensive things. Without facts or credible research, LePage publicly weighs in on things with his bigoted thumb prominently on the scale. That his gut feels something to be true is enough. That he thinks nothing of blurting out every hurtful, biased and uninformed thought on his mind means he has “backbone.”

LePage’s staunch opposition to immigrants despite their documented economic contribution and Maine’s desperate need for more working people is based in large part on their race. LePage’s suggestion that refugees and Muslims are terrorists is because of their dark skin – along with the white lights of cameras that flash every time he says something provocative. LePage turns up the heat on racial tension precisely so it will boil over and call out to reporters needing fuel for their daily fires. LePage’s mind reflexively jumps from one stereotype to another, and his mouth is happy to throw up any old racial trope that will garner the media attention he craves.

Why else would he say that guys “like” D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty are selling drugs and impregnating young white girls? Why not guys like Patrick, Francis or Stephen?

Why else would LePage say to reporters, “Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers” when they don’t – and as governor of the state he should know it – or that our enemies in the drug war are people of color and people of Hispanic origin. Unless you are someone who believes the color of skin is always relevant to any assessment, why would you say the first black president of the United States hates white people?

“When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red. … You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin,” LePage said after divine intervention sent a black comedian from New York to put his latest act of bigotry on the world stage this week, complete with props.

“Let me tell you this, explain to you, I made the comment that black people are trafficking in our state, now ever since I said that comment I’ve been collecting every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state,” LePage said. “I don’t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison, but they come and I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx and Brooklyn.”

“There are a whole lot of white girls, too, a whole lot of white girls,” LePage said. “In fact, in almost every single picture is a white Maine girl in the picture.”

Why on earth is the governor of Maine scrapbooking while a record number of people are dying from drug overdoses in the first place? Are these pictures that LePage cut from newspapers he says doesn’t read, or are we supposed to believe the Maine Drug Enforcement Administration has begun photo-bombing mugshots with Maine white girls?

The FBI reports that in 2014, 1,211 people were arrested for selling or making drugs in Maine, and of those, 170 – or 14.1 percent – were black. So let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?

When more than 85 percent of drug dealers in Maine are white, only one type of person would create a binder with 90 percent blacks and Hispanics.

Cynthia Dill is a civil rights lawyer and former state senator. She can be contacted at:

dillesquire@gmail.com

Twitter: dillesquirew