“And when you throw out all of the nonsense and contradictions, there's nothing left except race.”
The Huffington Post’s Bob Cesca apparently has the Tea Party movement all figured out. According to him, it’s all about race. In a March 3 article, “The Tea Party Is All About Race [1],” Cesca blasts the Tea Party members for supposedly being racists who are upset that an African-American is in the White House. Of course, there’s a lot of that going around on the left [2].
Cesca gets straight to his point, “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.”
To provide an example of all the racism, Cesca points to Dale Robertson, founder of TeaParty.org, who held a sign that had “niggar” written on it. That really isn’t that bad, however, because, “the wingnut right has been dying to blurt out, as Lee Atwater famously said [3], ‘n-----, n-----, n-----!’”
Cesca, however, must have forgotten to mention that numerous Tea Party groups have dissociated themselves [4] with Robertson and have even spoken out against him.
The reason, of course, that the other actual members of the Tea Party are so furious is chalked up to the President’s race. “In the final analysis, when you boil away all of the weirdness, it becomes clear that the teabaggers are p----- 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.”
That is exactly right – because the Tea Party movement has absolutely nothing to do with taxes and health care.
Cesca naturally also has to tie in Fox News and Rush Limbaugh because they are both “extensions” of the Tea Party. Although Cesca admits that, unlike Robertson, they don’t actually say “n-----.” It is supposedly “implied.” He complains that, “Every week, a new example pops up on the radio and somehow the offenders are able to keep their job …”
But the Tea Party is also an “extension” of other things, too, according to Cesca. “It's an extension of the race-baiting and, often, the outright racism evident in all of those conservative spheres.” Examples? He didn’t provide any.
Cesca blames-surprise-“the far right” and Sarah Palin’s selection as GOP John McCain’s running mate. He complains that, “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.” As though Cesca personally spent any time at a Sarah Palin event. Of Obama, Cesca writes: “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.’”
That’s hard to prove since Obama is the only presidential candidate we’ve ever had that has a friend who set off bombs in the Pentagon and the Capitol. Also, didn’t Hillary Clinton take some heat for her husband’s pardoning of Puerto Rican nationalist terrorists just as she was poised to run for New York Senator?
Cesca did manage to find one example of a “racist” member of the Tea Party moment. He claimed that Pam Stout was racist because “all that’s left is race” when she explained to the New York Times why she had joined the movement.
Simply because Stout wasn’t protesting about the “unconstitutional measures fueled by fear- mongering over the very remote threat of terrorism” and she believes the economic crisis and health care was “manufactured.” Cesca dismisses Stouts concerns and and belittles her reasoning, asserting without any proof she's motivated by racism.
So, when you throw out all of the nonsense and contradictions, if you don't agree with Bob Cesca, you're a racist.
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