The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement’s origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore. Here’s only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I’m seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:
Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was taunted by tea partiers who chanted “nigger” at least 15 times, according to the Associated Press (we are not cleaning up language and using “the N-word” here because it’s really important to understand what was said.) First reported on The Hill blog (no hotbed of left-wing fervor), the stories of Lewis being called “nigger” were confirmed by Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones and Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, who was walking with Lewis. “It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis,” said Carson, a former police officer. “He said it reminded him of another time…”
There were many reports that Rep. Barney Frank was called a “faggot” by protesters, but the one I saw personally was by CNN’s Dana Bash, who seemed rattled by the tea party fury. Frank told AP: “It’s a mob mentality that doesn’t work politically.”
Meanwhile, a brick came through the window at Rep. Louise Slaughter’s Niagara Falls office on Saturday (the day she argued for her “Slaughter solution” to pass health care reform, though it was rejected by other Democrats on the House Rules Committee)…
So I’m having a hard time tonight trying to believe almost uniformly white tea partiers are anything other than a racist, right-wing reaction to the election of an African American president who brings with him feminists and gays (even if he doesn’t do as much for them as they would ideally like). I’m having a hard time seeing the tea partiers as anything other than the spawn of George Wallace racism – the movement Pat Buchanan bragged to me that Richard Nixon made his own…
Anyone pretending to be surprised?
Not reported by the main stream media because it didn’t happen. This bullshit is pure propaganda from the democraps and your a sucker if you believe it. It’s from a party who is on on the political ropes. A party that is furiously trying to pass a healthcare bill that this country can’t afford and nobody wants.
#21 I suggest you calm down and read the article (or better yet the link) again.
“Here’s only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I’m seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:”
What she was commenting on was only what the main stream media was reporting. Like the AP, CNN, NY Times, etc.
#20
Considering the RNC chairman has now condemned the Tea Party, I would say we are way way way beyond the point of trying to claim this was an isolated incident.
ROFL.
Unimatrix0 said,
Not reported by the main stream media because it didn’t happen.
I guess fox news, http://foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/21/tea-party-leader-condemns-racial-slurs-hurled-black-lawmakers/ the LATimes http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-health-care-overhaul-cleaver,0,6055929.story
and msnbc http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/03/20/2234644.aspx aren’t mainstream.
This bullshit is pure propaganda from the democraps and your a sucker if you believe it.
I guess you’re a sucker if you know the difference between “you’re” and “your” too…
It’s a crying shame that such pinhead minds are in such pretty bodies.
Is that Marry Poppins pictured on the right next to Palin?
Doesn’t surprise me at all. I live in Florida (when you get a lot of your wacky news reports.)
I saw the 60′s all over again when Obama ran for President.
The fear and analogy of right wing republicans having the ability to fall into a fascist mindset and electing an Adolf Hitler is not out of the question. You do an entertaining and informative job on bringing the news, oddball and otherwise, to the net. Unfortunately, the internet is not helping in any form of education or intellectual evolution, rather used for the purposes of reinforcing ideological biases and personal prejudice. We are merely Neanderthals with iPods.
Well Barney Frank might not be gay, but he sure is a fag.
A fag for the financial and health care lobbies.
Damn, he is gay. Who’d wanna hit that!
Anyway, my point still stands.
>> # 10 Bob said, on March 21st, 2010 at 9:07 am
>> And the first things liberals do when they are losing an argument is scream racism.
When the conservatives are called-out for being racist, the first thing they do is counter-charge!
I, as a liberal, call-out racism when I see it.
… and I don’t see it everywhere.
For example, I didn’t hear much racism in the anti-affordable healthcare movement.
But racism is perfectly clear in the “birther” movement and all the ridiculous ACORN bashing.
The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches.
Finding nutcases in a group is not a challenge and is not unique to any one group. Perhaps the eco-terrorists are representative of the entire Democratic party since they are Democrats themselves?
You need to reference a Relationship Chart. Correlation Causality. Or in this case relevant representation.
if I had a tea party I’d invite Alice and ware a hat.
Anyone pretending to be surprised?
nope, the haters need something to rally behind
Every Tea Party needs some Mad Haters
A MN Tea Party event in MN involved the same racist/homophobic and in this event xenophobic comments a few months ago (I went there out of curiosity). I hate to incite the Godwin Rule on my comment, but if these folks were wearing brown shirts and swastikas, you couldn’t tell the difference.
It’s surprising how many nutjobs are out there. The right wing lie machine has people so riled-up that they are losing their minds. I can understand disagreement, but I don’t understand ignoring facts.
Note to right wingers: Your parents told you about the boogie man in order to scare and control you.
And they don’t know the first thing about how to dress. Pearl necklace with that skin color? At least Sarah looks contemporary.
Great quote Truthy!
Daniel chptr 11 and this-
Isaiah:3:12-As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths. From daniel to revelations never before has prophecy matched as it does today.
#30 “Finding nutcases in a group is not a challenge and is not unique to any one group.”
Again I say read the link for more relevant info that refutes your argument. One paragraph that buttresses her argument follows.
“On Thursday MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews grilled tea party Astroturf leader Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity about supporters who taunted a man with Parkinson’s disease at a tea party gathering in Ohio last week. Phillips insisted the bullies just didn’t represent the tea party movement. But such demurrals don’t cut it any more. At the Nashville tea party gathering last month, a proponent of the kinder, gentler tea party movement, Judson Phillips, tried to distance himself from crazed and racist elements – but later endorsed racist speaker Tom Tancredo even after he told the convention: “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.” Tancredo blamed Obama’s election on the fact that “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” He got some of the loudest cheers of the weekend.”
And we all know that literacy tests were never used to exclude minorities from voting. (sarcasm)
Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’, Tactic #13:
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.