Because logic demands it
Desperate to prove that their Merry Band of Idiots totally isn’t racist, Teabillies have tapped Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson — the guy who has said that most blacks lack moral character — to lead the South Central Tea Party, thus answering once and for all the eternal question: Is the Tea Party racist?
We’ve seen the meme repeated and supposedly proven by a series of Racers, Racists and Race-hustlers, including Janeane Garofalo, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, Van Jones and the staff at NPR.
What a shock and a surprise for them when it was announced on Facebook yesterday that Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, a black man, is leading a Tea Party rally and protest, “…to expose the lies and misinformation of the NAACP in Los Angeles…” He even announced the formation of the “black led” South Central LA Tea Party. The event is scheduled for Sunday, July 24th from 2pm to 4pm.
[snip]
But as the meme of racism from the true Racists, Racers and Race-Hustlers continues to exist, it’s important to notice that they (as a total group) are liars. They lie to the American people, they lie to the media and they lie to themselves. The Tea Party is not now, nor has it ever been, nor would it ever tolerate, racism. Racism takes away from the message of the Tea Party, which has always been the Four Basics – The Constitution, Capitalism, Fiscal Responsibility and Smaller Government, four subjects that effect all Americans regardless of skin color.
The creation of this new Tea Party in South Central LA is just more proof of the lies of Garofalo and company. And one wonders, with all of their pronouncements decrying the Tea Party over the last two years, if they would attend a Tea Party whose group of organizers are black? I know I will be there. Maybe now is a good time for Matthews, Sharpton, Garofalo and the rest to come on out, see what a Tea Party is all about and finally admit they have been lying about the Tea Party for years.
Organizing a Tea Party in South Central is just good common sense. I’m sure that the Tea Party will thrive there, and that the rally will be a smashing success — especially if ol’ Grady “Niggra Race Pimps” Warren shows up.
Teabilly logic is infallible, innit?
[via Oliver Willis]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Zam
The tea party isn’t racist, it’s just filled with them, its leaders play on racial fears at almost every chance. Seriously, if one person could explain to me what they meant by saying “take our country back” before Obama had even enacted a single policy I might be more willing to agree with them.
Joel
For a not-racist organization, they’re certainly self-conscious about it.
kdaug
What the hell is a “racer”?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Dear Skreeparty:
I’ll be your black friend for the reasonable price of $10,000,000. Attending your events with the Caucasian boyfriend (thereby increasing your diversity rating) will cost you an extra $2,000,000, plus the tranquilizers needed to get him in a state where he won’t kill you. And me.
However, no amount of money will get me into that lame assed patriot drag you all favor. Stop stealing your wives’ stockings and wigs, you sick bastards.
M. Bouffant
I checked the dictionary & “Rev.” Peterson’s picture was right next to the definition of ‘Race-Hustler.”
Scamp Dog
@Zam
They mean “A Democrat got elected!” They got into all kinds of crazy $#it when Clinton was in office: accusations of murder, drug running, selling the Lincoln bedroom, investigating the Christmas card list, etc, etc. Sure, a certain amount of racist nonsense bubbles up amidst the other nonsense, but they’d be just as crazy if Hillary Clinton or Jon Edwards were in office. The specifics would change, but the crazy would remain. Count on it.
2th&nayle
As a white male lib born and raised in the south, I was wondering when someone would make mention of this. Gawd, I hate these bastards! Thanks ABL. The truth is never too late.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
No, the Tea Part isn’t the least bit racist. At all.
Thoughtcrime
I found some video of Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpuJaTA7Txk
Ash Can
The Tea Party isn’t racist ’cause they say so.
Brian S
Glad to see they’ve still got the grammatical errors working for them too.
Roger Moore
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
That was Tea Party Nation, not the Tea Party. Those are just people calling themselves Tea Partiers, not the real thing. This is one of the advantages of the somewhat amorphous nature of the Tea Party. There is no single Tea Party, so it’s always possible to disavow any specific instance of racist behavior as reflecting a single aberrant individual or group rather than the Tea Party as a whole.
It’s all part of the broader theme that all Whites* are individuals, while all Minorities represent their group at all times. So any number of White racists in the Tea Party can’t make the whole organization racist, but the presence of a single Minority supporter is proof that Minorities accept the Tea Party and anyone who suggests they don’t is a reverse racist.
*Except, of course, for Gay, Jewish, etc. Whites, who are really Minorities.
James E. Powell
@Brian S:
Typical out-of-touch liberal elitist. No one wants to have a beer with you!
dww44
@Scamp, I happen to agree with Zam that saying “I want my country back” 3 weeks after the election pretty much cemented that the sayers were and still are racist. A favorite cousin of mine, she, too, mired as am I in a sea of Republicans, said this from the get go.
Oh, the Tea Partiers say they aren’t racist. They may, in some instances, genuinely believe they aren’t, but those of us who live amongst them know that they are. I was driving down the road in this Red state in February 2009 and happened upon a white van with a big sign on the back that said “Where’s the Birth Certificate”? I was gobsmacked. The disrespect and disdain shown to Obama, coupled with the fact of his skin color and that he was a Democrat created the perfect storm to drive them nutso. And, we all know that indeed they are nuts.
The Europeans think this country has truly gone around the bend,the wheels have come off the bus, and the insane are running the asylum. It’s over and above the fact of a Democrat in power. As unliberal (IMO) as this President sometimes is, he is definitely a sane and rational and thoughtful man and infinitely preferable to anyone else on offer for the office. I just wish he would show a bit more anger sometimes, but I really do understand why he doesn’t. He would never have been elected if he came across as an angry black man.
signifyingmnky
@Scamp Dog
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. They called Clinton a crook and made a political witch hunt out of his presidency, but that was just about hating Democrats, and they’ve done that for years. They argued that Clinton was a Presidential crook who should be impeached, and then they impeached him.
Barack Obama on the other hand is a usurper. He’s not only “not my(read their) President”, he’s also not American, not Christian, Communist, Marxist, Socialist, Radical Black Christian Muslim and Manchurian Candidate, hell bent on destroying the country by taking the wealth of the “blessed” and “hard working” and giving it to the lazy.
I don’t ever recall any memes that inherently and willfully ignorant driven while Clinton was President. Those Republicans wanted to paint him as the Democratic Nixon.
These Republicans want to revoke this President’s citizenship.
“Take Our Country Back” isn’t about a Democrat getting elected at all. Those people have all lived under Democratic presidents without feeling like their country was taken from them. It’s about the fact that their worldview convinced them that a black man was naturally incapable of leading the country. Barack Obama winning the Presidency shattered that. He “robbed” them of their worldview. He “stole” their vision of their country.
Hence, “Take Our Country Back!”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Ash Can: Isn’t that what the SCOTUS said was all you needed?
Kane
In large measure, these are the same people who wore band-aids at the 2004 Republican presidential convention to mock and to put into question John Kerry’s war wounds. The very same people who developed an industry of conspiracy theories surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton, accusing them of everything from murder to operating a drug cartel.
There is no doubt that if Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich or Bill Richardson had won the Democratic nomination and the presidency rather than Barack Obama, the unfounded attacks and conspiracies would have come from the usual suspects. Surely the ammunition used in these attacks would differ depending on the individual, but the goal and purpose and visciousness to delegitimize would remain intact.
There’s no question that there is racism within the tea party and the Republican party, but more broadly the racist attacks resonate with these individuals simply because it is an attack on President Obama. Racism is a convenient tool in the arsenal to the objection of a Democratic president, who just happens to be Barack Obama.
Zifnab25
The real racists are the people that would suggest the honor and integrity of the glorious Elderly White Gentleman’s Society was anything less than unquestionable.
We’ll do what we want, to whom we want, and if you get in our way we’ll 2nd Amendment Rights you.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Once again, they do not understand racism. The very fact that the Peterson says that most blacks lack moral character makes him racist. It doesn’t matter that he’s black. A woman can be sexist against other women. All it takes is a judgment based on a perceived characteristic of the entire group.
This is why Michael Steele was able to stay as the head of the RNC for so long.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Kane: If Clinton had won, there would have been a number of attacks based on her weakness as a woman. They would have also gone have her for this being Bill Clinton’s third term. I wonder if they would have tried to impeach her for taking Bill’s advice because he could not be elected again?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Nice summary of the TP’s little Caucasian Exceptionalism problem R.M.
Next stop: “I wouldn’t have called you a n1gger if you hadn’t called me a racist!”
Larime the Gimp
While I think the crazy would be just as prevalent regardless of which candidate we had picked and elected, I think that Hillary and BO would get it worse than Edwards would have. The fact that it’s a democrat is enough for many of these people to lose their shit, but being a woman or a black man just makes the crazy even stronger. So yes, while I agree they’d be doing this to anyone we elected, I think Hillary would have had it a bit worse than Edwards and Barack has it worse than Hillary would have. It’s just icing on the crazy cake.
Roger Moore
@Kane:
I think you have it backward. The people making the attacks may be attacking Obama because he’s a Democrat, but they’re choosing a racist message because that’s what resonates with their audience. If the audience disliked Obama primarily because of his policies, that’s what they’d be attacking him for. I think that’s the key thing to understand about today’s Republican Party: for the base it’s about identity, not policy.
TooManyJens
I think that there aren’t so many people who hate Obama because he’s black who wouldn’t have also hated him if he were a white Democrat, but mostly that’s because I think the overlap between “virulent racist” and “crazy-ass Republican” is about 90% anyway. So yeah, they’re crazy-ass Republicans and they would have hated a white Obama like they hated Clinton, but him being black just cranks them up to 11.
Joel
Just because many of the ‘baggers would have lost their shit over H.R. Clinton had she won the presidency doesn’t mean that they’re not racist. Racism and sexism aren’t mutually exclusive. Matter of fact, I reckon that Venn diagram has a nice overlap.
SensesFail
@Roger Moore:
You made an excellent observation. When Tea Party leaders are questioned about the existence of racists signs at rallies or racist speech in emails, the leaders blame individuals and not the group. But when a black man supports the Tea Party, this demonstrates that all blacks are cool with the Tea Party.
lol
“Not racist, but number one with racists.”
Alison
One thing that would have been worse with Clinton would be the nonstop PMS jokes, because you know most of those ignorant asswipes wouldn’t realize she probably went through menopause like ten years ago.
Yutsano
Yup. Totes not racist. Now with tokens!
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
What does Soci@list public transportation have to do with it?[/wingnut]
Comrade Kevin
Oh, how amusing, at the top of the page on this post, there is an ad that says “STAND WITH RON PAUL, Click here to prevent a debt ceiling betrayal”. Not exactly their target audience here. I bet they’d be a hit on Stormfront, though.
slag
@Brian S: At least they didn’t go with “impact”. Though Kthug would love that.
ruemara
I can’t say hiring Uncle Ruckus to chair the South Central
TokenTea Party Group will draw more blacks to their cause. But it will give us something to talk about as we go about a moral character lacking, rib eating, live ‘coon munching, economy crashin’ ways.Also, Fuck You, Right Reverend Ruckus.
Kane
@Roger Moore
Ay, there’s the rub. The purpose of all the attacks directed at President Obama is to delegitimize him and his presidency. Once his legitimacy is put into question, then his policies become a unacceptable even when he is willing to adopt conservative policy.
PTirebiter
Reading this post, I couldn’t get past remembering an episode of the Dave Chappelle Show. He’d been born blind in the South and was adopted by a white family that put off telling him he was black until he’d become a leading member in the KKK.
DaddyJ
It is all about race, but in their mind they can’t be racist, because they are racism’s real victims.
I have an in-law (upper-middle class, white, Tea Party sympathetic if not active) who pointed out the hillbilly caricature on a can of retro Mountain Dew and declaimed “I regard that as racist!”
Sadly, their victimization seems to consist of nothing more than being prevented from victimizing those beneath them. The freedom they are always yammering about losing is the freedom to kick down.
And some of them would rather bring the whole damn ladder down than live unsure of their status.
If this was a 95% white nation, there’d be no Tea Party and little handwringing about the nanny state.
Steeplejack
@PTirebiter:
Win! I was thinking the same thing.
Villago Delenda Est
The problem the tea party has is that they have no credibility on what they claim is their reason for being: concern over the deficit, concern over “big government”, concern about the Constitution.
When the deserting coward was spending like a poet on payday, when he was expanding government intrusion into transportation and communications, when he was ignoring the 4th Amendment and our treaty obligations, the tea partiers were silent at best, and to be honest, cheering him on.
Then 8PM PST 4 November 2008 rolls around, and suddenly, the deficit is the most important thing there is in the universe. Just like opening a door, suddenly there’s a problem. It didn’t exist as a problem, in the eyes of the tea party, until John McCain conceded the election.
This is first about what party the President is a member of, and to compound things, the guy has a melanin surplus. He’s near. That just adds to the outrage.
Yutsano
@Villago Delenda Est:
Actually, that’s pretty much all there is to it right there. All the other fake outrage stems from that one single fact.
Lysana
@DaddyJ:
As an aside, there are areas where hillbillies are specifically a protected class in the US. Ohio had to pass laws about it as many of its citizens were denying people housing and jobs based on their accent. And there IS a strain of bigotry against hillbillies in this culture. Leftover from the days when race wasn’t based on color and maintained by classism. But claiming a hillbilly on a can of Mountain Dew has the same cultural weight as a vaudeville darky on a hypothetical bottle of shoe polish is nonsense. The problem is, there’s just enough of a weight to that cartoon that it gives them comfort.
Jewish Steel
Greetings! Greetings! Fellow Race-Hustlers! (electronic Debussey bubbles in the background)
Yutsano
@Jewish Steel:
They have a shot for that now you know.
Jewish Steel
I think it’s pure moog on Jack Horkhimer’s Star Hustler and there is no known cure.
I am a step down from ICU, recovering from mechanical pleuridesis and bleb stapling. I may get my chest tube out tomorrow. I’m not exactly thrilled to be lucid enough to be typing this but they took away my morphine pump today. But I’ve been lurking and watching over all of you and will return among you like a certain other well-known Jew who was physically tortured and then disappeared.
Yutsano
@Jewish Steel:
I’d get that back like now. I just did some minor research and you’ll be a hurting unit for awhile. You may have to perform sexual favors with the nurses, but it’s a small price to pay for your comfort.
Seriously: don’t be afraid to ask for pain control if you need it.
Steeplejack
@Jewish Steel:
Dude! Sounds bad. Get well soon.
Jewish Steel
Thanks, boys!
I’m going to tell them their dosing me below my level of pain tomorrow.
YellowJournalism
Alison: I could definitely see that if Clinton where POTUS. And once it was pointed out that she’d probably gone through menopause, the Rush-types would endlessly play soundbites of Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes saying, “What you need to do is get yourself some horomones!”
(This means I’ve seen that movie too many times or I just really know what kind of cheesy, sexist crap most radio pundits use to punctuate the crap they spew.)
Frank Lee Mideer
@Joel 1:25am:
People who supported Obama over HRC in the ’08 primaries are racist?
You are one confused little man, Joey…
Nylund
The Mrs. and I went to a parade in a small town in Texas some time back. The Tea Party had a booth set up. Bunch a crazy white guys saying stuff to each other like, “Katrina was a good thing because it washed away a lot of trash,” and “You’re getting too tan. Any darker and I’m going to make you start mowing my lawn.” I even heard one tell a “joke” that went, “Why do black people smell so bad? So blind people can hate them too.” It was utterly disgusting. I could fill a novel with the crap I’ve heard from avowed Tea Partiers.
arguingwithsignposts
Go Skree Racer!
h/t thoughtful black co-citizen
This is one big “i have a black friend” defense.
WereBear
@Nylund: Your description of their “jokes” supports what @DaddyJ was saying about “kick down.” Without a large & homogenous group to look down upon, and automatically be better than; they would feel their lives have no meaning.
I do think they are deeply racist; because it’s so amazingly obvious. They are misogynous too; they don’t need a woman President to show that, either. Yes, they hate Democrats, even if they are also white Southern men like Carter and Clinton.
Why parse these differences like it matters? The Tea Party hates everyone!
Bruce S
Peterson is also the guy who has said on his radio show “Thank God for slavery and white people…” (God’s way of bringing black folk to America according to his fevered “brain”) and that slave ships were just “like crowded airplanes!”
I don’t totally discount that there actually is something of a black conservative tradition (black feminist icon Zora Neale Hurston wrote scathingly against Brown V. Board of Ed. and school desegregation as an “insult” to black teachers and black schools, the NOI is nothing if not fundamentally conservative and there’s the sad turn of Bernice King), but Peterson can’t even fill those shoes – just a flamingly opportunistic and appropriately ignorant wing-nut trying to cash in. This guy doesn’t begin to offer an inch of cover – whatever checks he’s cashing, he’s not worth it even for this absurd errand.
MikeJ
Speaking of racist fucksticks, have you seen the thread over at Edroso’s place?
Nick1936
I know one when I see one
harlana
Just WOW, for once, I’m speechless
arguingwithsignposts
@MikeJ: yeah, that comment thread at Edroso’s is a sewer. Ugh.
Woodrowfan
why do I see racists when i look at the Tea Party? I dunno. Probably for the same reason I see water when I look at the ocean.
LittlePig
Villago Delenda Est Johnson is right!
Matt
Apparently nobody’s pointed out to Big Cheese Teabagger that assuming South Central is some sort of infinite fountain of negritude is *itself* a pretty racist idea…
Mike Lamb
Shorter Tea Party: We have a black friend, we can’t be racist…
drkrick
Disagree. Some tipping point was passed between ’81 and ’93. Republicans regarded Carter with disapproval and even contempt, but they didn’t dispute his right to hold the office after he was elected to it. The response to Clinton 12 years later was qualitatively different, starting with the “Impeach Clinton” bumper stickers that popped up around DC in November ’92, two months before he could possibly have committed an act that would justify impeachment, and continuing with the baseless charges of murder, drug dealing, and corruption around an money-losing land deal before hitting pay dirt with a false deposition in a civil case based on perjured claims of damages in the first place.
The music was going to be the same no matter what Dem took office in 2009. Obama’s race just determined the content of the lyrics.
sublime33
Nothing says “grass roots movement” quite like a protest sign that 99% of people don’t have the equipment capable of printing such a slick looking sign.
jon
There’s a lot of racial harmony at Conservatives4Palin in its discussions of the best film ever.
My favorites:
and
jake the snake
I work with an African-American woman who is a Tea-Partier and a big fan of Rand Paul. (We are in Bowling Green, KY where Paul has his practice). I have not discussed this with her, but I did hear her complaining about liberals
and about some extemely high percentage of people in Detroit being functionally illiterate.
She is ex-military which may have something to do with it. I suspect she is some specie of liberatarian.
She did give me a little pamphlet copy of the Constitution from the Heritage foundation when she heard I had one I had printed off the internet.
gocart mozart
Jesse Lee Peterson will soon divorce his wife on the grounds that she is a “n*gger lover.”
gocart mozart
Yeah, it started over at Roy’s ‘Village Voice’ piece where the comments are 1000+, most by some ass who accurately calls himself “Racist, Waaah, Waaah!”. He then slithered over to alicublog and polluted that comment section.
piratedan
so is what they’re saying is that being/voting against your self interest doesn’t have to adhere to a racial group? Man-oh-man, how American is that!
Joel
@Frank Lee Mideer: The fuck are you saying?
dj spellchecka
i went to a teabagger rally here in northeast ohio last fall and for every four african-americans in the audience there was one african american speaker, the one who headlined….
oddly enough he asked the nearly all white audience repeatedly “do i look like a racist to you?”
some things never change…
Kane
-Matt Taibbi