This is an opinion column.

Mistakes. We all make them.

We make them because we’re human. Because we’re perfectly imperfect. Because we’re Flawed.

Some more than others, alas. More imperfect. More unflinchingly flawed.

To the point of being impossible. Impossible to believe. Impossible to tolerate.

Alabama, we simply can no longer tolerate U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Oh, I know we’re likely stuck with him until he’s up for election in—it’s hard to even type this—2027. But that does mean we must tolerate his unabashed meanness, his insipid rants. His ignorance.

Alabama Republicans, is this really your guy?

Yeah, you tried to give us Roy Moore a while back, but thankfully, in 2011, common sense outvoted calamity.

Now, teleTuberville is the doll of your party—the face (and mouth) of all Republicans wants to be for Alabama. He must be, given the silence among state party leaders after his most recent thoughtless blather—his inexplicable attack last week on “inner city teachers” (a not-very-well veiled denigration of teachers in classrooms where most of the students are Black and too often from low-income).

An attack that went without a response from Gov. Ivey. She’s pouted and tweeted about losing the U.S. Space Command to Colorado Spring, but our Republican-in-chief has thus far been silent on Tuberville’s slap in the face of teachers. Silent even as she leads the state Board of Education.

An attack on any teacher is an attack on all teachers, I thought Ivey might say. Crickets.

Ivey or Tuberville’s U.S. Senate colleague Katie Britt. Or the state party chair.

An attack on any teacher is an attack….crickets.

Alabamians, is this what we accept from our senior U.S. Senator? Is this subterranean bar okay with us?

Or have we come to our own impossible—impossible to tolerate? Impossible to accept.

RELATED: Woodfin calls Tuberville’s inner city teachers comments ‘dog whistle’

The senator could have said he was sorry. He could have said he was wrong for attacking teachers.

He could have apologized for saying, “COVID really brought it out how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are, in the inner city.”

He could have expressed at least a scintilla of remorse for saying, “I don’t know how [’inner city teachers’] got degrees,” which not only disparaged the men and women who diligently earned their credentials but also each institution of higher learning they attended.

He could have just said he was wrong for saying, “I don’t know whether [inner city teachers] can read and write.”

But he did not. He did zero of the above after uttering his abhorrent, arrogant, and degrading thoughts on “Triggered,” a streaming “show” hosted by Donald Trump Jr. (Did he think only the hardest of the hard-hearted right would hear him?).

Instead, teleTuberville’s string was pulled and he … blamed us. Blamed us for misinterpreting his very clear words and sought to further enlighten us with a statement to WAFF in which he doubled down on the attack: “Coach (don’t get me started on why his office refers to him with this title rather than, oh, Senator] is far from the first person to criticize inner city schools,” it read in part.

This, of course, was not Tuberville’s first foot-in-mouth utterance with a racial tinge.

Last October, he took the state before a frothy Republican crowd at a fund-raiser in Nevada for U.S. Senate candidate Adam Lexalt (who lost the general election to incumbent Democrat Cortez Masto) and disparaged the ongoing reparations debate. Democrats, he said, “want reparation (sic) because they think the people who do the crime are owed that.” Then he punctuated with an insipid vulgarity.

RELATED: Former Auburn star on Tuberville’s ‘reparation’ remark: ‘unnecessary’, dead wrong, ugly’

In May, amid a national bipartisan discussion about the danger of white nationalists serving in the military, Tuberville, speaking with WBHM said, referring to the Biden administration: “They call them [white nationalists]. I call them Americans.”

RELATED: Tuberville on white nationalists in the military: ‘I call them Americans’

Yet again, his office had to scoop up the mess. “Sen. Tuberville’s quote that is cited shows that he was being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military,” a spokesperson stated.

Skeptical or not, Tuberville could have said white nationalists—avowed racists, let’s be clear—have no place in our military. He didn’t.

On each occasion, he refused to be accountable. Refused to choose empathy, and humility. Or decency,

Pull the string and he takes no responsibility.

C’mon, Alabama Republicans. You want to win, cool. And between gerrymandering and an incompetent state Democratic party, you could elect a cabbage to statewide off.

Or a doll—if that’s what you’re willing to tolerate. No mistake about it.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

Are we becoming the land of the bully and home of the nasty?

Through faith, former Birmingham news anchor finds unlikely new season as an actor

United Methodist member recalls effort in 1970s to merge Black and white congregations

Instead of forcing kids to hear the ‘Star-Spanged Banner’, they should study it

Questioning parenting after youth violence is real, but does not absolve lawmaker inaction

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Stay tuned for my upcoming limited series podcast Panther: Blueprint for Black Power, co-hosted with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj