Tea Party protest: A display of racism?

Now we’ve seen what the Tea Party movement is really about, said Joan Walsh in Salon.com. Over the past six months, I’ve tried to convince myself that these millions of angry protesters are just average citizens genuinely motivated by “economic anxiety,” but the mask came off last week in Washington. During a tumultuous Tea Party demonstration while Congress voted on health-care reform, protesters repeatedly hurled the word “nigger” at Congressional Black Caucus members Andre Carson and John Lewis, who had been nearly beaten to death during a 1960s civil-rights march in Alabama. They spat on another black Democratic congressman, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank was called “a homo” and a “fag.” It was a disturbing display of reactionary bile from this country’s racist past, and attempts by Tea Party organizers to distance themselves from their wing nuts “just don’t cut it anymore.”

That’s “a despicable smear,” said The Washington Times in an editorial. The vast majority of protesters were “very well-mannered” in expressing their opposition to the Democrats’ arrogant takeover of the health-care system, and in videos of the aforementioned congressmen walking into the Capitol, no epithets can be heard. With no evidence but the allegations of a few Democrats, the news media turned this story into an attack on the Tea Party movement itself, so as to silence the First Amendment right of millions of Americans. Sure, you can find “nuts and racists” in almost any crowd, said Kathryn Jean Lopez in National Review Online. But I was there last week, and the Tea Partiers I talked to were just average citizens opposed to taxes, spending, and the endless expansion of government.

Ah, yes—it was just a few bad eggs, said Elmer Smith in the Philadelphia Daily News. That familiar excuse “gets old after awhile.” Consider another outburst last week by Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas, who shouted out “baby killer” in the House chamber when pro-life Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak was speaking in favor of the health-care bill. Neugebauer later said he was referring to the bill, not to Stupak, and that he just let his emotions get the better of him. Got it? “The protestors outside are misunderstood, the lawmakers inside are misquoted,” and no one was responsible for stirring the mob into a frenzy. Sounds like “total denial” to me.

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