Guest Voz - Bob Cesca: Tea Party Is All About Race

Guest Voz - Bob Cesca:
I was going to open this piece with an analogy about the tea party groups and why they're treated seriously by the press and the Republicans. The analogy would go something like: "Imagine [insert left-wing activist group here] getting a serious profile in a mainstream newspaper, and imagine serious Democratic politicians appearing at their convention." The problem is, when I really evaluated what the various far-left activist groups are all about and compared them with the tea party movement, there really wasn't any equivalency. At all. Because when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry, ignorance and racial hatred.

I hasten to note that I'm talking about real racism, insofar as it's impossible for the majority race -- the 70 percent white majority -- to be on the receiving end of racism. That is unless white males, for example, are suddenly an oppressed racial demographic. But judging by the racial composition of, say, the Senate or AM talk radio or the cast members playing the Obamas on SNL, I don't think white people have anything to worry about. This isn't an epiphany by any stretch. From the beginning, with their witch doctor imagery, watermelon agitprop and Curious George effigies, the wingnut right has been dying to blurt out, as Lee Atwater famously said, "nigger, nigger, nigger!" But they can't. Strike that. Correction. TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson brandished a sign with the (misspelled) word "niggar." So they're not even as restrained as the generally unstrung Atwater anymore.

Most of the time, they merely imply the use of the word. Rush Limbaugh referring to the president as a "black man-child," for example. Every week, a new example pops up on the radio and somehow the offenders are able to keep their job while Howard Stern is fined for saying the comparatively innocuous word "blumpkin." Limbaugh, on the other hand, can stoke racial animosity on his show by suggesting that health care reform is a civil rights bill -- reparations -- and no one seems to mind. And no, the impotence isn't an adequate Karmic punishment for Limbaugh's roster of trespasses.

The tea party is an extension of talk radio. It's an extension of Fox News Channel. It's an extension of the southern faction of the Republican Party -- the faction that gave us the Southern Strategy, the Willie Horton ad, the White Hands ad and the racially divisive politics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. It's an extension of the race-baiting and, often, the outright racism evident in all of those conservative spheres. But unlike the heavy-handedness of Dale Robertson and others, the tea party followers are generally more veiled about why they're so outraged by our current president...

From the outset, the tea party was based on a contradictory premise (the original tea party was a protest against a corporate tax cut). And when you throw out all of the nonsense and contradictions, there's nothing left except race. There's no other way to explain why these people were silent and compliant for so long, and only decided to collectively freak out when this "foreign" and "exotic" president came along and, right out of the chute, passed the largest middle class tax cut in American history -- something they would otherwise support, for goodness sake, it was $288 billion in tax cuts! -- we're left to deduce no other motive but the ugly one that lurks just beneath the pale flesh, the tri-corner hats and the dangly tea bag ornamentation.

Irrespective of whether the president passed a huge tax cut or went out of his way to bring Republicans into the health care process, the seeds of racial animosity from the far-right were sown during the campaign. In those lines waiting for then-vice presidential candidate and current tea party heroine Sarah Palin, their loud noises spread the pre-scripted lies, lies that entirely hinged on the president's African heritage. A white candidate would never be accused of being a secret Muslim. A white candidate would never be accused of being a foreign usurper. Only a black candidate with a foreign name would be accused of "palling around with domestic terrorists."

In the final analysis, when you boil away all of the weirdness, it becomes clear that the teabaggers are pissed because there isn't yet another doddering old white guy in the White House -- like they're used to. That's what this is all about.

By way of a postscript, one of the many faceless radio talk show wingnuts, Jim Quinn, this week called President Obama a "Kenyan wuss" who should be "slapped silly." The Kenyan lie and the "slap silly" insult aside, this president is no wuss. You know how I know? He's a black man who ran for president and won despite the growing mob of gun-toting militant white bigots like Jim Quinn who are sucking air in America. President Obama achieving this despite the hatred and threats against him takes serious guts. Guts that Jim Quinn and the tea party movement will never understand.

Teapartiers planning on Irritating Teaparty Congressmen! Congressmen Already Disconnecting Their Numbers!

Tea Party Patriots Release Personal Phone Numbers, Emails Of Almost 100 Incoming GOP Reps
A prominent Tea Party group is hoping to ensure that recently elected GOP representatives aren't transformed by their newfound Capitol Hill influence, by allowing their constituents to get to them before Washington does. At least that was the logic behind the Tea Party Patriots' decision to release the personal cell phone numbers and email addresses of almost 100 incoming Republican representatives, a step they took after they learned that their "Freshmen Orientation" seminar was going to be rivaled by an event supposedly "coordinated by lobbyists and campaign consultants" and organized by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

Roll Call tested the authenticity of the numbers and verified that at least some of them were correct. Congressman-elect Ben Quayle's, for one, had already been changed. While some incoming legislators seemed to willingly accept that they'd be getting a number of calls, Brian Kennedy, president of the Claremont Institute, seemed less enthusiastic about the nature and tone of some of the people that had been calling. "After a mass e-mail was sent out calling for Tea Party members to harass me, effectively, I have received many nasty and threatening calls saying we should 'stand down' and that 'they have my number,'" he told Roll Call in an email.

TeaParty Wacko Congressman Allen West Hires Insane, Racist Wacko Extremist who wants to HANG Latinos! Calls Nancy Pelosi "Garbage!"

HP Reports: Wacko Teaparty Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) hired wacko, racist radio show host Joyce Kaufman. Some of her her most combative statements include:
* In August 2007, when discussing illegal immigrants, she said on her show, "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it."
* She became infuriated at illegal immigration after she called Comcast and the recording said, "Press 2 for Spanish."
* She said at a rally, with West standing by, "Calling illegal immigrants 'undocumented workers' is like calling a drug dealer a pharmacist without a license." She was furious that children of illegal immigrants were educated in public schools and received health care at emergency rooms. "There are people who want to change your way of life, and some of them may be your gardeners," she said.

The Florida Independent also notes Kaufman has rarely spared Muslims from her harsh words, and, according to the Washington Post's transcript of her show Tuesday, she referred to Democratic leaders such as outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as "garbage":
"Over these months I have been blessed to form very wonderful relationships with the West family," Kaufman said, adding that she had been a supporter of his campaign. "I looked at this family and [told] myself, how do you not fight and put them up on the pedestal when we've got this garbage up on the pedestal now, people like Nancy Pelosi?"