Don’t pay attention to what you are hearing from Obama’s supporters. What they really want may be the opposite of what they are saying.
Race
Photo by Luke M. Schierholz
In a recent interview on Piers Morgan Tonight, Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman, once again, laid down the charge that has no proof, that the Tea Party is racist. I like Morgan Freeman. I think he is a great actor. But with this display, I also think that he needs to get out of the Hollywood bubble that includes such deep thinkers as Michael Moore and Janeane Garofolo, and actually visit a Tea Party gathering, (they are very safe places to go to). Here is his thinking. The Tea Party is opposed to Barack Obama, therefore the Tea Party is racist. Game. Set. Match. Gee, that was easy. Does Morgan Freeman know who Herman Cain is? How does he explain that one?
What were three men with FDR emblazoned on their T-shirts doing at a FreedomWorks event? FreedomWorks is an activist organization that is partnered with tea party groups across the country. FDR is hardly an icon of the right.
Andrew Breitbart is out with a new book Righteous Indignation and he took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with me about the book. The interview runs about 25 minutes.
Here is the video about unions teaching union thuggery that Andrew Breitbart mentions was posted on Brietbart.tv at around the 12:50 mark in the interview.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckWDQbvkjE0&feature=player_embedded
The 26th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday celebration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held at the New York Sheraton last night was a remarkable event in the midst of all the babble about discourse and civility. Of course it was civil; it would not be any other way, but considering the venom that has flowed in the past year with charges from racism during the health care debate to causing the Tucson shootings it struck a very different and positive tone.
The Obama administration, having stepped in it with both feet to protect their union backers rather than let two of the three U.S. automobile companies go into bankruptcy, are now weighing the sale of the stock owned by us, in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Their plans are to scale back the offering to prop up the price that they might be able to get in the market so that they can ultimately get most of the taxpayer money they spent, back.
“While both G.M. and the Treasury still hope to reduce the government’s stake in the company to less than 50 percent and rid the company of its Government Motors nickname, that goal may not be met, one of the people said,” according to the New York Times. In saying that, auto analysts are increasingly projecting that the government could get most or all of its remaining $43 billion investment, but it will takes years to accomplish. Uh-oh.
To say today’s “Restoring Honor” event in Washington will be historic is an understatement. Gauging by the biased reporting on the news pages of the New York Times and the seething, sputtering outrage from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow on the Op-Ed pages should give you a pretty good indication of the focus this event will garner.
Kate Zernike opens her report, titled “Where Dr. King Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle”, saying it is the ultimate “thumb in the eye” to stand on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in the place he stood and talk about restoring honor. How dare he? Isn’t that what racists said of Dr. King when he stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial with these words?
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”
Ms. Zernike reminds us of the case of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired by the Obama administration when a videotape of her redemptive speech about how she first discriminated against a white farmer but later helped him was shown across the Internet. She writes about video tape being heavily edited by failing to show how she mended her ways and helped that farmer. But Ms. Zernike doesn’t finish the story where later in her speech Ms. Sherrod says that those who opposed Obama’s health care plan had racist motives because President Obama is black. Ms. Sherrod’s redemption is far from complete.
She then says that the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights raises the specter of Jim Crow and George Wallace. But it was the federal government that passed and enforced the Fugitive Slave laws and it was independent states of the north, exercising their states’ rights, who supported the Underground Railroad and refused to actively assist returning slaves to the South. So states’ rights cut both ways.
She concludes that, “Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.” It’s hard to quiet the argument because those on the left keep falsely making it. They cannot prove racism so they feel that by repeating often enough, they can make it stick.
I was at a street fair manning a booth for a Tea Party organization this spring. An African-American teacher approached us tentatively to ask what we were about. I asked her if she wanted the rumors or the truth and she opted for the truth. I told her that we were a policy based organization focusing on accountable government, fiscal responsibility, limited federal government and following the Constitution. She said she didn’t know any of that, she got e-mails from Moveon.org all the time and before leaving she signed our e-mail list. When the truth reaches the ears of people over the screeching of the New York Times and the main stream media, it is generally well received. The racial of mix of the Tea Party rallies will change over time when we can speak to the folks one on one without the lies of the left.
The Opionators
Bob Herbert begins his Op-Ed piece in a very open minded fashion, “America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.” Thank you for sharing that, Bob, but there’s no need to pull punches here.
“There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.”
So why to you and your fellow travelers throw down the race card every time someone disagrees with a policy, if they are not of the same race? Object to ObamaCare, that’s racism. Object to the stimulus, racism. Wanting Obama to fail to turn America into a socialist states, racism straight up. Yes there is hatred and bigotry in this country, but it is primarily coming from the left.
Not to be outdone in the outrage department, Charles Blow titled his Op-Ed piece, “I Had a Nightmare.” Mr. Blow said the following, “I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.” This would be an excellent point, if he could point to 3,000 blacks that Glenn Beck has murdered in the name of restoring honor. But Mr. Blow can make no such connection, so his analogy to the Ground Zero mosque falls flat. Curious indeed.
After venting his spleen, Mr. Blow suggests we re-read Dr. King’s speech “and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.” Let’s do that.
“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
How do the actions of the left, throwing down the race card at every turn, accusing everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama to have racism at the core of that disagreement comport with not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred”? It arrogantly assumes that it is impossible not to see the glorious benefit of the government running every last aspect of our lives, therefore the only reason to disagree has to be racism. With regard to violence, where do we see the violent demonstrations on the left or the right? Breaking windows, looting, SEIU members beating down street vendors for selling anti-Obama buttons, etc. are all on the left. When the police show up at rallies organized by the left they show up in riot gear, at Tea Party rallies the mounted police have to decide whether to let people pet their horses or not.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
Didn’t America elect an African American President of the United States with 53% of the vote? More than voted for Clinton either time, or Jimmy Carter? Barack Obama wasn’t elected by minority votes alone.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” –“I Have a Dream Speech”
Who more closely shares that dream, Glenn Beck, or those on the left who insist that forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech that blacks can’t get into college or get a job without affirmative action; that black families have not been destroyed by government programs like welfare that drove fathers away; that government run schools that can’t graduate its students are far better for blacks than school vouchers that will let them escape those hellholes? Dr. King’s speech says nothing about racial preferences. Dr. King’s speech talks about color blindness. Dr. King’s speech says give us an equal chance. Glenn Beck believes that. Those on the left do not. It is those on the left who believe African Americans cannot compete without more government programs to help them. Glenn Beck believe they can succeed if government gets out of their way and if the left stops the lies of dependency that hold them back. It is the New York Times, Charles Blow, Bob Herbert who wrap themselves in racial division and then say, “Why can’t we come together?” If you want us to come together, stop standing in the way.
The Sherrod incident is the latest in a long line of shoot from the lip misfires from the Obama administration, from the president on down. Here is a review of some of the more egregious of them:
- President Obama, without waiting for the facts says the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department “acted stupidly,” in an incident involving African American professor Henry Louis Gates. A picture from the “beer summit” shows the president confidently striding toward the cameras while in the background Sergeant Crowley takes Professor Gates arm to help him negotiate the stairs, as Professor Gates walks with a cane. Racist?
- With 13 dead Americans at the hands of terrorist Nidal Hasan, Janet Napolitano comes out and claims, “The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days.” A few days later she would eat those ridiculous words.
- Not to be outdone by herself, after another terrorist attempt on our soil in Times Square, Secretary Napolitano quickly came out to label the attempt a “one-off” and the suspect a lone wolf. As the investigation picked up steam there were all sorts links to terror groups in the Middle East.
- When the president of Honduras tried to override term limits and become the next Hugo Chavez, the Honduran government enforced its laws against the changes that its president was trying to illegally implement. The Obama administration immediately labeled the legitimate actions of the democratically elected Honduran government a coup. Hillary Clinton’s State department cancelled the visas of all members of the Honduran Supreme Court. Not to be intimidated by Chavez, Castro, or Obama, Honduras stood its ground. The Congressional Research Service looked at the Honduran Constitution and the actions of its government and found that the government acted properly and within the law.
- When Arizona reached the end of its rope and could not get the Obama administration to enforce the law on the border, they passed a law to give their police greater flexibility to determine the legal status of people stopped for another police matter. The Obama administration immediately called the law unconstitutional. When asked if they read the massive 10 page law, that’s right 10 pages, both Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Janet Napolitano (yes, her again) both said they hadn’t read it before declaring it unconstitutional. This administration pushes through legislation running thousands of pages each and they can’t find time to read a ten page law before condemning it.
- Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod gave a speech to the NAACP where she spoke about her transformation from having a racial bias in a decision she made 24 years ago, to today where she tries to treat all individuals regardless of race. Only the first part of the story was headed toward the airwaves, the part about her past discrimination, and before the news hit the air she was fired by the Obama administration. Had they watched the whole tape before acting, they wouldn’t be swimming in apologies right now.
Is this just the lack of experience or does the Obama administration need adult supervision? They jump to these wild conclusions and then end up backtracking days later. After eighteen months in office you would think they would have learned by now how to govern.
Another case without as quick a trigger is the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. After taking office President Obama appointed a commission, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the root causes of the crisis. A prudent person might say, let’s hear what the commission finds out and then write legislation to address those root causes. With months more to go before that commission’s work will be done, we have another 2,000+ page bill coming out of Congress and signed by the president to put new regulations in place on the financial services industry. Why the rush? Wouldn’t it be better to fix the real problems rather than what Chris Dodd and Barney Frank think are the problems and let them paper over their own culpability in the creating the crisis? Why were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac excluded? In one of the hearings before the commission an argument was made that AIG did not have to be bailed out, that there were measures in place to ride out the crisis and that in the long run their policies would be fine. Whether that is true or not, will have to wait for the final report, but the “just don’t stand there, do something,” mentality is disconcerting. I certainly hope we are never faced with another Cuban Missile Crisis with this team in place.
The NAACP was once a proud organization with a noble cause, to advance the lot of people of color. Today it has abandoned those principles to become just another attack arm of the Democratic Party. This week they released a resolution condemning racism within the Tea Party movement.
I have been to a number of Tea Party events with hundreds of thousands of peaceful orderly participants and racism was not evident, surprisingly so. I say surprisingly because with any gathering of that magnitude to have a few fringe elements at either end of the spectrum would almost be expected. So is it possible there are racist elements at any given event? Sure. It is routine in the Tea Party? It is so rare, you have to aggressively search to find it and when you do, what proof is there that they are really Tea Party members or supporters or just some wacko who walked into the crowd with a sign?
Let’s look at the Strategy
The left has tried vainly to paint the Tea Party as racist because that is the most toxic label that they have. The racist label brings out the black electorate, polarizes the progressives, mortifies the moderates, and makes conservatives cringe. If they can make it stick it is very effective. It is also overused and as such, it is losing its sting. So how do you make it stick?
One way is to follow what the NAACP is doing. Pass a resolution condemning racism and demand the Tea Party repudiate racism in their ranks, which by the way is virtually non-existent. If you can cow the Tea Party members to take the pledge, then the liberal/progressives can plant racists at each rally with nasty signs, videotape them and then blame the Tea Party for failing to honor their pledge and thus “proving” racism is in the ranks of the Tea Party and it cannot be eradicated. This is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Let’s Look at the Facts
This is from the NAACP web site:
“Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.”
I was a marshal at the Tea Party rally in New York on April 15th this year. We were concerned about reports on the street that infiltrators with racist signs might show up to garner media attention, which to that point had been rather thin. What were we to do? We couldn’t take their signs away, we couldn’t touch them as they had as much of a right to be there as we did. We came up with the idea that we would carry signs repudiating the person that our signs pointed to. We would approach the person, politely, tell them that their sign did not comport with the values of the Tea Party and ask them to put the sign away or leave. If they did not comply, we would surround them with our signs that said those views of that individual were not consistent with the Tea Party so that any media picking up their sign would see ours as well. If things got aggressive we would call in the police that were on hand. To my knowledge we never had to use our tactic as there were no racially offensive signs at the rally. We did not need a resolution by the NAACP to develop our counter strategy. It was part of our core beliefs, which puts the big lie to the NAACP’s resolution.
More from the NAACP web site:
“The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vial, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the “n-word” in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation’s first openly gay member of Congress.”
The first part of this passage was almost laughable. High profile media coverage? The lame stream media has been trying to bury the Tea Party by not covering them. What main stream media coverage was there in Washington in September of 2009 where several hundred thousand Tea Partiers rallied? It was dismissed as a couple of thousand.
Nancy Pelosi’s stunt to march through a crowd of Tea Party members to pass the Obamacare bill, did draw a lot of media attention and controversy. Show us the money! Andrew Breitbart put up $100,000 to anyone who could produce any video evidence that the things claimed in the above quote from the NAACP actually happened. There were media cameras and microphones all over the place, hundreds if not thousands of people with cell phone cameras and miraculously not one of them captured what the NAACP claims happened as fact. John Lewis was invited on several news programs to give his side of the story and he declined. Mr. Breitbart is still waiting to write that check. As Groucho Marx famously said, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own two eyes?”
NAACP President Ben Jealous had this comment. “I give a 42-page speech. Half a page is focused on the tea party,” Jealous said. “We need the media to pay attention to the issues that are most important to this country” such as jobs, education, and crime. Uh, what did you expect sir? If you wanted the media to pay attention to the other 41 ½ pages of your speech, perhaps you should have dropped to bogus charge against the Tea Party.
I scoured the NAACP web site for any mention of the New Black Panther party and the case against them that was dropped by the Obama Justice Department. The site lacks a search feature so it made it more of a challenge but I looked through the site’s blog and found nothing. Now here is a case that is plainly caught on video tape and other video tape is found of King Samir Shabazz, spewing racial epithets and advocating murder of whites or “crackers” and their babies, but we hear nothing about this from the NAACP.
So, we have the NAACP issuing a resolution about alleged racism in the Tea Party for which they have no proof (there are some still pictures on their websites of people holding signs, but no reference to where the pictures were taken or who the sign holders were. They could have just as easily been a plant to smear the Tea Party). They ask the Tea Party to pledge to oppose racism, which I have demonstrated that opposing racist messages is standard operating procedure among the Tea Party, but they make no mention of the overt racism among their followers, where that racism is clearly on full display in living color with sound and includes not only racist sentiments but a call to actually murder whites. This apparently is considered worthy discourse to the NAACP leadership.
I call upon all members of the NAACP who really believe there is no place for racism in America to cancel your membership in the NAACP and join the Tea Party. We do not tolerate racist messages among our members. We have many African Americans in prominent positions in the Tea Party and we would have more if you join us. Our positions to end wasteful government spending and free up our economy will probably do more to advance you and your fellow NAACP members than fighting for the next government program. The NAACP has run aground on the shoals of petty squabbles to help the Democratic Party. It’s time to abandon ship and swim for shore.
The above opinions are my own. I do not speak in an official capacity for the Tea Party.
