The Tea Party Express has been expelled from the National Tea Party Federation, an umbrella group of Tea Parties, in a disturbing incident of Tea Party on Tea Party non-violence.
The weekend expulsion came in response to a so-called satirical letter written to Abraham Lincoln by Tea Party Express spokesman and Rightwing talk show host, Mark Williams.
The letter in question begins: “Dear Mr. Lincoln, We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”
The National Tea Party Federation had called on the Tea Party Express to remove Williams as spokesperson. They didn’t. So they’re out. Whatever “out” means to these folks. Tea Party poopers!
Williams is also the Rightwing clown who recently called on citizens to defraud the government’s $20 billion BP Fund, as The BRAD BLOG reported earlier this month. Some “conservative,” eh?
Williams’ high-larious “parody letter” (as he later called it when he took it off his site) was, itself, in response to the NAACP’s recent resolution, condemning “racist elements” within the Tea Party. Geez, what racist elements?!…
He’s also the jerk who told NPR, in response, that the NAACP are “professional race baiters” who “make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.” Nice.
The insane (or just hateful, you make the call) Williams has managed to convince himself that any racist signs showing up at Tea Party demonstrations were from a supposedly left-leaning initiative called “Crash the Tea Party” — an idea which hadn’t even occurred until this past spring — meant to embarrass the Tea Partiers. “Crash the Tea Party” quickly crashed and burned itself. But even if that group had anything to do with such signs this past Spring, it doesn’t explain the various racist signs and emails going all the way back to the inception of the post-2008 Tea Party (more accurately described as Tea Baggers, as distinct from the legitimate Ron Paul Tea Partiers who were decrying George W. Bush’s “Big Government” and his violations of the Constitution long before the Baggers showed up in response to having lost the ’08 election.)
In his continuing denial, Williams recently offered this deluded statement on MSNBC: “It’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the Tea Party.”
Really, Mark? Tell it to the guy in the photo below, as taken at a February 2009 “Tea Party” demonstration in Houston…
For the record, the man holding the sign in the photo above is Dale Robertson, the man who registered the domain TeaParty.org.
For what it’s worth, we’re agnostic on just how many of the Tea Baggers are actually racists, versus disinformed Fox “News” viewers. In truth, the common element seems to be that they are all sore-loserists, since they didn’t bother to show up with their phony outrage about “out-of-control government spending” and violations of the Constitution until George W. Bush was out of office. Imagine that!
But most importantly, all of this gives us an opportunity to re-visit our own amusing experience with Mark Williams’ “grassroots” Tea Party Express, when they kicked off their second national bus tour here in Los Angeles in October of last year. If you missed our short documentary interviewing the Tea Party Express supporters the first time around, it’s still just as much fun. And for giving us an excuse to run it again, we have to thank the appalling Mark Williams!…
I wonder why the Tea Baggers like to claim Lincoln as their own?
I mean, Lincoln was certainly a great president, but he represents the exact opposite of what the Tea Baggers say they stand for.
In fact, Lincoln was certainly FOR big government, something which the Tea Baggers claim to despise and fear.
Lincoln fought a war for the expansion of a much bigger government than that which had hitherto existed.
The war between the Union and the Confederacy was a war between a centralized authority (with its finger on what was soon to be burgeoning industrialization), against the federated smaller governments formed by land-owning elites in the south (hence, the names of each camp– “Union” and “Confederacy”.)
So what would the Tea baggers say to Lincoln?
How would they explain their hatred of “big government” to him? How would they react to his own aggressive expansion of centralized authority (in fact, of “bigger government”?)
These questions underscore the utter ignorance that the Tea Baggers have of the very heritage which they so furiously claim to uphold (as if describing Obama as a nazi AND a communist doesnt, in itself, demonstrate a woefully uninformed perspective.)
The almost schizophrenic confusion which suffuses tea-bagger rhetoric is only matched by its bigotry.
The Tea baggers can do their best to try and clean up this truly embarrassing (and revealing) affair with Mark Williams. And they can attempt damage control by teasing out the 10 or 11 African Americans who might be in their camp.
But the fact remains that most people in their constituency see racism as a sign of good up-bringing, not as a social evil.
I know quite a few people who are in the tea parties. I work with these folks, I share equipment and space with them, I ride the bus with them, etc…
My work often takes me across the mid-West, even to the heart of the Bible Belt in which the Tea parties dominate (and, again, where I have to share facilities with their members.)
It pains me to acknowledge that many of these folks are, indeed, openly (in some cases, proudly) bigoted. And its not just about race, but also about religion, national origin, sexual preference, even apparel.
I don’t need Faux News and BreitbartTV telling me that what I see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, is not bigotry.
(and sorry Andrew Breitbart, but I am not going to film these people for the sake of your vanity, let alone your hog-wash bribe… I don’t film my neighbor’s every movement so I can post it on some bullshit “veritas†youtube page as part of a political smear campaign… some of us still value privacy, even if your paid charlatans at BigBreitbart.com don’t.)
All that being said, I’d like to hear how the Tea baggers would address the governmental expansion in which Lincoln put so much stock, as per their own supposed fear of “big government.†(I say “suppoosed” because, after all, they dont seem to mind big government when it comes to hindering the rights of gay couples, hindering womens rights, wire-tapping, etc…)
One more thing–
Sorry to soap-box at such great lengths, but Williams and the Tea Party need more than just a primer on the real history of the Civil War.
They also needs to be reminded of what really happened during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonial/post-colonial eras.
Someone should inform Mark Williams that the “care†which he assumes whites gave blacks in early America included—
-public whippings,
-torture,
-amputations,
-legalized rape,
-lynchings (and other grisly forms of execution),
-separating children from their families as per market demands,
-starvation,
-state-sponsored terrorism,
..and the dismal list goes on and on, ALL in addition to being worked to death.
So Mark, is that what you and your idiotic, self-righteous following would call a “good time�
I wonder how a doughy, out-of-shape and over-privileged crap-sack like Mark Williams would react to that kind of “care�
(On the other hand, I guess Mark ought to be glad that now Breitbart owes him a fat wad of cash for proving Tea Party racism.)
“the “care†which he assumes whites gave blacks in early America included—
-public whippings,” etc., etc.
Sir, at the peak of slavery in the American South, only six percent of whites owned slaves. That’s in the SOUTH at the PEAK of slavery.
It’s a documented fact, agreed upon by historians across the political spectrum, that fully 2/3 of whites who came to colonial America arrived under some form of bondage. They died in huge numbers during the Middle Passage, they were sold on auction blocks, they were whipped and beaten to death, and when they ran away, newspaper ads were placed offering rewards for their capture.
I realize such facts undermine the neat little angels ‘n’ devils morality play that you’d like to pretend constitutes American history. I realize that on some emotional level, you have some weird need to believe in universal white guilt.
It’d be nice if anything in life were so simple.
Wow, Melba. Got cites for those facts and figures? Or just makin’ ’em up outta whole cloth?
By the way, I presume you’d be cool then if just 6% of African-Americans held 100% of the white people in America as slaves, right?
Melba,
Get a clue.
First of all, I never said there werent bonded white slaves.
And the fact that white slaves were mistreated does not obviate the very real cruelty that was inflicted upon enslaved Africans. Nor does it erase the social distance that existed between even the white and black slave communities, or the divisiveness of race in early America.
Like it or not, the colonial world was broken along ethnic and hierarchical lines.
I wish we could change that hon, but we really cant. If such were the case, civil rights would not have been something for which Black America had to fight so strongly (remember? It wasnt that long ago.)
You seem to be suggesting that since only the upper-class minority of colonial Americans owned slaves, then slavery must not have been the wide-spread injustice that it truly was.
That’s utter hog-wash.
Even assuming that your statistics are true, that means thousands upon thousands of slaves per a single landowner. So even your stats are true, do they lessen the evil? Is it fair? Is that “liberty�
What really is your point?
You might as well say that any caste system cannot be unjust (even one so viciously and corporally enforced), since only a minority is privileged to own vast numbers of other humans in such an arrangement.
As far as that goes, I really dont know what in the world you are trying to prove.
If its not too socialist for ya, you should hustle your bustle down to the public library and do a little brushing up.
First, Melba, your numbers are way off. 26% of whites owned slaves in the antebellum south–not 6%.
But what difference does it make whether the number was 6% or 26% other than to reflect that 74% of Southern whites did not have sufficient funds to buy slaves.
Are you suggesting that the institution of slavery–an institution which treated living, breathing human beings as nothing more than chattel was somehow less repugnant because few could afford purchase them?
I don’t know where you get your stats on whites but you are obviously ignorant of the vast discrepancy between indentured servitude and slavery.
As observed by wikipedia:
That differs vastly from African slaves who were kidnapped from their homeland, forcefully transported, and, should they survive Middle Passage, sold into permanent bondage. Under the US slave system, the African slave’s decendents (children, grandchildren, great grandchildren) became slaves at birth.
I regret to inform you, Melba, but your attempt to apply the term “Middle Passage” to whites who came to the U.S. under terms of indentured servitude also displays the profound and dangerous level of ignorance shared by so many tea-baggers.
By definition, “Middle Passage” refers to the forced transportation of African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean.
Since I suspect, Melba, that you don’t read much, I’d recommend you pick up the DVD of Amistad which provides a remarkably accurate account of what “Middle Passage” was all about.