Two days ago we were discussing how the latent racism in the tea party.
Today, we're arguing whether or not it was fair to brand a lower tier Obama Administration official and NAACP honoree as racist.
By any reasonable measure of spin, Breitbart succeeded in changing the narrative. He has persuaded the media to engage in its favorite story, reporting on he-said-she said media navel gazing.
We wind up snookered by Breitbart the moment we view him and his ilk as a legitimate source of news. They are not. Fox News is not about news, Brietbart is not about news, they are about propaganda. They are far more polished and smarmy than Pravda, but they serve the same function -- sell the party line.
We need to fix that. We need to have that conversation, but not today. Today we need to get back to talking about the tea party, and the racists white supremacist elements that animate that movement in so many ways. We need to remind the MSM today that it is the tea party, not the NAACP that has a race problem.
Defending himself against charges of racism, Mark Williams pushed the narrative that the NAACP were the racists.
You’re dealing with people who are professional race baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.
Mark Williams is the founder of the Tea Party Express, a fine tea-bagger hate machine that has been championed by the usual suspects, Bachman, Palin, etc. Somewhere between blowing up on cable TV programs, Williams found time to pen a letter posing as Ben Jealous (head of the NAACP) in which Mr. Williams writes that President Lincoln was the worst racist ever. He referred to blacks as wanting to sit around all day and receive money from the government. He referred to the government as "massa" and pined for the days that blacks were allow to laze about and let the white man make their decisions for them.
His complete inability to understand that his defaulting to those terms and stereotypes, to the lazy black man, to the joy of a life without decisions as the natural goal of the NAACP, is wretched, racist, and wrong.
Suddenly the shit hit the fan. The NAACP has done a great thing in calling out the Tea Party. They provoked the racist schmucks to show their colors, and the schmucks happily complied.
By Sunday the tea party federation had kicked Tea Party Express out of their organization, and there was a general movement toward some actual progress. Then Brietbart had a great idea.. he'd just find some bit of tape from an NAACP event that looked vaguely racist, and change the narrative.
It worked.
Here's a summary of the titles from Mark Willaims blog over the last few days... just as a sampling.
Tea Party Federation outburst sets us all back
July 18th, 2010
National News: An obscure tea party group to which I have never belonged has expelled me.
Tea Party Express responds to the Tea Party Federation
July 19th, 2010
Lloyd Marcus: "Tea Partiers Easily Put On The Defensive. Stop it!"
Then.. suddenly..
Reinstate Shirley Sherrod
July 20th, 2010
Whew.. I don't know you Mr. Williams, but you should go pay Breitbart cash money for his services. He pulled your ass right out of the fire.
Now it's our turn. We have to find some way to roll the narrative back. To remind folks that Mark Williams is a tea party leader, and he likes to say things like,
Mr. President, you are just not ready for prime time and just still don’t get it. I don’t care where you were born but your understanding of this country could not be more twisted.
and
I would suggest to those offended by the term "Colored People" (the phrase that made my article so controversial) please contact the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and join me in calling for an end to their use of the racial slur and that Mr. Jealous take me up on my offer to travel with me on the next Tea Party Express so that he may meet all of you in person.
We don't need to look far to find racists in the tea party. We do have to find some examples on tape that will look good in a 15 second clip.
Update:
I'm just going to stick this link in here... it's the full video of Shirley Sherrod's speech. If you haven't watched it, you should. Ms. Sherrod's speech begins with a discussion of her father, who was murdered when Ms. Sherrod was 17. The murderer was acquitted by an all white jury. Go and Listen.