We know that there is a blog war on, and that means nobody wants to give notice or consideration to what their “enemies” are blogging about, but we would like to take a moment to address the disturbing pictures seen on LGF.
(image via LGF, original source of image unknown)
First, it is incorrect to paint the Tea Party movement with a sweeping brush of racism because of the signs captured and displayed on LGF.
We have attended and extensively documented four major tea parties, Chicago 2/27, Chicago 4/15, Chicago 7/4, and Quincy 9/12.
Our personal experience is that there has been little to no observable racism embodied in the language or signage on display at the Tea Parties we attended.
In Quincy, of all of the shots we snapped that day, we only captured one Obama-as-Hitler sign. We will post it tomorrow for the record (the image isn’t on the computer this post is being written on). But that’s it. One sign out of hundreds in Quincy.
We’ll look through our massive catalogue of shots from all of the Tea Parties we have attended, to see if we are subconsciously blocking out the racist signs, but we do not think they are there. We have seen the Obama-as-Hitler crap, but we just don’t recall seeing the racism or threats of violence Charles has been posting about.
We are not saying this to discount what LGF is highlighting. We are simply reporting what we have witnessed and documented.
That being said, what Charles has posted on his blog is disgusting. While we bet that it represents a very tiny slice of the sentiment on display that day, it needs to be condemned. Not dwelled on, but dealt with.
Remember during that one McCain rally, where attendees confronted anti-Muslim protesters (video below)? In the end, the anti-Muslim protesters left. That should be the model for anyone carrying signs that are racist or imply a threat of violence.
We challenge Tea Party protesters everywhere, if you see the kind of crap posted on LGF at your local Tea Party protest, confront it and get rid of it.
Many on the Right will be reluctant to devote any column space to this, out of a desire not to publicize something so ugly and unrepresentative of the movement, but that should not stand in the way of confronting this behavior head on.
The Left tolerated it and even encouraged it during their protest days of the Bush administration. Those who stood against the progressive Left were mortified at their viciousness. What does the Tea Party stand to lose by behaving better than the Left ever even tried?
And as one last thought, just in case people don’t get the picture on the difference between the Tea Party movement and the Progressive anti-war marches: we remember clearly the crowds chanting “Fuck Fox News”, “Fuck Fox News”, “Fuck Fox News”, as they went past the Fox cameras in NYC. During the DC Tea Party, protesters surrounding the CNN camera chanted “Tell The Truth!”, “Tell The Truth!”, “Tell The Truth!” Anecdotal? Yes. Revealing? You bet.
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[...] By tnredstate Leave a Comment Categories: Uncategorized This Needs to be Addressed [...]
Just ignore Charles. Once great, now petty and vindictive. Truly sad.
As you know, I covered the rally in D.C., calling in sign slogans live to Stephen Green as I came across them for several minutes, and never saw anything offensive. However, it is possible that after years of covering left-wing protests in Washington — invariably a vast cesspool of virulent hateful scum — I lack LGF’s super-sensitivity. Once you’ve seen elementary-school kids chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, we support the PLO!” and “For Hezbollah, we will fight!” it kind of blunts your capacity for outrage.
On the other hand, the fact that in an ocean of tens of thousand of homemade Tea Party signs, there were a couple dozen seriously off-message — well, at least it debunks the “astroturf” smear. If the gazillionaire right-wing funders were going to do a fake protest with bogus signs for their plastic GOP robot clones, I don’t think those signs would be there, eh?