TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: TEABAGGERS BAG SPOKESPERSON MARK WILLIAMS OVER RACIST BLOG POST, BUT ALLOWED OTHER MISSIVES TO SLIDE

Oh, you know the teabaggers are pissed about this one! Here they were, thinking they were going to be able to dismiss the claims of racism by the NAACP with the usual denials, parades of what black teabaggers they could find in front of cameras, cries of “reverse racism” and backbiting insults leveled at the organization. Unfortunately for them, the ink was hardly dry on the resolution before one of those insults ended up proving the detractors right! Thank you, Mark Williams. Thank you for showing everyone exactly what we are talking about! It hasn’t been noted yet, but the group he heads, the Tea Party Express, is the faction of teabaggers that had some silly caravan earlier in the year that criss crossed the country starting with a rally in Searchlight, NV on March 27, ending up with one in Washington, DC on April 15. That Searchlight rally was the one where Breitbart.com’s Andrew Breitbart did his usual shtick of crying about right-wingers being called a racist and announced a $100,000 reward for any video of two congressmen being called the N-Word by teabaggers as they went into the Capitol to vote on the healthcare bill (he then proceeded to call Senate Majority Harry Reid a racist, but we digress). Well, if Breitbart had any shame – or a conscience – William’s “Letter to Abraham Lincoln” would embarrass him. It most certainly embarrassed the Tea Party Express. They paraded another black conservative in front of the cameras, this one being David Webb of the Tea Party Federation on CBS’ Face the Nation, to announce that they expelled Williams from their ranks because of the letter. Of course, Webb had to pat his group on the back saying they police themselves and this is an example, but our question is what the hell took them so long? It’s not like this was Williams’ first racist rant. Wikipedia has listed tons of quotes from this scumbag that a self-policing organization would have picked up on before they signed him on as their public face. Maybe the Tea Party Federation while those self-policing efforts failed them. Meanwhile Mark Williams is seemingly on the run. A CNN contributor, he was on a few days before the controversy defending the Tea Parties saying that “Racists have their own movement. It’s called the NAACP.” He also bragged about his letter to Lincoln as the controversy went on, saying “We are so afraid of political correctness that we can’t get a conversation started”. On Sunday, July 18, the day the expulsion was announced, he was supposed to be on Don Lemon’s CNN program, but interestingly enough he canceled out, citing travel plans. He later put out a response blaming someone else besides himself – namely David Webb – on his blog, a whine that we also have here. In fact, what better way to explain Mark Williams than to give Mark Williams the space here? Much of what you are about to read comes from the guy himself, and that includes those quotes found on Wikipedia. So…the teabaggers aren’t racist? Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. They best do better than this if you want to convince people of that!

Mark Williams’s “Letter to Abe Lincoln”

Dear Mr. Lincoln:

We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?
Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely
Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person

Mark Williams’ response to the expulsion

Important note: I have not run this past any other tea partier on Earth, it is my own commentary.

___________

Apparently I have offended the tea party “leadership.”

Mind you, there is no tea party leadership; every tea partier is a tea party leader. But something happens when the stronger egos and personalities in a movement begin to feel a sense of ownership. It is not long before they act to claim and defend that feeling.

An example of that happened today.

I was in the air all day today winging my way home from a successful, nationally broadcast conference on race in not just the tea party movement but as a too common staple of recent political discourse. The summit (for lack of a better word) had been quickly organized by Geraldo Riveria and his staff in the wake of my response to the NAACP condemnations of the tea party movement. My flights were not even confirmed until late Friday for an early Saturday jet into LaGuardia arriving just in time for the show. the goal for Rivera and staff was use searing heat of the debate between the NAACP and me to create cooled down answers (chairs to the nose notwithstanding, and he’s the first who will crack wise about that.)

The discussion was moderated by Rivera and broadcast live. It took up the entire hour of his Saturday “Geraldo at Large Show” on the Fox News Channel and featured a number of high profile figures in the civil rights movement, a representative of Freedom Works and myself to represent the tea parties.

By the end of the evening we were all in agreement that the rhetoric has reached such a level, and unjustifiably so, that it makes actual conversation let alone understanding of our common ground all but impossible. We all agreed too that it was time to dial down the backward finger pointing and move forward.

A day earlier I had already I pulled my own inflammatory (and arguably over the top – just ask my wife) criticism of the NAACP in response to NAACP chief Ben Jealous’ expressed desire to open talks with tea partiers. I took it a step farther in both print and on the Geraldo show to applauded Jealous’ overture and provide all of my personal contact information.

Last night I sat down around the same table with National Urban League President (and former mayor of New Orleans) Marc Morial, Reverend Al Sharpton and Project 21 Director Deneen Borelli. With us via satellite hook up was NAACP Senior Vice President Hilary Shelton. We hotly debated on the air and continued spi
rited yet friendly discussions during the breaks. At the end of the show we parted with the understanding and agreement that the division needed to be put behind us and that each of us would do everything within our power to realize that goal in order to facilitate real discussion and a united front against the enemy that faces our country.

So it was with profound disappointment that upon landing in my connecting city that my telephone message box and email were packed with requests for comments about something somebody from the National Tea Party Federation said about the Tea Party Express and me (Ed. Note: That would be David Webb, who by the way is backing a proposed summit on racism–OPP).

I am refusing all media requests on this. I do not wish to widen the fracture and exasperate the damage done to our movement by the National Tea Party Spokesman. That careless individual tea partier who assumed the mantel of “leadership” did so long enough to turn a critical and serious movement and delicate peace with skeptical groups, into a World Wrestling style personality conflict with me at the center. There are internal political dramas amongst the various self-anointed tea party “leaders” and some of the minor players on the fringes see the Tea Party Express and Mark Williams as tickets to a booking on Fact (sic) the Nation (Ed. Note: David Webb called Mark Williams an “embarrassment” on Don Lemon’s CNN program that Williams was supposed to be on).

The fact of the matter is that the tea party movement is a grass roots uprising of Americans who share a love for liberty and that Mr. Webb speaks only for Mr. Well just as I speak for only myself.

By way of background, the National Tea Party Federation is a collection of individuals who do the bulk of the lobbying and organizing of tea party events for around 40 of the thousands of groups active locally and nationally. The Tea Party Express (all 35 of us) were among the original signers and the intent was that we would act as a central clearing house to mount factual responses to smears such as the one we are now enduring.

My disappointment was a grandstanding statement on national television about expelling an individual (me) and my 34 other staff and performers from a grassroots movement that does nothing more than support the Constitution of theses United States because of the Constitutionally guaranteed exercise of the Creator’s endowed freedom to thought and expression is at least as damaging as the rest of the rhetoric that Morial, Sharpton, Dorelli and Shelton hammered such a delicate end.

Other gems from Mark Williams

These were found in a cached version of his Wikipedia page. We needed the cached version because at the time someone wiped this out and replaced it with “Mark Williams is an A-hole” (since been fixed). After reading these remarks, we pretty much have to concur with the sentiment. And remember a lot of these quotes are years before the Tea Party Express signed him on to be a spokesperson, so to can him now that he shows the racism he is known for is a little disingenuous on their part, don’t you think?

On Hurricane Katrina Sept. 9, 2005 on CNN
“The Left’s experiment in training Americans to be passive and expect the government to do absolutely everything for them has been overwhelmingly successful in creating an infantile mindset, with the result being that in New Orleans and entire segment of the population, mostly black – the Left’s guinea pigs in this endeavor — apparently no longer have the requisite brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Category 5 hurricane.”

Same day, same station, this time his target is rapper Kanye West in the midst of his “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” remark. Apparently, he didn’t seem to care too much about Kanye questioning the requisite brains and commen sense of the government to handle a natural disaster.

“He’s a Ku Klux Klansman in blackface.”

It seems as though Mark Williams do not believe that Blacks and Latinos can think for themselves, considering he likes to frame opposition from people of color as some contrived thing from liberal white people. When immigration became a hot issue Mark Williams came up with this nugget.

“A human rights near atrocity. We’re watching the plantation owners swap out Africans for Latinos — no difference but for the lack of visible chains. Supporters of illegal immigration are really saying that they support the exploitation of the desperation of dark-skin people who speak a different language and who are desperate only by virtue of skin color. Been there, done that, fought a civil war over it. Here we go again.”

On Palestinian people

“If there is a crueler pile of camel manure than Palestine, and then it has got to be the total fiction of a Palestinian people.”

Everytime the whine about “political correctness” comes out, it is always someone pissed off that someone less than white was able to enjoy the freedoms of this country. On July 18, 2010 Jordan Lieberman, Vice-President of the right wing Campaign Grid was in such denial on CNN about there’s no racism among teabaggers that he said – and we quote -“There’s really no such thing as a tea party” suggesting that they are some loosely federation of unaccountable people. He then turns around and says that this nonexistant tea party had done what it can to weed racist out of their “movement” Really? Maybe they can explain this quote said at a Tea Party Express bus stop in Boston, MA on April 14.

“Political correctness is going to kill us. Political correctness led to 9/11, political correctness led to Barack Hussein Obama — political correctness is a societal HIV. (America has) a full-blown case of AIDS and we’re the cure. “

The whole campaign to keep Cordoba House from building a mosque from near the site of the World Trade Center comes from the kind of hatred that would make those waging or participating in one damaged goods were it were any other religious structure like a temple or a church. But because no one calls out anti-Muslim bigots for the bigots they are, Mark Williams felt comfortable posting this on his blog on May 20, 2010.

“The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god.” (Muslims do not worship a monkey god; ostensibly, “Allah” is the same god of Judeo-Christianity.)

For the record, that didn’t go over well at the time, but apparently the teabaggers were fine with this. So fine in fact that Williams posted this…um…apology after the outrage.

“In the course of the article I described the ‘god’ worshiped by terrorists as ‘a monkey god.’ I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God… Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength and devotion. He is known as a destroyer of evil and to inspire and liberate. Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship and worthy of my respect and admiration not ridicule.”

He then goes on to attack Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who correctly compared him to Adolf Hitler.

“Sniviling [sic] worm (…) a Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned rat on Anne Frank.”

Showing exactly how teabaggers like to play this denial game Tea Party Federation spokesperson David Webb the black conservative the teabaggers chose to speak to the Sunday talk shows on July 18, was on Don Lemon’s CNN program on July 18, implying that he made these remarks before he signed on the Tea Parties! Never mind the fact that he lied – he posted this crap almost two months ago – even if he said this beforehand that should have been warning flags before a group made him a spokesperson. Now the New York Daily News kept the heat on Williams after this BS, and so did CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who called him out directly on his show. The Attleboro, Massachusetts- raised 54-year-old Williams, who would have been about 8-years-old at the time of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and obviously younger during the movement leading up to it, responded with this.

“I was in the streets marching for civil rights while asshole southern sheriffs were swinging nail studded baseball bats at blacks’ heads. Two things you can always count on: I will defend my record on race to no one (sic), under any circumstances and, I will call out any racist, any time without regard to who they are . . . and that includes our half white, racist President.”

Another blog post continues on with this crap.

“Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.”

Of course, this doesn’t come without a bit of irony. This is what he said on April 12 in Buffalo, NY about how his Tea Party Express will deal with Buffalo NY Gubenatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who was blasted for sending racist and pornographic emails. Paladino, who is a wealthy businessman, is currently the tea party favorite for the New York Governor’s seat.

“I doubt we would support the guy, based on what we’ve seen. You’ve seen the e-mails, right? So what makes you think I would support him? It’s absolutely incompatible with anything we stand for. You saw the e-mails, right? Pornographic, racist, e-mails? How do you think that we would ever support something like that? Why would you even ask that question?”

You damn well know why, Mark.In the future, pick fights you have the spine to wage.