‘Left’ Behind: Tolerance and the Tea Party
Speaking of tolerance, the Keyboard Militia found an infiltrator wearing Nazi SS garb at the St. Louis rally.
He’d probably get along quite well with our president’s old fundraiser host and alleged ghostwriter Bill Ayers. I don’t think either hikes, but both seem to have an affinity for camps.
In North Texas, Lance Pippenger caught a picture of tea party security intercepting a man in full Confederate regalia attempting to enter a tea party with the Stars and Bars.
I know that some of the tea party attendees are a little long in the tooth, but I don’t think any of them are that old. Note that neither the security guard nor the two men on the event staff beside him seemed at all thrilled with the disruption. They did remain civil as they turned this man away, and the flagpole is still presumably attached to the flag.
This wasn’t the only appearance of the old Confederate battle flag on display, however, as these two specimens showed up at Houston’s tea party.
Let me see if I get this right: a Confederate battle flag is supposed to be a sign of bigotry and racism according to the leftist orthodoxy (Stuff Stalin Said, 2nd. ed., pp. 34). But I’m fairly certain the young man on the left hasn’t gone to many Klan meetings, unless he’s gone with Dave Chappelle. Perhaps they were going for “edgy”?
In Cincinnati, we found a “moby” that looks like Moby, captured on camera by Michael Reeseman. Per Michael:
My wife Sarah and I had just gone down to the concession area when we heard the crowd warmly welcoming Sonja Schmidt to the podium. Rather than make the climb back to the nosebleed seats right away we stepped outside for some air and spotted this lonely fellow doing his rather obvious agent-provocateur bit.
Reading his sign, I quipped as we passed “Actually, there’s one inside speaking right now.”
“Who is she?” he asked. (Or “Where is she?” I wasn’t sure; the former makes more sense.)
“Sonja Schmidt — google her.” We continued to walk.
“You mean “Sonja Token”? he replied, a bit smarmily to my ears.
I’m not quite sure what it is about pasty white urban liberals that makes them think they have the right to judge the “authenticity” of someone’s race, but it must be tied to the same poorly oxygenated part of the brain that makes them blind to the fact assigning a skin color an ideology is racism of the first order itself.
For the past few weeks Democrats were thrilled with the idea of going to tea parties around the nation and exposing racism.
I wonder how they feel about that now.
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky.
Notice they either have a stupid smirk on their face or a glassy eyed, totally fogged out look?
They don’t WANT socialism, they NEED socialism (along with a 10 1/2 D in the ass, that their parents, Moonbeam and Stoney, should have performed!).
The left is tolerant only of their views, and their heads explode when competing views are expressed to a wide audience. They’re so accustomed to the lamestream media being complicit in spewing the leftist message that they go apoplectic whenever it’s challenged.
Mr. Liberal Tolerance Guy’s complaining to the police is reminiscent of police-station-bombing-Bill Ayers calling the police when Fox News showed up at his doorstep for comment.
“Waaa! Waaa! Waaa! Mr. Police Officer, they’re taking my picture! Make them stop! Waaa! Waaa! Waaa!”
Hilarious, indeed!
Sad sacks on the wrong side of history.
I went to both DC events and saw almost nothing in the way of infil-traitors. Three 30-ish guys in office clothes and metrosexual haircuts were yukking it up at the Washington Monument holding stationery-sized signs obviously written at the last moment and stapled inside manila folders so they could conceal them with a flip.
One sign said “Jesus is my co-payment”, a bridge too far in cleverness terms… but hey, the got the Jesus mockery in there, so they were proud of themselves.
The other sign said, and I kid you not, “I’m ignorant”.
I believed him. He looked like a congressional aide, possibly from Barney Frank’s office. I thought about bracing those three with my camcorder, but I decided I couldn’t improve on the second sign’s self-declaration, so I just moved on.
Dave in Dallas, I arrived at the DC Washington Monunment event around 7:10pm and saw on the 15th street side a couple of counter-protesters with a racist sign hand-written on a bed sheet; which kept getting covered-up by ralliers placing their signs in front of it.
Oh my, where to start? What a great thing the TEA Party events are. Thank you for the pictures in this story and others. And the man who hearts teabagging? The young lady standing next to him does not seem to share his enthusiasm. Perhaps he hearts it because it is truly rare. (and yes, I think people who use that term deserve a bit of ridicule)
A bit off topic but it is on my mind this morning, I sure hope Pres. Clinton was not equating the TEA partiers with the OK City bomber(s). I don’t see the similarity. We are not skulking around, buying up a bunch of fertilizer, we are right out in the open. Peacefully demonstrating. Showing our faces. Planning to accomplish change through the ballot box.
His comment did bring something to mind. There are wacky people everywhere, he knew a few, Obama hires them, and there are people who seem to hate the IRS for reasons that go beyond their tax forms. What WJC and BHO might want to consider is what the anti-IRS people are going to do when that agency becomes the enforcer of the health care mandate. Seems to me, that’s worth a little more worry than the little ol’ TEA partiers.
The notion that a low turnout of blacks at the tea parties proves the tea partiers are racist is absurd.
In the first place, according to CNN’s exit polling, Obama won 96% of the black vote. If that data is correct, they are firmly in his corner — as they have every right to be — and given that fact, plus the fact that blacks only make up about 12% of the population in the first place, it is simply ridiculous to expect them to show up in large numbers at gatherings specifically aimed at protesting Obama’s agenda.
In the second place, the tea parties are not country clubs with admissions committees deciding who gets in and who doesn’t. Blacks, like everyone else, are free to participate or not. If they choose not to participate, that only tells us they don’t support the tea party’s positions or perhaps are simply too busy to attend — but in any event, it is their choice and hence does not necessarily tell us anything at all about the motivations of the tea partiers themselves.
So when Keith Olbermann intones pompously, “Hey tea partiers, where are all the blacks?”, the answer is that they are wherever they wish to be.
Third, the whole accusation of racism against the tea partiers is just the logical fallacy of ad hominem. Even if the tea partiers were racists, this would not prove their arguments or positions false — because the truth or falsehood of any argument is not a function of the character of the person advancing it.
Ad hominem is not a debating tactic — it is, in fact, a tactic for avoiding debate. So I have a question for the left:
When are you going to drop the phony racism issue and address the real question, which is this: Given that we all agree that the 19th century practice of forcing one man to pick another man’s cotton was a great and terrible evil, why then does the left today think it is perfectly acceptable to force one man to pay another man’s doctor bills?
620,000 Americans died in a horrific civil war fought largely to eliminate an economic system that functioned on the idea that some individuals are entitled to free (or reduced cost) goods and services provided by confiscating the fruits of the labor of other individuals. Why, then, has the left been on a 70+ year crusade to resurrect this noxious idea in the form of a welfare state, wherein “the needy” are presumed to have this very same right to free (or reduced cost) economic goods and services provided by confiscating the fruits of the labor of the “less needy”?
Tell us what justifies such a notion.
I love your comment, because you hit it right on the nail. I am a black man and I know that a lot of blacks insinuate racism because of a learned mistrust of white people. Some believe whites have a culture that says blacks are better served as tools for labor rather than to have equal rights as whites do. It is an unfortunate stereo-type that makes blacks become what they claim to despise, RACISTS. The very notion that a person would be judged on their skin tone is absurd. Your skin tells me nothing of who you are and what you believe. What the black community needs to do is to study history of racists movements of the past. In the opposition to the civil rights act of 1964 you had overt racists people carrying signs that said overt racists things. They had the numbers and the communities to endorse these movements. Today those same racists people must hide within groups like the Tea Party because they know they do not have the support they once had 46 years ago. They can’t carry the same racist signs they once could and the main reason is that the majority of people don’t think in that way. It is obvious the Tea Party is about the issues, because if it were not they would not have hesitated to show their true colors since they have numbers that match their physical appearance. Here is a White Supremacist site to prove my point http://www.stormfront.org. just view their Tea Party participation on April 15.
PrimeDirective
“What the black community needs to do is to study history of racists movements of the past. In the opposition to the civil rights act of 1964 you had overt racists people carrying signs that said overt racists things”
I agree. Also, by studying it I hope they notice there were a couple people against the civil rights act that had non racist reasons. They warned that to enforce this; the role of government had to change and it would probability end up having negative repercussions. So, in the name of anti racism the progressives were able to do what they had wanted since the end of WWI (and had tried to do several times after then; but failed). Vastly increase the power and reach of the federal government. Fighting racism was the foot in door to keep it open. It’s also probably part of the reason they throw out ‘racism’ whenever people question state power (i.e., it worked in the past, while all their other arguments failed).
Please see Bill Randall and others speaking about race at Tea Parties
http://anotherblackconservative.blogspot.com/2010/04/videos-black-conservatives-bill-randall.html
If you like Bill’s message, you can learn more about him at http://randallforcongress.com/ – primary election is May 4th
You might also find this link interesting, long but worth it, The Other Side of “the Race Card”
http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/03/31/the-other-side-of-the-race-card/
After seeing these, I’ve got more books to buy, I’ve become a history junkie and look forward to reading Rev. Perryman
One wonders why the “yobbos for hire” aren’t being shipped in just yet. One suspects that many who were scheduled to turn out for the events put it off because of the spectre of violent progressive incitements.
I strongly suspect that as November gets closer, we will see the progressive strategy shift to that option, meaning that SEIU will probably have a large (person) recruitment drive beginning in May or June, as the known stooges would be too obvious were they to get involved in the yobbo brigade.
However, having seen teh quality of the progressive “infiltration”, they are about as good at this as they are at trying to run a country.
The Left just can’t comprehend a protest that’s unlike their anti-war/William Ayers protests. If these people represent The Left’s “best shot,” they SURE need to get back to the drawing board!
I loved the confrontation with the “NAZI.” Not too quick on his feet, repartee-wise, he looked like he wanted to punch his confronter, but he undoubtedly did NOT want to be arrested, with a subsequent investigation of who he really was. Perfect!
This guy in the photos does not use his brain for much.
The Black population in the U.S. is approx 12%.
The percentage of Blacks that are not Democrats is something like 10 – 15%.
So at best it might be expected to see a couple of Black citizens per 100 at a TP event. That would be a “best case” scenario.
(
Now out of the 2 per 100 how many are actively involved and will go out and attend any political event? Some people go to these events and some people don’t. That’s just a fact of life.
So by looking at the simple math why would anyone expect a large proportion of the rallies to be made up of our Black Americans??
We are probably lucky to have 1 or 2 per 500 which is a figure we must improve on and bring more and more Americans into the movement.
“They” are as much a part of “us” as we are….
“We” are all Americans.
Oh and as far as the morons kkk sign.. He must have missed out on his factual history class. (do they actually teach such a thing as factual history?)
It was members of his own Democrat party in the south that started the KKK following the Civil War with the purpose being to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
That’s right you leftist knuckleheads, your own kind started and supported one of the worlds biggest HATE groups known to man.
Not to even mention the Democratic parties opposition to the civil rights movement.
try googling Robert Byrd, the Democrats longest serving Senator, and read how he supported civil rights… Very interesting…
Leftist love to reinvent history.
Leftist = Propagandist
I’ve been saying that, since they first started calling Tea Party folks racist. I did the math and I’m no statistician, but it became clear to me with the simple math principles I was taught in school that a statistical proportion of Black folks were indeed present at their local Tea Parties.
It’s like that Black Gentleman told the MSNBC reporter when she asked him if he was uncomfortable, ” No, these are my people, Americans”. How profound was that?
Actually, according to the latest polling data, black participation at tea party events is at about 6% — so that is a relatively high number when you take into account the other information that you posted.
Maybe black conservatives are making an extra effort to go to the protests to help fight the left’s ‘racist’ meme. “self selecting for over representation” or something.
In each of the cases of the infiltrators, they were snarky and swarmy 30something white guys (with the ACLU girl). The very group that is NOT in favor by Obozo, the left, AA/EEOC policies, and are considered priveleged and therefore not “in”. How do these idiots reconcile that irony?
Jerry Stanton found this smug liberal standing behind the crowd at the New Haven, CT, Tea Party, with a foul two-sided sign.
Obvious counter protest. And given the actual statistical count of non-whites at tea party events (see at http://bit.ly/cxVYN6) he sort of has a point. Perhaps figuring out how to include more non-whites would be more helpful than ignoring the problem via the excuse that said liberal tried to get his message across in bumper sticker format.
So Bob, let’s discuss that. Why is the tea party not resonating with minorities? What can be done to obviate the liberal’s underlying point?
One obvious observation one could make here is that tea parties are seen as borderline racist, even subtly. I would tend to agree. Much of the far right narrative regarding health care invokes the image of welfare queens; for that matter, poster after poster after poster on this site complains about the welfare state in general where it concerns health care. Given the history of the welfare state people hear the narrative and translate this as yet another culture war assault.
So what can be done to fix that image?
There is no image to fix. The Tea Party stands for what it stands for. Those who agree will stand with it. Those who don’t, won’t.
You’re going to the wrong source. Instead of asking Tea Partiers what we can do to attract more minority participation, perhaps you should ask minorities, in particular black minorities, why they stand so solidly with a party that thinks the best they can and should expect is government handouts and transfers of wealth. A party so in thrall with the education lobby and teachers’ unions that it condemns generation after generation of minority children to sub-standard educations in unsafe, crumbling schools.
Democrats created the “welfare queen” when they drove a stake through the heart of minority communities and families with their Great Society policies and have labored mightily since then to condition minorities to accept their lot of the downtrodden beholden to whomever tosses them the biggest bone. Tea Partiers happen to think all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, are better than than and capable of so much more. We believe that dependence only fosters more dependence and harms the so-called have-nots far more than the so-called haves who are tapped to pay the freight for that dependence. And minorities who agree will stand with us.
Bravo to you, Sukie, for you are exactly right.
There is a reason why today’s leftists and “progressives” always resort to calling their opponents on the right “racists”.
The reason is that their two cherished ideas — socialism (in some shape, form or fashion) as a domestic policy and pacifism as an international policy — were thoroughly refuted by the events of the 20th century.
Socialism did not bring prosperity to the masses as its advocates claimed it would — rather, in places where it was practiced fully and consistently, it brought mass death by starvation to the masses. See, for instance, the histories of the U.S.S.R., communist China, North Korea, Cuba, etc.
Likewise, pacifism did not bring about world peace as was promised by its advocates — instead, it invited the horrific aggressions of two world wars and one “cold war” which saw the deaths of millions of innocents and the enslavement of still millions more under communism.
Thus, with their two beloved ideas so thoroughly discredited and debunked, the left is reduced to lame ad hominems, the two most popular being “You are racists” and “You are stupid”. It’s all they have. It’s a demonstration of their intellectual bankruptcy.
Since the Tea Party rallies were open to everyone, we have to assume blacks
weren’t present because they chose not to be. No problem, that’s their choice.
Instead of questioning the motivations of Tea Partiers (which they are quite open
about)time might be better spent asking why black voters have consistently
rejected Republican’s recruitment efforts? Could it be many black Americans
are themselves racist? After all Obama got 96% of the black vote. Do you think
all these voters agreed with every policy position Obama took or is it possible
they voted for our President solely because of his skin color? No caucasion
politician in U.S. history has ever gotten that kind of support from any voting
bloc.
The problem Republicans have with enticing the black vote is that so many
black voters are about as open-minded as the O.J. jury. There really is no
way to reach them at this stage of the game, which is sad because Democrat
policies do the most damage to the black community. Hopefully one day the Tea
Party supporters can help change this.
I’ll tell you why minorities are distrustful of the GOP. We have seen how it uses a few “tokens” (such as Michael Steele) to try to give the impression that it isn’t racist, but then we see the mostly Republican Teabaggers marching around with signs reading, “White Slavery,” “Niggar [sic],” “What you talkin’ bout Willis,” “Go back to Kenya,” and signs depicting the President as an African witch doctor. And there are many, many more overt displays of racism at Teabagging events that I could list here, but then that would require that I spend the rest of the day doing that.
I am an ex-Republican. I voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and campaigned for George H.W. Bush in 1988. It was the latter experience that really showed me just how much prejudice exists within the party. I am biracial as well as bilingual. English is my main language, and I speak it without an accent. Yet, because I am most certainly NOT lily-white, it’s assumed that I must be a foreigner, and an illegal one at that (despite the fact that my family has been on what is now U.S. soil for thousands of years). I made many calls to potential voters before the election and spoke with a lot of extremely prejudiced Bush supporters who didn’t realize that they weren’t talking to a white person. Wow, what an eye-opener. The other campaign volunteers were nice to me, probably because I was the only one who could try to sell Bush to Spanish-speaking potential voters. Still, there were some rather uncomfortable moments, such as when we decided to have a potluck just for staffers. Apparently, the others assumed that I would bring some homemade Mexican food. I brought homemade mac & cheese instead.
The Christian Coalition completed its takeover of the GOP in the late 1980s, and along with that came even more prejudice. Gone was the party that always supported less government intrusion into our personal lives; in its place was a party that became focused on limiting personal freedom for some and forcing one religion upon everyone. I quit the GOP in disgust in 1992, and have been an independent voter ever since.
It seems that the Teabaggers are desperate to latch onto any nonwhite person they see at their events and use them as “proof” that large numbers of minorities support their agenda. I’ve seen news reports on gatherings in which white Teabaggers paraded a black Teabagger or two on a stage as though they were trophies.
Personally, I can’t understand why minorities who are Teabaggers don’t seem to mind the overt racism and prejudice displayed at these events. Then again, stupidity isn’t limited to just one race.
Well Ms. Mundy, the first thing you *could* do is to refer to us as Tea Party people instead of the derogatory term you used. The next thing you *could* do is to use your eyes to really see what the Tea Party movement is all about. If you watch the MSM, all you will see is what *they* want you to see, in effect perpetuating the agenda of the *progressive* movement.
Tea Parties are about less government, lower taxes and getting back to the Constitution of our founding fathers. Educated minorities who use reason and logic see what this administration and the previous administration have and are doing to us, the American people.
I was never a fan of GWB, but one thing I’ll say for him…you wouldn’t see him bowing to another world leader like our current president. And GWB wouldn’t apologize for being an American or having American values like our current president.
Only thing I can say sister is, stop drinking the *koolaid* before it’s too late.
Don’t feed the concern troll.
Well, the first thing to fix that image might be to point out that it’s always some ninny from the left side trying to insinuate a racist or racial component to the Tea Parties.
Check out this video from this week: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/16/nbc_reporter_to_black_man_at_tea_party_have_you_ever_felt_uncomfortable.html.
Note this report of the NYC Tea Party (by Ira Stoll, also a PJM writer):
Observe that several other polls besides the NY Times one seem to have the racial makeup and the proportion of women much higher than the Times. Enough to make one wonder about the Times’ sample.
It would seem that the best way to fix the image of the Tea Parties is to continue to refute the people with transparent motives who keep repeating that the Tea Parties are white and exclusionary.
[Updated with the link to Ira Stoll's blog.]
Observe that several other polls besides the NY Times one seem to have the racial makeup and the proportion of women much higher than the Times. Enough to make one wonder about the Times’ sample.
Indeed. However, the CBS/NYT poll was a random sampling regarding support (and interesting of it’s own accord) rather than tabulation of who actually showed up and where. Tabulation polls will vary, and the most interesting ones would be those such as the CA central valley where whites are hovering near 50% of the population.
If the central valley data (e.g.; there are other places like this) shows the same over-representation of whites as I’d guess at just by looking at pictures posted of events, it really *is* prudent to ask why this is.
Certainly nobody is suggesting overt racial overtones. However, white tea party predominance in areas where the white population is edging to minority status itself is problematic in terms of both long term image *and* message. No racism may be intended, but if minorities aren’t showing up in the same ratios as per population, it could be that they perceive this.
Thus the basis of my original question remains: how do you fix this?
Certainly nobody is suggesting overt racial overtones.
Fooled me.
Thus the basis of my original question remains: how do you fix this?
And I think my original response is still appropriate: when someone says “but this group is ‘too white’”, point to the number of counter-examples, point to the fact that a number of non-whites are in fact leaders of various Tea Party groups, and point to the polling data which suggests that the proportion of non-whites is in line with or greater than the expected value given the other factors identified in the population, like overall higher education and higher self-identification as Republican.
The point is one of perception; the facts suggest it’s not actually the case that the Tea Parties are unusually white. Thus, to fix it, it’s necessary to strongly challenge the repeated assertion that Tea Party groups are “too white.”
Beyond that, there’s a second question: what does it mean to be “too white”? Why is it that a group that, as self-defined, consists of something close to a third of the population overall, and clearly doesn’t exclude people on the basis of race, loses something by being “too white”?
Does the NAACP, as others have asked, lose credibility because it’s “too black”? Is the characteristic that makes the Ku Klux Klan unsavory the whiteness of its members? Should people not pay attention the Hadassah because it’s “too Jewish”?
Honestly, the fact is that “too white” as a reason to discount the Tea Party groups is just an ad hominem of circumstance: it doesn’t actually have anything to do with the group or the groups positions except to the extent that it can be applied, irrationally, to influence people who aren’t paying attention.
12. G.L. Alston
“One obvious observation one could make here is that tea parties are seen as borderline racist, even subtly. I would tend to agree. Much of the far right narrative regarding health care invokes the image of welfare queens; for that matter, poster after poster after poster on this site complains about the welfare state in general where it concerns health care. Given the history of the welfare state people hear the narrative and translate this as yet another culture war assault.”
Funny, I missed that despite it being something I look for.. since I studied sociology and am a conservative (and I know that spending on welfare is not very large in money terms). I’m thinking your building a strawman. Not saying it never happened, just that it hardly happened. Most of the healthcare debate was about the inherent structural issues involved in making it government planned / controlled.
Perhaps figuring out how to include more non-whites would be more helpful than ignoring the problem via the excuse that said liberal tried to get his message across in bumper sticker format.
Because of course, because it’s the skin color that matters, that determines one’s ideas, rather than the other way around — eh Alston?
As a certain Leftist political party of renown once put it: “What you believe is no disgrace; the swinishness is in the race.”
The Tea Party threatens to bring back into the mainstream certain ideas which should never have left it — the idea that the individual is morally sovereign above all (including democracy), and has first say over the disposition of his life, his efforts and their results.
Leftists and those who operate on their premises, like Alston, cannot afford to let the Tea Party define itself by its ideas, because if that happens, the debate will BE about ideas. The Left will be done in America should that happen, and so they will pull out all the stops — ALL of them — to prevent that.
Michael Smith nails the reason why this is so: the Left’s ideas are done, discredited, dead. Their only hope of implementing them now is to keep them shrouded in the fog of altruism (“we’re just trying to help people”) and hidden under the false label of ‘liberalism”, and away from the prying eyes of thinking men.
Because of course, because it’s the skin color that matters, that determines one’s ideas, rather than the other way around — eh Alston?
I was speaking of an image problem, which like marketing doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with reality. But here’s some reality for you: Obama is in office by virtue of the fact that most of the voters voted for him. Here’s more reality: if I google pictures randomly of tea party events what I would typically see is a sea of white people. It’s easy for Obama voters (of any race) to look at these pictures and dismiss them.
If you want to have your tea party heard and taken seriously (i.e. a movement that represents ALL Americans) then whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to have people looking at pictures of tea parties and see something different: a sea of faces representative of ALL Americans. The left can’t just dismiss that with a wave of the hand. You can’t claim to represent ALL Americans when you don’t have substantial minority participation (mainly because without it, it’s a stupid claim. QED.)
GL, that’s a nice example of the fallacy of the false antecedent. You start out with
which is false. No one imagines that the Tea Parties, or any other group, can in any non-trivial way represent all Americans. Of course, once you assert a false antecedent, then any consequent can be asserted as true.
Indeed, as you point out, at the time of the election a majority of the people voted for Obama by an overall margin of about 7 percent. Of course, this means that by your initial assertion, the movement toward Obama ought not be taken seriously, since, after all, it didn’t represent ALL Americans either. But then this is always the danger of reasoning with fallacious steps; if a fallacious inference supports your position, it inevitably can be used to support the opposite position.
What is true is that by the various polls we’ve considered, the numbers of people who are now taking “Tea Party” positions exceeds by substantial factors the margin by which Obama won the election. Thinking that can be discounted is just foolish.
I would certainly encourage you to continue in that belief, however.
No one imagines that the Tea Parties, or any other group, can in any non-trivial way represent all Americans.
Reduced to Clintonising the word “all”, are we? I thought the meaning was clear enough; I used it thusly — “a sea of faces representative of ALL Americans.”
Shall we now parse “representative?”
GL, all I can respond to is what you write. If that wasn’t what you meant, then you should try harder to write what you mean.
But then, let’s instead assume that you meant, as you say, “a sea of faces representing ALL Americans.” That’s still a false assumption; I challenge you to find anything anywhere that asserts the Tea Parties claim to represent “ALL Americans” in any non-trivial way. The fact is that the whole antecedent, and the argument based on it, is essentially vacuous.
It’s also a nifty attempt to weasel out of a losing argument; all the Tea Party demonstrations can demonstrate is that there are a large number of Americans who felt sufficiently strongly about this to come out on a work day. Add to that the fact that, depending on the poll, something between a third and two-thirds of the population apparently agree in general with the positions that seem common among Tea Party protesters, and that exceeds by a very large proportion the margin in the Presidential election.
But I certainly encourage you to maintain this rather delusional attitude to the situation through the next election.
I would just add that if these were racist events wouldn’t there be people booing or threatening minorities to leave? That sounds like something that the racebaiters would LOVE to get on video, so if we’re really racists preventing minorities from joining us sounds like all you’d need to do is get some folks together and just show up and film the reaction of all the “racists” telling them to go away.
Since that hasn’t happened that just shows more evidence that we’re not racist. Hell all the protests I’ve been to and seen are just people assembled publicly, there’s nothing stopping anyone from just showing up. So if minorities don’t show up that’s their call.
The message is there and is being told loud and clear. It’s just that folks are putting blinders on to it or just don’t want to look past the “allegations” and see the truth of the tea parties. If they did they might join us more.
Maybe instead of asking Tea Partiers you should ask all of your black friends.
Peter, actually, most all my black friends are either active in Tea Party protests or at least favor the basic Tea Party positions.
Arrogant and inpermeably ignorant dolts, all of these counter protesters. They have no comprehension of or tolerance toward anybody’s motives but their own and substitute disdain for empathy and perception. It’s almost sad. Almost. Stepford Liberals live the most insular and often shallow lives, I find. I know people for whom NPR is the only authoritative source of info.
“assigning a skin color an ideology is racism of the first order itself.” Ironic, isn’t it?? The media, screaming about racism because the Tea Partiers are “all white” doesn’t get the fact that they have accused everyone of racism because OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN. Isn’t that called….racial profiling as well? They should be called on this at every opportunity. Saul Alinsky: “Make them play by their own rules”.
Alston: “And given the actual statistical count of non-whites at tea party events (see at http://bit.ly/cxVYN6) he sort of has a point.”
Really! Does the lack of blacks on the morning and evening MSM shows mean the MSM are racist? Does the lack of blacks at left wing 527 groups mean they are racist? Does the lack of blacks in the staffs of Dems in Congress mean they are racist? How about the lack of blacks and Hispanics in the WH press corpses-are they racists?
“One obvious observation one could make here is that tea parties are seen as borderline racist, even subtly. I would tend to agree. Much of the far right narrative regarding health care invokes the image of welfare queens…”
Again, really? That is making a very broad leap without any corrobrating evidence. Let’s see would you call the illegals who marched in 2007 for amnesty and the lack of blacks and whites in their crowds be considered by you as meaning they were racist? How many whites marched in the million man march? Are they racist-well you bet. How many whites are in the CBC in Congress? Are they a racist group?
And you have no trouble with people living off the government teat for generations? You have no trouble with illegals coming here to have babies and using the anchor baby to gain access to our health and welfare system when this nation is drowning in debt and AMERICANS cannot get the same level of health care? You have no trouble with now $66 trillion being spent on welfare with no real reduction of the roles? You have no problem with a permanent underclass of citizen being kept in that position because of the policies of the left? I’d say YOU are the real racist and your projection is all too trasnparent.
“Why is the tea party not resonating with minorities?” Blacks and Hispanics have been so hoodwinked and deluded by the left, and they have become dependent upon the US government. They have lost their independence and pride.
Really you are way to easy to refute.
That is making a very broad leap without any corrobrating evidence.
You seem to have confused observation and endorsement. What I said was this: One obvious observation one could make here is that tea parties are seen as borderline racist, even subtly.
“ARE SEEN AS” means “some people will conclude this.”
That’s an observation. Endorsement would be if I said “tea parties are racist.”
Please try to address what was actually said, which is a question of how to correct the perception.
You can’t correct the perception of people who want to perceive it that way. To such people, more black in attendance would just be more Uncle Toms and race sell-outs in attendance. To them, the perceived racism would still be there, while they would completely miss the actual racism in their own belief that blacks who don’t think the way those observers believe blacks should/must think aren’t authentic black people.
I don’t know any Mexican American liberals here dude.
Most of them, including a friend of mine that just became a naturalized citizen, all believe in freedom and self determination. So yes, we vote GOP.
A thought to those who might be concerned about the lack of Hispanics at TEA parties. Some groups of Latinos, ESPECIALLY Mexicans, do have significant European ancestry. This does manifest itself in us and our children. A good number of us tend to be naturally pale to varying degrees but we crank out melanin like no tomorrow when we see enough sun. My family in particular are all white as the driven snow unless we work outside for a living. A couple of my professors are also look white, despite their ancestry.
Medina, I grew up in the sort of town where everyone speaks at least a little Spanish, and I have Mexican American relatives; one of the things that astonishes me among many people, left and right, outside the Southwest is the number who think all Mexican Americans are dark, wear sombreros and zarapes, and swam the Rio Grande last week.
I blame Hollywood’s stock character syndrome…where every Texan is a white dumbass, every Hispanic is a poor downtrodden illegal immigrant Mexican, and no one’s made a movie about my namesake.
Come on, the guy lived at least 4 different lifetimes’ worth of adventures!
How’s that Socialism working out for them with Hugo??? These idiot’s don’t look past their loony liberal noses. They haven’t got a clue. They should just look at S. America. The MSM’s and the Hollywood jokes need to take a peek. They are the ones that will be silenced… It’s unfolding in real time…
It`s obvious people who want socialism and more gov`n are the 70 million who don`t pay any federal taxes and collect some type of gov`n welfare at the expense of those who do pay federal taxes….
The party crashers, and those sympathetic to them, will cast a blind eye towards
their excesses.
They still don’t get credit for originality, because they maintain the same ole,
same old.
I saw that guy as I was leaving the Cincy Tea Party on the U of C campus.
I was inside witnessing Sonja’s speech. When she talked about how we need to make Obama a one-termer, I held up my Palin poster as the cheers roared and Sonja looked up at my poster.
I think she’s a Sarah fan.
Most of the counters are just college students who have been indoctrinated by campus lib professors and are living off their parents’ incomes.
Want to see racism at work? Take a look at the Obama administration and compare the percentage of blacks to their incidence in the general population.
Feh, I can see racism at work right here, in your post.
Get this, collectivist: Those who get it don’t give a flip about racial tallies in any shape, form or obfuscation, not in the White House nor in the Tea Parties.
The debate is defined by ideas, not by skin color. People of a given race are not interchangeable; they are not defined by their race. They are defined by their ideas, which are not determined, but *chosen*.
To stray from the flow somewhat, I have some reservations about Jason Levin being suspended (I know, with pay = vacation ha ha ha). But unless you can show what he did was illegal rather than just vile, I wonder if suspending him violates his free speech rights and/or makes him a political martyr. I happen to think he doesnt merit such attention.
Levin was suspended for using the time he was getting paid to do things like teach to make his political website and further his political goals… which would be just as appropriate if he were working for the Tea Parties as against them. The fact that he is a scumbag didn’t enter into it, though I am sure it made his bosses that much more comfortable giving him the elbow…
He was also selling T-shirts and asking for donations. That was another strike. I think it may have been another group that flooded his forum in its last days that did that, given their usual tactics.
How stupid do you have to be to think that, if you turn up at a protest with a sign, no one will snap a picture of it (and you) and post it on the Internet?
Stupid enough to be a liberal, apparently.
Why should we let the leftist/progressives define the publics perception of the Tea Party? The left is over run with agenda driven lairs which the MSM has PROVEN over a considerable length of time by their totally in the bag reporting.
No there is not any reason to let them set any terms at all.. Times have changed and the lefts propaganda driven message is now being seen for what it is, a big lie.
The American people are beginning to see what the Tea Party is all about and more and more of them LIKE what they see.
Kinda funny, and telling, how Leftists always seem to have Nazi paraphernalia, very detailed Confederate uniforms and flags on hand when they want to try and portray the Right as Nazis or racists. I’m pretty sure they could come up with some pretty authentic KKK robes too, if need be.
Gateway pundit blog has identified a couple of the infiltrators.
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/04/tea-party-infiltrator-2-is-dem-official-truther-was-arrested-with-code-pink-in-front-of-white-house/
Not surprisingly one is the Secretary of the St. Charles County Democratic Committee. The other writes for Code Pink. Names and photos at the link. Make them fmaous on the internet PJTV, let the entire country know who they are
Just noting that The Stars and Bars (AKA the First Confederate National Flag) was not the flag pictured. The flag pictured was The Southern Cross. (Or more specifically, The Confederate Memorial Flag version of it. The standardized 3×5 version pictured was commishioned after the ACW by The Daughters of the Confederacy to serve as a memorial to those Confederates who had died in the war. Most versions of the flag used during the land component of the war–with a few exceptions, the Confederacy wasn’t really into standardization–were square.)
You’d think someone posing as a historical reinactor would know this.
/Pendantic observation
He’s been placed on administrative leave by his employer (the whatever school district), not brought up on charges. It’s not a matter of legal or illegal, it’s a matter of whether he was indulging in personal business during paid time and/or whether he violated the district’s AUP by using the district’s computers/network to engage in political activism. The worst he’s likely to suffer is a reprimand — he probably won’t be fired and he’s certainly not going to jail. Not exactly martyr-level consequences.
In other words, he’s free to say what he wants, as long as he does it on his own time and his own dime.
Just in case this hasn’t been pointed out before, but this:
“I’m not quite sure what it is about pasty white urban liberals that makes them think they have the right to judge the “authenticity” of someone’s race, but it must be tied to the same poorly oxygenated part of the brain that makes them blind to the fact assigning a skin color an ideology is racism of the first order itself.”
is the best think I’ve read in a long time. Thanks, Bob!
It has occurred to me that the main tool of the political left is false guilt. Call someone a greedy, racist, sexist, homophobe in order to create a false sense of guilt in others. This false guilt will cause many of their opponents to remain silent in order to avoid the embarrassing labels. However, most leftists are cowards at heart will crumple like a paper cup at the slightest confrontation.
NH was liberal-bottom feeder free. Wheeeeeeeeee!
And no men in black on top of the parking garage taking picture.
4 blackhawks flew over at one point… weird.
I have been puzzling about lefty plants vs just fringe types who see themselves as fellow travelers when they look at the tea party movement. We went to the Dallas Tea party, where the confederate flag guy pictured above was. He talked our ear off as we walked through the parking lot to the venue, and seemed very knowledgeable about the whole “sons of the confederacy” thing. I did not see his discussion with the securi-tea folks. My take was that he sincerely believed his schtick, and wonder if he just was ventilating his own brand of patriotism, rather than making a play to discredit the Tea parties. We saw three other guys, all with the same “truther” T-shirt on, whose motivation seemed less benign. Unfriendly, unwilling to talk, and were the angriest people we met in the whole park that night. Gave themselves away.
But I am finding the litmus test for Tea parties interesting. We need to keep the focus on taxes, personal responsibility, etc, etc, and stay out of the myriad other possible causes that our large numbers attract. Stay focused, and these racist memes and other distractions are totally irrelevant.
At Fort Lauderdale, not so many pictures taken by the media – a generous number of African-Americans, interspersed with Haitian-Americans, Jamaican-Americans, and other immigrants, many of them small business owners. In addition, Hispanics – backgrounds from Cuba, Puerto Rico as well as Mexico. We had an Orthodox Jewish contingent as well, but all the media attention was on a group of EIGHT (count ‘em 8!) anti globalism demonstrators – granted they brought their own drum section to draw attention. And they were ALL WHITE!
I’m not so sure that the fellows with the Confederate flags on their jean jackets are “infiltrators.” The Dallas punk scene that I remember (1998-2004 or so) was way more raucous and open-minded than the majority of punk lyrics suggest, and there’s such a mish match of patches on the guys’ jackets that unless they acted oddly, my first assumption would be that they’re genuine Tea Partiers, if selectively blind. The Confederate flag often just stands for rebel around here, much in the way that the mass-murderer Che does at college campuses.
Not to mention, to the historically astute, the Confederate flag doesn’t necessarily mean anything untoward when it relates to Texas Hispanics (see Col. Santos Benavides, highest ranking Hispanic officer of the war, and a Confederate war “hero”).
When I listened to Bill Clinton use suggestive wording associating extremist events with today’s peaceful protesters, I knew we had finally reached a point where authenticity or honesty is no longer what the left is all about. They are about attempting to discredit anyone & everything that does not meet with their belief system. At a media event a few years back, it is alleged Al Gore said Fox News was bad for the movement because balance is bias. It permits the listener or viewer to hear or see both sides of an issue & that means they must try to convince any who question them that their point of view is the correct one. He supposedly also said, if we cannot convince them, we will have to discredit them so others look upon them as outside the acceptable mainstream. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
The left must really be angry with those who exposed their intentions to try to portray the Tea party movement as crazies. Once it was obvious the left was out to destroy people using lies, exaggerations, distortions, & egged on responses, the lefts plans were for naught. Now they know each & every time they try to attack, they had better be able to prove what they are saying since even Nancy Pelosi could not agitate a response they could use to attack Tea Partiers. Seems the left now realizes their despicable tactics have been discovered & people know such attack tactics are regularly employed by these hyper partisan political opportunists!
Charlie Martin — But I certainly encourage you to maintain this rather delusional attitude to the situation through the next election.
Charlie, your rebuke says you think I vote left, which tells me you’ve gone so far down the ideological rabbit hole that you’re wholly unable to distinguish between right wing centrists and socialists. This site seems to presume that it represents the mainstream of the right wing. It doesn’t. It represents the far right, which is a minority of the right wing vote.
In the upcoming election, there will probably be some blowback against the democrats. This falls squarely in the “no kidding, sherlock?” territory; there is always blowback against the party in power if the economy is bad. Sorry, but you’re not exactly being Nostradamus here.
#33 seguin — I’m not so sure that the fellows with the Confederate flags on their jean jackets are “infiltrators.”
They’re not. This is all part of the result from the rush to prove tea parties aren’t racist.
This entire episode is amusing.
Here we have outraged conservatives, none of whom were outraged enough to organise protests against PATRIOT, which is a constitutional slippery slope with the undergirding for a police state if ever there was one. Democrats claim that conservatives support it solely because the claimed target is brown skinned middle eastern people worshipping a different deity.
On the other hand, six months after the first black president is elected, one with ties to muslims, white folks hit the streets to protest claimed constitutional abuse because some working stiff might not have to spend the remainder of his life in debt because his kid got sick.
Hmmmm. That seems a might suspicious, say the democrats.
Tea party activists go into panty wetting mode. “The left is calling us racists merely because every indicator makes it seem that way! They’re liars who will use their MSM lackeys!” A couple of young rebel types hit the tea party to see what’s up and get their pictures taken so that tea party people can claim they’re lefty infiltrators. See those confederate flags? You know what THAT means, right? Uh oh.
Hilarity ensues.
Meanwhile conservatives far and wide can’t begin to fathom how it is that anyone could construe an undertone of racism: “they’re making it up!”
Ummmmm….. I’ll take “timing” for $1000, Alex.
GL, try this video from the DC “all white” Tea Party.
People object to the assertion that the Tea Parties “appear” racist because it’s false, and the assertion that the demonstrations have been “all white” is, at best, a foolish and uninformed untruth.
Or, at worst, a knowing and malicious untruth.
Nice attempt at taking what I said and twisting it to suit your own need to slander a whole group of people. Very Clintonian of you. I was comparing the use of the Confederate flag in the Dallas underground scenes with the use of Che Guevara in other scenes of a liberal bent. In neither case does the wearer truly identify with the ugly reality behind those symbols, but because they are hated by groups they dislike (liberals or conservative or polite society, what have you) they have adopted them for mostly shock value and as evidence of their non-conformance.
Nice try at your little elitist pseudo-intellectual wank-fest though. You almost sounded intelligent.
Honestly, Medina, in Southern California, I’ve seen a lot of Hispanics at Tea Parties!
(And blacks, and Orientals too. . . )
Charlie Martin — People object to the assertion that the Tea Parties “appear” racist because it’s false
You’re not seeing the point.
“Conservatives” (the far right) are already negatively associated with immigration and non-christian religion (“Obama is a muslim out to destroy the USA” is something I’ve seen more than once.) Assuming that tea parties (or anything else promoted by the far right) have racial or otherwise xenophobic undertones lurking about isn’t exactly a stretch.
Compounding this, the conservatives didn’t take to the streets re PATRIOT, but they *do* take to the streets regarding culture war issues. Claiming that tea parties are about the constitution sounds like rationalising; there’s no history of conservatives protesting anything *but* culture war issues.
Given the far right’s ongoing, non-stop investment in waging a culture war, it’s prudent to ask whether tea parties are little more than the latest attack, this time dressed up in a rattlesnake flag.
We are really winning. I was at a Vancouver, Washington tea party on Saturday. One guy in an SEIU purple shirt was there, enjoying the speeches. When we are picking up these guys, we are starting to make a difference, moving beyond preaching to the choir.
#36 ALSTONED: Glad to know libtards like you continue to use stale, ineffective rhetorical tropes,(They’re Racists, fascists homophobes, or just mean-spirited,ya da yada,bla bla), in an unsuccessful attempt to marginalize political dissenters.It’s worked wonders for CNN,MSNBC,The NYSLIMES, and the other moribund organs of crypto Stalinism hasn’t it?.I’m sure it will work just as well for you.BTW:The only serious RACISM in the USA today, is government promoted reverse racism aimed at whites.Finally, try switching from pot to penicillin,it won’t get you stoned, but it might alleviate your tertiary syphillis.
Next time, Mr Owens, have somebody”bump” the thug and Accidentally knock off his glasses, while videotaping him.We need to strip away the “crypto” from the crypto stalinist. Afterwards , follow him home and pay some homeless people to camp out on his lawn to give the creep an opportunity to demonstrate the famous liberal “compassion”.Wanna bet he’ll never crash another tea party?