Does it matter who is President?
If certain Tea Partiers and Tea Party groups have come under fire for alleged racism, it may be due to the fact they’ve couched their opposition to the Obama Administration personally. They don’t just oppose the Administration, they oppose the man himself. This is what happens when persons, especially on the Right, still believe in the Cult of the Presidency.
The Cult, as we know, is where people believe the President is more than just the leader of the Executive Branch of government, as embodied in the Constitution. They believe he embodies all their hopes and dreams and personifications and can also win wars and stop oil spills in a single bound. It the Cult that led to the Clinton-bashing years of the right from 1992-2000 where, despite accused of murder, theft and rape, Clinton is still an important figure politically whose wife is Secretary of State while the Right suffers from lack of new ideas because activists, think tankers, pundits and writers spent most of their time, money and energy on hunt for the White Whale rather than offering coherent critiques on Clintonism. (The exact opposite took place in the last decade as the Right spent most its time acting as the Bush Administration’s Praetorian Guard.) Sadly, the same phenomenon is happening again and the fact Obama is half-black make such attacks even more difficult because the boundaries are even more narrow.
And yet when we realize, from the recent Washington Post series on the enormous secret government interlocking with big business that has risen in the wake of 9-11, the President himself as a person is dwarfed by the system that surrounds him. Whether its all the intelligence agencies that have been created since 9-11 (and I thought the whole reason 9-11 took place was the problem of too many intelligence agencies) or military-industrial complex, the President in reality, instead of being a wundermenschen may well very be just prisoner in his own palace. The system has a way of multiplying and acting upon its own wishes, forcing our leaders down the roads it wishes they would go, offering choices only it lays out, creating boundaries and structures of government that are sacrosanct. This is what Eisenhower feared would happen. This may be true for Bush II and Obama, it may be have been true for any number of Presidents.
If Tea Partiers focused their critiques and attacks to the system (or big government, the military-industrial complex or the empire, or the establishment whatever you want to call it) itself instead of the figureheads engulfed in it, then maybe such charges of racism, while probably not going away, will become ridiculous and maybe more and more people who also feel that their government has become the grotesque spawn of both fear and power and wealth will become Tea Partiers rather than be put off by them.
Well said, Mr Scallon.
Sean,
Excellent post. Really good points that I agree with 100%.
That said, you can’t seriously be trying to advance the line that the Tea Party is only being tagged as racist because the individual they’re fixating upon as a hate-figure just so happens to be a black guy as well as a Democratic President?
Like, it’s all just a misunderstanding. How can they possibly be expected to hate on a black guy without it looking like racism? People are just (deliberately) misinterpreting their personal animus as being based on skin colour when, in reality, they’d be saying he same things about a white guy from Arkansas if he had a D after his name and lived in the White House?
Sorry, but no. The NAACP was right to call on the Tea Party to denounce its racist elements, and it would have been proof of your theory if the Tea Party nationwide had used this as an opportunity to clean house and present a less intolerant face to the nation.
But that didn’t happen.
What – did – happen is that one major Tea Party leader came out with a really disgustingly racist screed that left no one in any doubt about his real opinions. Then a conservative blogger tried to smear the NAACP as a bunch of anti-white racists by doctoring clips of a speech to remove the part where the speaker was applauded by an NAACP audience for denouncing anti-white racism.
And I’ve seen no one on this site who identifies themselves as a Tea Partier finding fault with either of them. Not one. Lots and lots who are only too happy to paint themselves as victims of a ‘Liberal Media’ conspiracy, but no one who thinks there’s anything really wrong in what either of them they did, because ‘everyone knows’ blacks and liberals are the Real racists, and you have to fight fire with fire, etc, etc.
You might – want – the Tea Party to be purely about the things you think are important, but from what I see looking around here, you’re not going to get it. Not while there’s a black guy parking his skinny ass in a seat that they think is reserved for ‘people like them’.
But YMMV, as they say.
[...] from the left and the right [link added] of how conservatives need to start acting like grown-ups. I especially like this from the Salon [...]
I just don’t get it. A Tory watering hole like this and you folks never watched “Yes Minister” or its sequel, “Yes Prime Minister”? Has there ever been a president of this country who controlled the government? You wouldn’t know it from reading their biographies.
And as for this: “And yet when we realize, from the recent Washington Post series on the enormous secret government interlocking with big business that has risen in the wake of 9-11″, if this isn’t satire laced with irony, you really ought to shoot yourself in the head. Bush, Cheney and Rove are running the government and this series surprises? Maybe the problem with Washington these days is that it holds people surprised by this “news”. Here’s an idea, Google Halliburton, General Dynamics, Blackwater, Sikorsky, the US Army and its army of contractors.
“If certain Tea Partiers and Tea Party groups have come under fire for alleged racism, it may be due to the fact they’ve couched their opposition to the Obama Administration personally”
Or do you think it could possibly because of signs carried by people at Tea Party rallies that are unmistakably racist?
Just Google “racist tea party signs” under Google images for an eyeful.
Posters of Obama as a witch doctor, as a black criminal mugging a white uncle Sam, signs with racist slurs printed on them, it goes on and on. Far too many to be chalked up to all of them being from outside liberal agitators, which turns out to have been a myth anyway.
People aren’t claiming that every single Tea Party member is as racist as these worst elements, but the fact that the element exists in the Tea Party is unmistakable.
Scratching your heads in disingenuous bafflement saying “Gosh, let’s try to figure out why they’re called racist” is comical, at least be rational about it.
“People aren’t claiming that every single Tea Party member is as racist as these worst elements.”
That’s what I thought the NAACP just did.
Racist or not it goes back to one thing: personal opposition. The Right was just as nasty towards Clinton.
I have challenge for the next national Tea Party rally. Can the speakers and those who attend go the entire rally without mentioning Obama’s name once. Can they draw signs without his name? Can we finally throw down the secular idol we’ve created and called “Mr. President”?
Two points:
1) In the real world that exists outside of the Wingnutosphere the NAACP very clearly called on the Tea Party to denounce its racist elements. The fact that the representatives of the Tea Party chose to pretend that the NAACP had called the entire group racist says a lot about how stupid they think their followers are.
2) What you’re talking about isn’t personal opposition, not if your argument is that The Right would be this hateful towards any Democrat in the White House. What you’re describing here is blind, ideological hatred where the individual doesn’t matter, it’s all about the screaming and the catharsis that comes with flinging poo at a cartoon cut-out.
“it’s all about the screaming and the catharsis that comes with flinging poo at a cartoon cut-out.”
The cartoon being the President, right?
I disagree with nearly every point here.
You say the right and the teabaggers are somehow more into personal cult than the left. This is laughably 180 degrees from the truth. Never heard of Hollywood and Gossip rags? Bastions of right-thinking? Never heard of “the last 10 years under Bush”?
“They don’t just oppose the Administration, they oppose the man himself.”
No. Actually the opposite is true. The democrats and Obama supporters who are teabaggers are against BIG UNRESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT. Think (honestly). Obamas PERSONAL APPROVAL is around 45%, while approval of his policies is around 20%.
“Right suffers from lack of new ideas…”
No. That’s only in your head, and in a willful refusal to pay attention.
Tea party somehow more racist than the NAACP? That’s a lie.
This post is full of lib lies, to support the lib agenda.
New York Times quietly cleans up some of the dishonesty:
“…there is no evidence that epithets reportedly directed in March at Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, outside the Capitol, came from Tea Party members.”
This, um, “apology?”, is buried at the bottom of a piece that seems to say it is obvious that the Tea Party is racist, even if concrete examples are frustratingly hard to find.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/us/politics/18bai.html?_r=1
“The cartoon being the President, right?”
The cartoon being the wacked-out caricature of any and all Democratic Presidents popular on the Right. Nothing to do with the person behind it, and even less to do with their policies, statements or actions. They’re – all – the Most Evil Lie-beral Evah x eleventy!!
But you already know that, right, Sean. What with you being an evil lib yourself, bringing on that dreaded lib agenda.