Day: May 6, 2010

Verbatim

Jon Ponder

What I do better than most is figure out which way the parade is marching, dash to the front and say, ‘Follow me.’ Nobody wants to listen to me rant and rave, they want to hear some kind of conflict.

– Mark Williams, chairman of Tea Party Express, the astroturf group operated by GOP political strategy group, Russo, Marsh & Rogers, that sponsored bus tours to rally opposition to Pres. Obama across the country.

If Tea Baggers Were Black…

Trish

WhiteSlaveSmSometimes it’s hard to improve on the original, and Eric Effron’s editorial in a recent issue of The Week is such a case. What if, Effron asked, tea baggers were black?

It’s a provocative thought experiment: “Imagine,” writes author and self-described anti-racism activist Tim Wise, “if the Tea Party were black.” In reality, of course, the Tea Party is virtually all white, but for the sake of this exercise, imagine that members of Congress in March had been surrounded by thousands of angry African-Americans, yelling insults at white, Southern politicians and talking about “revolution” and “taking the country back.” Or, imagine that the hundreds of gun-rights activists who recently descended on the nation’s capital, many armed with AK-47s and handguns, were black. Would admirers of the Tea Party view such protesters as patriotic Americans entitled to voice their heartfelt opinions, or as a dangerous mob that the police and the FBI should closely watch? And what if there were a black Glenn Beck, with millions of devoted followers, calling for a public uprising against a tyrannical U.S. government? Would he be seen as an entertainer—or as a threat to public safety? “To ask any of these questions,” Wise concludes, “is to answer them.”

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