While I Was Away, The Teabaggers Played
July 26th, 2010So, when I arrived in Vegas last week I got an email forwarded to me that showed the teabaggers at Secure Arkansas to be up in arms over a little piece that KARK did about racism in the tea party.
KARK recently did a hit piece on the Arkansas Tea Party by trying to link the Tea Party to White Revolution guy Billy Roper. With no video of Roper at any Tea Party Events, KARK put a translucent picture of Roper and a Nazi flag over a picture of Tea Party activists at the Arkansas State Capitol.
The video on the examiner link below is about a real racist. Maybe KARK Channel 4 should do a story about La Raza and the Brown Berets instead of insinuating a story about the Arkansas Tea Party.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-5433-Little-Rock-Immigration-Examiner~y2010m7d20-Arkansas-Tea-Party-Racist-Story
Okay, I’ll bite. First things first, KARK has the video up and, what do you know, there is no “translucent picture of Roper and a Nazi flag over a picture of Tea Party activists at the Arkansas State Capitol.” The picture they put up of Roper is in no way translucent and stands by itself. So, surprise surprise, the folks running Secure Arkansas lied about what was in the video. Know what’s even funnier? If you follow a link from the link they provide in the email has this little quote from Roper:
I was registered on a
Tea Party website as one of the organizers of Russellville Tea Parties
…over a year ago, but rather than try to compete with the other organizer
who was doing his own thing, I just started campaigning at them, and
others, across the state. Last July 4th, for example, we held an
anti-illegal immigration demonstration in front of the Pope County
Courthouse after attending the Tea Party there. I and nine supporters
attended the last one there, too, and passed out campaign fliers there.I
anticipate that many of the weaker individuals will try to disavow me
or protest that they aren’t racist, that says more about them than it
does me. You have a quote by Thomas Jefferson up, do you know what HIS
views on race were? The same as mine.”
So basically, Secure Arkansas and the rest of the teabaggers are saying that KARK had no proof that Roper ever appeared at their rallies, but they unwittingly provide a link to the man himself saying he was involved with them and campaigns at them! Do these guys realize just how foolish they look? Oh, and just for fun, the little disclaimer on Roper’s site describes him as “Pro-God, Pro-Guns, Pro-Guts” and “Against Illegal Immigration, Against Abortion, Against Gay Marriage”. Birds of a feather I guess.
Besides blasting La Raza, a Latino civil rights and advocacy organization with a horrible racist agenda that includes fighting childhood obesity and fighting for Wall Street Reform, and the Brown Berets, an obscure and tiny Black Panther like group in the email, the video that’s supposed to show “a real racist” is about Shirley Shirrod. And it’s written on the same day that it became obvious that Mrs. Shirrod was the victim of teabagger/Fox News based lies. The writer, Kenneth Wallis, hasn’t corrected the record as of yet. But judging from this quote, I don’t think we can expect to see any fact based posts coming from him anytime soon:
The NAACP was once a great organization that fought for civil rights against people like Hugo Black, Robert Byrd, and other democrat racist. Now the NAACP cries racist against any conservative person or movement while it gives a pass to any member of the left from Marion Berry, to Robert Byrd, to Black Panther Thugs. Shirley Sherrod, a faceless bureaucrat could have advanced in government like Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, and other socialist. Fortunately, video footage showed up on the unregulated internet of Sherrod bragging about her racism and bigotry to none other than the NAACP! Since you probably won’t see this on local TV news, so here’s some videos about that issue.
Yeah…wacky. And you notice, all the groups that the teabaggers single out as racists are groups like La Raza and the NAACP, not organizations like, I don’t know, the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazis, etc. Just saying.
Oh, and one more bit of fun. I got contacted by a reporter while I was in Vegas because, apparently, Jeannie Burlsworth, founder and chair of Secure Arkansas, reads my blog:
Burlsworth promised a “very interesting” 2011 legislative session, although she declined to say which lawmakers might support the group’s proposals. She quoted a liberal blog, Blue Arkansas, that said the group might be at work on a “radical profiling bill like the one in Arkansas.”
“Go for it,” said one woman in the audience. “Let’s go,” said someone else.
The blog’s July 17 posting actually read that a “racial profiling bill like the one in Arizona might come up,” according to a post by David MacAvoy.
Emphasis mine. So, Mrs. Burlsworth had to actually misquote me to avoid saying the word “racial” when talking to her group. You know, so that “Go for it!” response wasn’t recorded in that context. Heh. Well, Mrs. Burlsworth, if your reading, please, try to get quotes right. That kind of thing, much like being able to properly count petition signatures, could be very helpful to the folks at Secure Arkansas. Oh, and I’m glad to see that you’re looking forward to the next legislative session. We are too. And I promise you, we will be there for the fight, every step of the way.
Tags: racism, Secure Arkansas, teabaggers