Go To A Tea Party? Oppose Obama? Yeah, You’re A Racist

So says the Sage of Screech, Keith Olbermann.

The whole of the "anger at government" movement is predicated on this. Times are tough, the future is confusing, the threat from those who would dismantle our way of life is real (as if we weren't to some extent doing it for them). And the president is black. But you can't come out and say that's why you are scared.

Say that, and in all but the lifeless fringes of our society, you are an outcast. And so this is where the euphemisms come in. Your taxes haven't gone up, the budget deficit is from the last administration's adventurer's war, Grandma is much more likely to be death-paneled by your insurance company, and a Socialist president would be one who tried to buy as many voters as possible with tax cuts.
…
But facts don't matter when you're looking for an excuse to say you hate this president (but not because he's black). Anything you can say out loud without your family and friends bursting into laughter at you, will do. And this is where the Tea Parties come in.

But recognize what this backlash is, and you can free yourself of this movement built of inherited fears, and of echoes of 1963 or 1873. Look at who is leading you and why and look past the blustery self-justifications and see the fear — the unspoken, inchoate fear of those who are different.

If you believe there is merit to your political argument, fine. But ask yourself when you next go to a Tea Party rally, or watch one on television, or listen to a politician or a commentator praise these things or merely treat them as if it was just a coincidence that they are virtually segregated.

Ask yourself: Where are the black faces? Who am I marching with? What are we afraid of? And if it really is only a president's policy and not his skin. Ask yourself one final question: Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you'll ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you?

So much stupid and so little time. And that’s just the excerpts.

Now, I don’t accept Olbermann’s description of tea parties as all white affairs. He offers no evidence of this, just ugly accusation but two things…

First most polls show Obama polling at upwards of 90% with blacks so I’m not sure why you’d expect to find a lot of people who support these polices at rallies against them. And let’s not pretend this divide is a new and sudden phenomenon. For comparison consider that in October 2005 George W. Bush was polling at 2% approval among blacks after Katrina. It's almost like all Presidents pay a political price for real or perceived failures.

Now we know for a fact that when blacks do attend these protests MSNBC has a nasty habit of whitewashing them out of the story (see what I did there?). Seems to me erasing a black man out of existence is a tad bit racist.
Don’t forget that when SEIU goons attacked someone at a St. Louis protest, it was a black man named Kenneth Gladney who was injured.

But enough about the race angle. Race is a complicated subject that’s not going to be improved, let alone solved, in by an Olby Special Comment or a blog post. That’s okay because it’s irrelevant to this discussion anyway.

The real issue here is how the left tries to shut down debate and de-legitimize opposition by throwing around the charge of racism. This is one of the oldest tactics in their playbook. When Republicans win it’s because they fooled the voters, or scared them, or played on their worst fears. It’s apparently impossible for a liberal to admit that perhaps they are wrong and the majority of voters disagree with them.

Consider Olbermann’s conclusion that opposition to big government is only based on fear of Obama, not as left wing ideologue but of Obama as scary BLACK MAN.

This is such a silly notion and so easy to refute it’s almost comical but let me give it a go…

I would not like these same exact programs if say, to pick three liberals at random, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Clinton or Mike Huckabee were President.

Now since Keith is slow, allow me to point out that each of those 3 men is WHITE.

Other big government supporting politicians I am not a fan of…Harry Reid, the late Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Arlen Specter, Bernie Sanders, Charles Schumer, Pete Stark, Chris Dodd, Henry Waxman, John Edwards and John Kerry.

I also didn’t like it when George W. Bush ran up huge but comparatively small deficits for 8 years (in fact, as Glenn Reynolds points out neither did a lot of the same people now in the tea party movement and they even organized and protested at the time!).

My God, all those politicians I just name...they are all white men (except for Pelosi)! Maybe Olbermann is right and I am a racist, not just an ordinary one but one of the worst kind…a self-hating race and sex traitor!

There’s a saying among lawyers, "When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table*." In the case of the left, when there’s nothing on your side, just cry racism. They have lost just about every political fight in the last year on the merits yet they are simply too dishonest, lazy and nasty to admit it. So they will go on doing what they do best…smearing their fellow citizens for having the temerity to disagree with them.

*Ace sent me the corrected version of that saying.

posted by DrewM. at 01:25 PM

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