I'd say I'm speechless, but I'm not.
Leonard Pitts' column is so shitastic that we must take it paragraph by paragraph, and sentence by sentence if necessary.
A few words on the meaning of tea.
They are occasioned by a recent commentary from Keith Olbermann of MSNBC.
You should stop reading right here given the reference, but we're just 2 sentences in. Let's give it a little more time.
The commentary — you can find it on YouTube — scores the tea-party movement as the outcry of people who haven't yet made peace with the fact that their president is black.
Another trusted source: YouTube. And scores? Really? Where are these "scores" if they're so prevalent?
Everything else, said Olbermann, is euphemism. Taxes? Socialism? Budget deficit? No, he argued, when you strip away the pretenses and rationalizations, "it's still racism," and they hate the president only because he is black.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Does Pitts really believe this shit?
One is reminded of the 2008 campaign in which many of Barack Obama's opponents insisted people only "supported" him because he was black.
Um, and many did just that. 96% of black people and 92% of Hispanics voted for Obama. Think they all did it based on his eloquence and "record?" Horsesheet.
It was an offensive claim, in that it assumed black was black was black and that people were so imbecilic that skin color — alone and of itself — was sufficient to win their votes. As if you could sub in rapper Flavor Flav and they would not care.
See above. Plus, they hated Bush.
The truth, it always seemed to me, was more nuanced. People liked Obama's policies, his eloquence, and his fierce intelligence and the fact that he was black....
Wait? I thought you just strongly stated that it was offensive that people voted for him because he was black. So now Pitts is saying people did vote for him based on his skin color. Nice.
....that his election would turn history on its ear, was a desirable bonus, but only that — icing on the cake, but not the cake itself.
Yes, it was, so just say it: Because he was black.
I submit that a rough inverse of that dynamic now helps define the tea-party movement.
What? What dynamic?
Ask yourself: Would we even be having this discussion if Condoleezza Rice were president? If Rice, Republican stalwart, conservative icon, and black woman were chief executive, would the first pot of tea ever have been brewed?
No, because people like you and the kind folks over at HuffPo, Daily Kos, Harry Belafonte etc. would have been too busy calling her an Uncle Tom like they did Colin Powell. (At least until he bit back at Bush, then he was your bosom buddy.)
One suspects the average tea-party participant would tell you emphatically, "no," and that this "no" serves as his personal shield against charges of racism. How can I be racist, he would demand, when I know in my heart that I would've supported Condi to the max?
Shield us against racism? No, get it straight, asshat. We (a strong majority of GOPers) didn't like Obama's fucking policies then, and we still don't like his fuck-America-any-way-I-can policies. If Condi had done the same as Obama has done (ridiculously doubtful), her ass would be a in political sling, too. So suspect your ass off, but you're dead wrong.
If you concede him that, then you have to ask yourself what it does to Olbermann's contention that racism is the whole raison d'être of the movement.
Olbermann is a glorious fuckwit of an individual.
The answer leads us back again to nuance, albeit in mirror image. The tea-party people distrust Obama's policies, his eloquence, his fierce intelligence and the fact that he is black then becomes the final straw, the difference maker and deal breaker. To put that another way: I doubt most of the tea-partiers hate Obama strictly because he is black, but it sure doesn't help.
Holy shit. Could Pitts be more confused—nay, fucked in the head? He, like most loony liberals who make this shit-ass claim, confuse even themselves. (And to the nice, amiable liberals, I hope you're a bit embarassed at the moment.)
My point is not that Olbermann's argument is wrong but, rather, that it is incomplete.
Yes, race is obviously a component, and a major component at that, of the reaction against the president. The recurring use of racist imagery and language, the attendance at tea party events of a racist group like the so-called Council of Conservative Citizens, settles that definitively.
Wait, Pitts is going to paint an entire movement based on the participation of one racist group? One, very small group equals a "major component." Wow.
But ultimately, people seem moved by something even bigger than race. This is race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, "culture," and the fact that those who have always been on the right side, the "power-wielding" side, of one or more of those equations, now face the realization that their days of dominance are numbered.
Wait until November, buddy boy. This is going to be 2006 in reverse.
There is a poignancy to their responsive fury because one senses that the nether side of it is a choking fear. We are witness to the birth cries of a new America and for every one of us who embraces and celebrates that, who looks forward to the opportunity and inclusiveness it promises, there is another who grapples with a crippling sense of dislocation and loss, who wonders who and what she will be in the nation now being born.
I think they call that nation "America.". Other than that, this is a gushing piece of meaningless tripe.
Oh, and by the way, if you can still follow his logic and reasoning, can you pass whatever your smoking. I'd like a hit too.
One hopes they will find answers that satisfy them because the change they fear will not be turned back. No one ever volunteers to return to the rear of the bus.
We don't fear; we don't like it. Not one bit. It's selling out our Constitution, our liberties, our rights, our personal freedoms and robbing us blind.
No one is telling anyone to get to the back of the bus. We just don't like where the driver is taking us. And by the way, isn't disssent patriotic? Isn't that what liberals cried between 2000-2008? I'm thinking yes here.
So for all the frustration the tea-party movement engenders among the rest of us, one also feels a certain pity for people like the woman last year who cried, plaintively, that she wanted her country back.
As if she didn't realize that it is already, irrevocably, gone.
Pitts, we are judging Obama by the content of his character. We are repulsed by what he proposes and what he's "accomplished". But get this one thing through your thick-as-concrete skull: None of the opposition has had to do with Obama's good goddamn race. And it never has, you clueless, race-baiting turd.I'm truly sorry for being off-the-charts mad, but sick to death of this "opposition to Obama means you're a racist." It's thoughtless, cowardly, mean, ugly, sickening and desparate.
* I'm sure the use of the word "boy" would be racist here.
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