One final note, I’ve seen a lot of Tea Party folks taking exception to the charge that they are in anyway motivated by racism. Fair enough. I would humbly suggest that when you embrace political leaders who claim that the president “favors the black person,” or when your keynote speaker claims that “literacy tests” would have prevented an Obama election, you should not be surprised that your membership comes to the mall toting signs that claim Obama is supporting “White slavery.”
I would pay cash money to watch TNC debate Welch, Gillespie, and the rest of the pasty white apologists at Reason barfing up lengthy pieces about how unfair it is to call the teabaggers racist.
TR
I’ve got $20 for this. Let’s make it happen.
stuckinred
Anyone interested in the release of the documents about the threats on Teddy? Imagine what it’s like for Obama.
dmsilev
I don’t remember that one; which tea-bagging jackass said that?
Edit: Oh, Tom Tancredo. Somehow, I’m extremely not-shocked.
And yes, that’s about as overtly racist as you can get, given even a tiny bit of knowledge about the Jim Crow era.
dms
middlewest
@dmsilev: Tancredo. I know you’re really suprised.
dmsilev
@middlewest: Yeah, saw that (Note to self: follow links *before* posting comment…). Wonder how many right-wingers tried to defend Tancredo for that, out of sheer tribalistic reflex.
dms
kc
Ooh, now Somerby will be pissed.
Zifnab
The great thing about being white is that you already know you’re better than everyone else. Your current socio-economic status (re: better than the darkies!) proves it. So pointing out that you are better than your neighbor isn’t racist, it’s the truth!
TNC wouldn’t win a debate with Reason magazine. It can’t be done. Reason magazine need only look as far as a paycheck or a site hit count or some other arbitrary number higher than what TNC’s got, and declare themselves the de facto winners, before a debate has even started.
Even in the best of all possible scenarios – that TNC is winning on every conceivable front – you’ll never win Welch or Gillespie over. Because they’ll just hate on TNC for being successful. They’re never going to change their minds.
Anne Laurie
Tweaking Mr. Cole: Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Kerry Reid
@kc:
You beat me to it!
Brian J
It’s not that they are likely wrong when they claim the majority of the Teabaggers aren’t racist. They are probably right. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s higher than the population as a whole, but not approaching the levels some indicate. But that still leaves a lot of people who say incredibly offensive things, people who enjoy the support of the current crop of Republican leaders. Maybe I have a bad memory, but I don’t remember any one of those clowns ever making a clear rejection of what those people saying. Instead, they respond with a “What, us?” sort of reaction.
John Cole
@Anne Laurie: You know what is funny. I knew I had read something about the movie on one of the blogs I read, and I could not remember which one it was.
Anne Laurie
@Zifnab:
Shorter Reasonoid: “Well, Mr. Coates is never going to stop being melanin-enhanced, is he now? And that makes him inherently genetically inferior — we own the SCIENCE that says so! Yay, free-market science!”
Anne Laurie
@John Cole: You’re breaking my heart, John. I thought my style, at least, was distinctive…
kay
It’s been interesting to watch the bigots react to Eric Holder. He’s really been fairly low-key. He doesn’t seek a lot of press, is a quite conventional law ‘n order, pro-prosecution AG compared to someone like John Ashcroft, who blatantly embarked on some sort of fringe religious mission. Ashcroft was bizarre. Holder has made very few waves.
Holder, even more than Obama, is a kind of test. Every time he opens his mouth (which is rarely) they go absolutely berserk. They’re constantly claiming bias, inexplicably, as Holder’s DOJ has now exonerated two Republicans who were investigated under Bush or convicted under Bush.
You have to wonder what that’s all about. There’s a lot of fear in it.
geg6
If such a debate could occur in some medium that would provide national exposure? TNC would mop the floor with those posers. I would relish their Randroid tears at being bested in every way by the darkie from the hood. TNC is one smart mofo and I have yet to meet or read or view a libertarian with a great mind, let alone any familiarity with logic and reality-based argument. The title of “Reason” is, without a doubt, the very definition of irony.
WereBear
Bingo. I have to go along with the folks who explained that if they had been the ones treated badly for generations, and the shoe went on the other foot… they would lust for revenge.
That is what they fear. And it’s only stoked because they don’t really know anyone else, besides people exactly like themselves.
Prejudice within prejudice. I feel like telling them that not everyone is a mean and petty tyrant who clings to grudges like a sloth clings to a branch.
But once again, everyone they know…
joe from Lowell
I know quite a bit about the Reasonoids. They’re not racists.
They’re willing to make common cause with racists and run interference for them, which is plenty bad enough, but there’s really no reason to accuse Welch or Gillespie of racism.
Ed Marshall
I know why people on the internet huff-and-puff about “I’m not a racist, you are putting words in my mouth” and yes, it’s probably pointless trying to get inside peoples minds and trying to prove *what* they meant.
What’s weirder is when people do this in real life. I’ve had people I know really well give me “Oh, and you are just going to say that means I’m a racist”. They are a racist! This is someone you know that finds a way to use nigger thirty times a day (probably partially because they know it irritates you). Will go on and on and with racist shit until you aren’t mad, you are bored. If you try out “are you not a racist?” “No, I hate everybody”. I don’t get this, if someone goes out of their way to be a racist prick all the time, and will tell you over and over that they are just right, why do they want to argue about not being a racist at the end of it?
kay
@WereBear:
I agree, I couldn’t articulate it as well as you did, but why this sudden mortal fear of The Prosecutor? They’re huge fans of prosecutors, generally, conservatives. They’re goddamn law ‘n order cheerleaders. “Lock ’em up, Top Cop!”
Holder strikes me as something of a conventional person, not at all radical, and he really hasn’t shaken up the DOJ (much to liberal’s chagrin, right?)
He spouted this bland clique about how we need an ” honest dialogue” on race, which we’ve all heard 50,000 times, and they all start screeching that he’s busting down their door with his jack-booted thugs.
I look at him and I see this serious, low-key, insiderish lawyerly-person, and they see HE’S ANGRY AND HE’S GOING TO ARREST WHITE PEOPLE, FOR REVENGE!
He’s been moving in and around and with some pretty powerful white people his entire career. If he has some crazed vendetta, he’s managed to hide it thus far.
M. Bouffant
They’re willing to make common cause with racists and run interference for them, which is plenty bad enough, but there’s really no reason to accuse Welch or Gillespie of racism.
Huh? Must they burn a cross on a lawn to be considered racists?
Elisabeth
@kay:
Of course, Holder had to hide his white hate. At least until his plan to become AG under the first African American president came to fruition. Doncha know Holder’s parents were in on the Obama birth conspiracy way back in the 60s as a way to get their son to such a lofty position.
Elvis Elvisberg
This is old news, and all, and everyone knows it, but it is worth noting that there is no rational reason for the Tea Party to exist.
If they were upset about government spending that added to the deficit… well, they wouldn’t be out protesting the health care bill at all. “[T]he [Bush-era] totally unfunded Medicare Part D program … will cost taxpayers roughly $1 trillion over the next decade–that’s $1 trillion more than Obama’s plan, which is fully paid for according to the Congressional Budget Office.”
If they were upset about federal government power, they would have been out there protesting the Patriot Act, and the Bush administration’s assertion that it could detain US citizens indefinitely without trial, or the fact that, as even the GOP now admits, we invaded another country for no reason.
But they weren’t.
Now, as others have pointed out, the nation’s ignorant whites may well have been just as out of sorts if Hillary Clinton had been elected. But there is simply no ideological or principled defense of the Tea Partiers. They are sad their side lost the last election.
The Tea Party is 100% tribalism, which just so happens to come from the exact same people who argued that desegregation was tyranny.
Anne Laurie
@joe from Lowell: Fair enough. I am not a Reason reader, so I made a possibly unwarranted assumption working from the “scientific” libertarians of my acquaintance. Although I’d argue (agree) that being so “willing to make common cause with racists and run interference for them” means I can safely dismiss them from the list of people whose opinions I need to respect, frankly.
kay
@Elisabeth:
He’s been letting wrongly convicted Republicans go like crazy. It doesn’t matter.
“Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asked a court to release two imprisoned former Alaska state lawmakers after the Justice Department found that prosecutors had improperly handled evidence in their trials on corruption charges. The move is the second embarrassing retreat for department prosecutors since the conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, was tossed out in April. Mr. Holder is asking a federal appeals court to send the cases of the former Alaska House speaker, Peter Kott, and former State Representative Victor Kohring back to the trial judge. Mr. Holder made the request after finding that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence to the defense. The Justice Department said it was also asking the appeals court to release the two men on their own recognizance. In 2007, Mr. Kohring was convicted of bribery and extortion-related charges and sentenced to three and one-half years in prison. Mr. Kott was also convicted in 2007 and sentenced to six years in prison. Both are Republicans. ”
He hates them, and wants to put them all in camps. Wake up!
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Of course, you’re talking to people who belong to the
RepublicanConfederate Party. If they do nothing else well, they hold a grudge for generations. Darth Cheney made himself vice president to avenge Nixon, FFS.Midnight Marauder
@kay:
This statement can be applied to any minority with a position of power in the Obama Administration. But it especially holds true if they are a black male.
I mean, the thinking you just laid out above was a pretty major point of attack during John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Elisabeth
@kay:
Just a way to lull us into a false sense of security. Wait until 2012. Then comes the Mayan end of times via the Obama/Holder world domination scheme.
Ahasuerus
@WereBear: Bingo indeed.
We got that from my spouse’s cousins, after the election. They actually seemed to think that they had to overtly declare their loyalty to the president or risk being punished. It was mind-boggling. And these are educated, well-traveled, wealthy people. I don’t know if it’s a projection of their own desires or simply too much exposure to the Fox Crazy Machine, but it’s depressing as hell.
Mnemosyne
@Ahasuerus:
Given that that’s what Republicans were basically demanding while Bush was in office, at least you can say they’re consistent in thinking that everyone should have to bow before the power of the almighty president.
El Cid
Wait ’til the New Black Panthers, ACORN II, MALDEF, La Raza, CAIR and the Nation of Islam hold their Million People of Color 2nd Amendment Defenders’ Armed March on Washington.
Uloborus
@Elvis Elvisberg:
Absolutely. Tribalism. It all fits together. It can be racial, economic, cultural, regional, or political. They just have to think they’re part of one group, and Obama (and by extension everyone associated with him) is part of the other. Part of tribalism is not valuing these ‘others’ as fully human, which means the tribalist knows how he would oppress the ‘other’. Since the ‘other’ is automatically less than him, that ‘other’ will obviously oppress the tribalist even worse. So when the ‘other’ takes power, the tribalist is not only angry, he’s terrified.
williamc
@Elvis Elvisberg:
Thank You.
Living in Georgia, surrounded by the Teatards, talking to them all the time, listening to them go on and on about nonsense, I could see how they believe what they believe as they quote Boortz and Limbaugh all the time, and I can’t believe how many of my honors friends from High School are now 30something Glenn Beck fans (thanks for that knowledge Facebook!), but at its base it’s just like hatred, like UGA vs. GA Tech during football season here. When asked to reconcile their stated beliefs with their apathy/inaction during the Bush junta, the sputtering starts and the nonsense about the “Constitution being usurped” and “the President’s tyrannical rule” comes pouring out. It really isn’t logical at all, but TNC reminding us once again that Confederate History Month never ends for some people makes some sense of it.
@kay:
This hatred of Holder reminds me a lot of what it must be like to be a black football player at a winning SEC school. Most of the school population loves that you win the game for them, loves your playing style, loves your ‘fundamentals’ approach to the game, but wouldn’t be caught dead with you outside of the stadium.
tkogrumpy
@geg6: Although not as ironic as “the American thinker”
liberal
@Elvis Elvisberg:
Good points. They’d also have been upset with the invasion of Iraq. After all, “war is the health of the state.”
liberal
@williamc:
It’s also stupidity.
Jeffro
The Teabaggers, Cheney, and everyone in between them…yes, they are full of fear. They’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop, whether it’s criminal indictments for torture, or simply the bill coming due for a country that spends like crazy, burns oil like crazy, and tramples on other countries like crazy.
Clive Barker had a quote a while back, something like “there is no delight the equal of dread”. They’re so afraid, they’re practically high on it…
LesGS
Coates would pop their heads like grapes.
Mike G
@liberal:
My favorite is the “starve the beast”, “shrink the government” ideologues who insist that “tax cuts increase revenues”. So you’re demanding tax cuts that will result in the government (supposedly) getting more money…and this will make government smaller?
Propose to them that they should support tax increases, which “always” decrease revenues, to starve the government, and watch their heads explode.
Kyle
@liberal:
Despite what they vehemently claim, I think the teatards’ dream form of government isn’t some freewheeling libertarian Hong Kong, but apartheid-era South Africa — a bullying, intrusive security state that reflects their fears and hatreds, protects their privilege and gives nothing but cracked skulls to outgroups they don’t like.
Delia
People who are “willing to make common cause with racists and run interference for them” are functionally racists, no matter what they may think or say about themselves.
matoko_chan
I’d pay money to see TNC debate Ross Douthat.
I got banned from TNC’s for sayin’ Douthat was just Bill Kristol with a thesaurus and and a little more hair….back when they were Atlantic homies.
Douthat is a flaming asshole and a shameless misogynist….he relly hates women. He totally creeps me out.
Like this.
The trouble with Douthat is that he is wrong, 99.9% of the time. Predictably he sees tuesday’s female winners as some sort of triumphant vindication that feminism has spread magically to the GOP. Alas he is very, very confused about feminism, as well as his own sexuality, I wager. The beating heart of feminism is control over our own bodies. And that means reproductive freedom. Palin, Haley, Angle, Fiorina, all anti-reproductive rights for women. They are not “Mama Grizzlies”……they are lifesized Stepford Barbies.
Everyone knows Palin gives old white guys wood….but that is a shrinking demographic. And the reason Palin is a gigantic turnoff for the under thirty demographic…..is that while MILFs are pretty cool, GILFs are just gross.
asiangrrlMN
I’m in for twenty. Let’s do this thing. I would love to see TNC educate some fools.
And, I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Holder make this comment ages ago? Why is it being brought up now?
@Delia: Yup. I agree. In fact, I think it’s more despicable because then the person is selling out his morals pretty damn cheaply. It’s like the difference between the Republicans who are stupid enough to believe the shit they spew (say, Bachmann) and and those who say it just to play to their bases (say, Palin). While I despise them both, I despise Palin more because she’s using other people’s fear and hatred to boost her own agenda.
@Brian J: I think the majority of TeaBaggers are racist. Otherwise, all the things they are protesting now, they would have been protesting for the last eight years. Yes, OK, if Hillary had been elected, the crazies would have come out as well, but much of that would have been misogynistic in nature.
grumpy realist
That article that compared the Tea Party members to the Poujadists was absolutely correct.
I have nothing but contempt for the Tea Party members and only slightly less contempt for Libertarians. None of them knows anything about history, government, law, or economics. (Libertarianism only makes sense if you are a 20-year-old male, who historically has been the only person who could head off into the wilderness with a gun, axe, and barrel of nails and “carve out” his own life. And probably died of some damned common illness because he didn’t have anyone around to help when things went sour, but that’s the breaks.)
ErikaF
Actually that’s the Tea Partier conception of government – a bullying, intrusive security state.
Tea Partiers figure gov’t is a super-Daddy that insists on supporting folks that don’t deserve it and won’t give special privileges to the Tea Partiers. Thus they can justify their race based anger – they’re not mad at the brownskins, they’re mad at the people that get special attention from Daddy because they’re poor and/or disadvantaged (and guess what races the “special attention” folks tend to be).
JMC_in_the_ATL
@joe from Lowell:
“They’re willing to make common cause with racists and run interference for them, which is plenty bad enough, but there’s really no reason to accuse Welch or Gillespie of racism. ”
Quite frankly, that makes them *worse* than racists.
Michael
@kay:
Projection, because they know what they’d be doing if they’d been as tromped as black folks once power got back into their hands completely.
They also know they’d completely deserve it.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Interesting that Tancredo even brings up literacy — hasn’t he seen the misspellings on Teabaggers’ signs?
joe from Lowell
No, any old example of them holding racists beliefs or attitudes would suffice. Cynical politicking and racism are not, in fact, the same thing.
Oh, absolutely. There’s more than one enemy out there, that’s all I’m saying.
“Functionally” blah blah blah sounds an awful lot like “Objectively pro-” blah blah blah. Let’s be precise in our language, and call out the Reasonoids for what they have done, not for what they have not or are not.
Worse than some racists, absolutely. It wasn’t my intent to lionize them, just identify them accurately.
Prof. K&G
@joe from Lowell: “Cynical politicking and racism are not, in fact, the same thing.”
By your definition, since George Wallace didn’t actually believe the things he said, he wasn’t racist. What should we call him, then? There does seem to be a good opportunity to coin a new term, here.