Here’s Tea Party Express Chair Amy Kremer on the topic of former chair, racist and “fellow conservative” Mark Williams:
“While Mark Williams may speak on behalf of us in some circumstances and in some situations, and we may agree on some things, this is not one of the things that we agree upon and Mark Williams is speaking on his own behalf and his own behalf only,” she said.
While reading this in the Anchorage Daily News, I was reminded yet again how silly it was for the NAACP to play the race card with the teabaggers. When local media makes Williams’ racism the lede in a story about a teabagger challenger, and when it devotes paragraph after paragraph to his mutterings about “Coloreds”, it just shows how much the NAACP overplayed its victimhood.
Lolis
Where is the denouncing and renouncing? Pretty weak tea.
Laertes
Teatards: YHBT. YHL. HAND.
They got pwned, hard. NAACP took a chance, calling them out for their racism. Had they reacted calmly, NAACP would have looked pretty silly.
It must have been terribly frustrating for the teabaggers who are merely freaking out because the President is a Democrat that the ones who are freaking out because the President is Black so quickly stepped to the mic to answer and prove the NAACP right.
El Cid
These are the people who despised Barack Obama for being near Bill Ayers and sitting in Jeremiah Wright’s church? That‘s separation of message and messenger?
David in NY
On the other hand, shouldn’t we wish that Miller would beat Murkowski for the nomination? Or not.
cleek
here’s to hoping something similar happens in mid-October.
Joshua Norton
How convenient. They can pick and chose when their douche-nozzle spokesperson is speaking for them.
Sorry, ducks. In for a penny, in for a pound. If you agree with him on anything, you agree with him on everything.
roshan
It’s funny that when the wingnuts cry socialism no one is bothered to say that they are over doing it but when actual cases of racist behavior is pointed out, people are quick to tell the accusers to tone it down.
Tata
Victimhood? A plain statement of fact is victimhood?
It’s disappointing to see mistermix buy the R theme that pointing out racism in the public discourse is ill mannered.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Laertes: Actually, no; the NAACP couldn’t have looked silly.
How could calmly and politely asking the Tea Party to refudiate(yeah, I said it) the unreconstructed white supremacists documented to have participated in essentally ALL Tea Party events possibly made them look silly?
No, there may not have been the utter pwnage had the Tea types reacted rationally… but, well, we are talking about the Tea Party, here.
Laertes
He’s not buying the idea, Tata, he’s mocking it.
dmsilev
@Tata: I think you need to recalibrate your sarcasm detector.
dms
Montysano
The deranged opposition to Obama is shot through with racism. There is simply no other explanation for the dementia caused by a provably centrist politician who is following a center-right agenda. So…. good on the NAACP, and shame on Wiegel for trivializing racism.
MattR
@Tata: I think you missed the sarcasm (click on the link at the word “silly” for confirmation)
El Cid
@Tata: I think there’s a good bit of sarcasm going on there.
El Cid
@MattR: stereo
matoko_chan
Dude, Weigel, McMegan, Chunky Reese Witherspoon Douthat, an’ all the rest of the WATB bourgie conservatives do exactly the same thing.
check this.
The system is WAI.
The democratic meritocracy selects for talent and virtue. OF COURSE an avatar of Jefferson’s natural aristoi could arise in a rural conservative population….but they get drummed out of the regiment.
The problem is an old one…..how do Jefferson’s noble yeoman farmers (NYFs) get self-representation?
In theory, the natural aristoi can arise anywhere– look at Obama.
But in practice the natural aristoi are selected out or driven out of the conservative tribe.
Douthat has it exactly assbackwards– we don’t need to level meritocratic values like “virtue and talent”, or give conservatives skillups so they can play…..
virtue and talent need to be selected FOR instead of selected AGAINST in the conservative base.
DougJ
Yes, this is right on the money. The same thought went through my head watching CNN yesterday. It’s turned into a series of tea baggers being asked “when did you stop beating your wife?”
Redshirt
Well, wait till Breitbart sets you all straight. He’s got video!
mistermix
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Yes. It’s always a risk for a minority group to stick up for itself, but that’s why people pay money to support groups like the NAACP (and the ADL, HRC, etc.)
scav
@Joshua Norton: well, Bush-league round 2 is only acknowledged as one of theirs when bloody convenient to the current sacred and ever-lasting cause (menu changes daily, be sure to ask your server) and president outranks spokesman according to most traditional metrics. ya jus gotta remember that the broad brush only works on others, the ones with actual platforms ‘n’ shit. That’s exactly why one’s gotta avoid that whole “careful policy development” because it leads to the development of things where paint (other than blusher and eyeliner) might adhere to.
Zandar
As I’ve said before, the NAACP should be addressing actual instances of clear racism and abuse of power towards minorities like in the Oscar Grant murder than giving Teabagger assholes free “Why isn’t there a NAAWP?” credibility.
catclub
Al Haig, after Reagan was shot, usurping authority, right?
I sure wish the NAACP had used sarcasm instead of sincerity.
“We think that the Teaparty should never denounce any racists in their midst. Look at how successful George Wallace was, and he never backed down!”
David in NY
“Why isn’t there a NAAWP?”
Because its real name is the Republican Party, Tea Party division.
Simple answers to simple questions.
David in NY
@catclub:
I was going to say I didn’t understand the relevance of the Haig quote. Help, anyone?
catclub
@David in NY:
Various spokesmen of the (various) Teaparties are saying contradictory things.
Sentient Puddle
@Laertes:
If the risk for a given strategy is that the Tea Party will react calmly to a provocation, then you’ve struck gold. The only real question left is how to harness this energy into building a perpetual motion machine.
Paul L.
Amazing the progressives who decried “guilt by association” with Obama/Rev. Wright embrace it with Mark Williams/Tea Parties.
Jackmormon
I saw the most recent iteration of this dust-up on CNN while on line at the bank—in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where I was the *only* white person present. So, so embarrassing.
cleek
@Redshirt:
i wonder if his video is the one about the USDA official who says she didn’t do all she could to help the white farmer… that happened at an NAACP fundraiser.
El Cid
@Paul L.: Mark Williams was the head of that Tea Party group. The analogy would have been that Reverend Wright or Bill Ayers was the candidate. Idiot.
gwangung
@cleek: That’s the one where the USDA person said she made a mistake 26 years ago and wouldn’t do the same thing again? Where the conservative pushback leads to never admitting a mistake or your own racism–i.e., the very things Williams is guilty of?
David in NY
@Paul L.:
They should start a new section on the SAT’s entitled False Equivalences.
I only hope that the Tea Party gets the same beating up about this that Obama got about Jeremiah Wright. But you thought that was all unfair at the time, right?
El Cid
And now there’s even more Obama administration attacks on good, honest, hardworking white people for their ACORN and NAACP conspirators.
So why isn’t the
Bush Jr.Obama administration prosecuting the New Black Panther Party for looking intimidating at a polling place without anyone apparently available to testify that they were intimidated?That is what’s important, not these minor incidents of white crackers going hunting for African Americans fleeing a flood and levee collapse because it seems fun.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
That’s the one. Because in Conservativeland, making a mistake 26 years ago that you use as a teaching tool to try and prevent other people from making the same mistake is exactly the same as making a mistake yesterday that you try to pretend wasn’t a mistake at all. That’s why Robert Byrd and David Duke were exactly the same. QED.
El Cid
@Mnemosyne: They hated Robert Byrd far more than they hated David Duke, because Byrd apologized and denounced his prior racism. That’s just going too far. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms never did that.
gnomedad
See, we’re a diverse group! Some of us are racists, and some aren’t.
El Cid
@gnomedad: Actually, it’s more like “We will disagree with him when he says racist stuff but we’re good with him when he doesn’t.”
El Cid
Oops — H/T to GOS diary for the story on charging hate crimes against the racist anti-black hunting parties post-Katrina.
jomo
That blog post crossed a line – it was so blatantly racist that it really couldn’t be tossed off as satire. It did everything the NAACP could have wanted. It made their charges plausible, it took the spotlight off them and firmly on the Tea Party, and it forced people to take sides. As race is one of the galvanizing issues of the Tea Party it may change the dynamic. And if Mark Williams pushes himself back onto the front page instead of disappearing like he should, it could really mess things up for them.
Ash Can
@El Cid:
Get called out, that is.
dj spellchecka
don’t know if the naacp intended for this to play out the way it did…but this sure reminds me of pure muhammad ali “rope-a-dope.”
they couldn’t have dreamed of a better outcome…the federation boots the racist, the racist’s buddies cry foul….cat fight, beotches!