OK, this is from a fairly left-wing source (someone who had once hoped that the populist left could find some areas of agreement with the populist right, whereas I don’t really have time for any of ’em), but she does cite some fairly mainstream sources — which, of course, being an ideologue, she has to apologize for. This was brought to my attention by Kathryn Fenner, by the way.
So ignore the fact that she can’t spell Jim Clyburn’s name, and note how this fits with my previously expressed concerns about the overlap between the tea party movement and racism in this country:
A year later, though, it’s worth more of my time to say what many resist: The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement’s origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore. Here’s only what the mainstream media is reporting, ignoring what I’m seeing on Twitter and left wing blogs:
- Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was taunted by tea partiers who chanted “nigger” at least 15 times, according to the Associated Press (we are not cleaning up language and using “the N-word” here because it’s really important to understand what was said.) First reported on The Hill blog (no hotbed of left-wing fervor), the stories of Lewis being called “nigger” were confirmed by Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones and Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, who was walking with Lewis. “It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis,” said Carson, a former police officer. “He said it reminded him of another time.”
- Another Congressional Black Caucus leader, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, was spat upon by protesters. The culprit was arrested, but Cleaver declined to press charges.
- House Majority Whip James Clybourn told reporters: “I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.”
- There were many reports that Rep. Barney Frank was called a “faggot” by protesters, but the one I saw personally was by CNN’s Dana Bash, who seemed rattled by the tea party fury. Frank told AP: “It’s a mob mentality that doesn’t work politically.”
- Meanwhile, a brick came through the window at Rep. Louise Slaughter’s Niagara Falls office on Saturday (the day she argued for her “Slaughter solution” to pass health care reform, though it was rejected by other Democrats on the House Rules Committee).
On Thursday MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews grilled tea party Astroturf leader Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity about supporters who taunted a man with Parkinson’s disease at a tea party gathering in Ohio last week. Phillips insisted the bullies just didn’t represent the tea party movement. But such demurrals don’t cut it any more. At the Nashville tea party gathering last month, a proponent of the kinder, gentler tea party movement, Judson Phillips, tried to distance himself from crazed and racist elements – but later endorsed racist speaker Tom Tancredo even after he told the convention: “People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.” Tancredo blamed Obama’s election on the fact that “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.” He got some of the loudest cheers of the weekend.
So I’m having a hard time tonight trying to believe almost uniformly white tea partiers are anything other than a racist, right-wing reaction to the election of an African American president…
For me, part of the real problem is that I’m having a hard time discerning what is real political disagreement, and what is actually fueled by prejudice against a black president. That makes civil discourse difficult. Of course, a fair number of these people are good at incivility….
The House Republicans were deliberately whipping up the protestors this weekend in Washington.
The author, Joan Walsh, the editor of Salon.com, points out elsewhere in the piece that Pat Buchanan tarred her with the elitism brush. She points out that she is the product of a lower middle class immigrant background and public schools and universities, while Buchanan is Washington aristocracy and a graduate of Georgetown. She’s liberal, but not off the charts, or generally very snarky as is Mo Dowd.
Y’know, Greg would probably have called you on your a priori* discounting of Joan Walsh as “OK, this is from a fairly left-wing source, but”
Ideas are, regardless of who has them.
*Ha!
I am ashamed of the way these people act. Through multiple media sources, the US is seen as a horribly racist, uneducated bunch of mindless, mean spirited people. Why would other countries want to build industry here or invest in our economy. Why would they respect us? The hate and lies have long ago gone too far. I am afraid that their hatred and meanness is beginning to effect the way I feel about them. There will be horrible consequences if this does not stop. Someone will be hurt, more than already. I am afraid.
Actually, Kathryn, sometimes ideas are, in SPITE of who has them. As in the Tom Friedman statement that I often quoted, “some things are true even if George Bush believes them.”
If you’re quoting a source who is saying a really terrible thing about people on the right (that they’re racists), then you are obligated to disclose to the reader that that person is habitually an opponent of the right. My reader should be able to take that into consideration, and decide whether to add a few grains of salt, and decide whether the quotation still has value.
I really don’t see how I could do otherwise.
Now, I will accept service on my general snobbish dismissiveness toward populism of both the left and right. It’s just that over the years, I’ve seen so many intellectually offensive things done and said in connection with the populist impulse that I am jaded about it.
I’m aware of it, and I feel bad about it, but it’s there.
It really bothers me, for instance, that I so often find myself at odds with working-class whites (or at least whites with working class sensibilities). I found myself on opposite sides of the ramparts from them on the Confederate flag issue, then video poker, then the lottery, and now the tea party thing.
It always bothered me that we were so totally dismissive of Jake Knotts, for instance, who was after all a legitimate expression of the wishes of his district. The classism that lurked beneath our criticisms of him made me feel like a snob.
So, while it rankled some of my colleagues deeply, I was glad for once to find common cause with him against the upper-crust Mark Sanford. It was nice, for a change. Jake still had his warts, but it was good to be on his side in a fight just once.
But populism is still a big problem for me. I still, as I did when I was a high school student reading “Enemy of the People” and such, tend to equate it with anti-intellectualism…
Local working class whites are different from those elsewhere in many ways. Some of that may be from the extremely poor education they may have gotten, and some of it is that, lacking a union to make them proud, they rally around the flag.
My paternal uncles were members of the auto workers union. My maternal grandfather, the railroad workers union. They were not instantly disposable worker/slaves. They commanded respect and treatment with dignity. New York State educated them well–a Regents high school diploma meant one did not have to take the college boards, for example.
We don’t have that same sensibility around here. The “Right to Work” is really just the “Ability to Fire at Will.” Disposable people…
Hmmm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html
I just sent the Bob Herbert piece to Brad! I suppose he might say it’s from a fairly African-American source, but….
Now we know that a quarter of all Republicans firmly believe that Obama is the Antichrist — and we have to assume that party Republicans are more realistic than Tea Party zealots — it makes more sense. They have declared holy war against the American government.
Enjoy all the links!
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-conservative.php#comments