Posted on 02/16/2010 7:30:10 AM PST by butterdezillion
By DAVID BARSTOW
SANDPOINT, Idaho — Pam Stout has not always lived in fear of her government. (snip)
The report does not mention the Tea Party movement, but among Tea Party activists it is viewed with open scorn, evidence of a larger campaign by liberals to marginalize them as “racist wingnuts.”
But Tony Stewart, a leading civil rights activist in the inland Northwest, took careful note of the report. Almost 30 years ago, Mr. Stewart cofounded the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations in Coeur d’Alene. The task force has campaigned relentlessly to rid north Idaho of its reputation as a haven for anti-government extremists. The task force tactics brought many successes, including a $6.3 million civil judgment that effectively bankrupted Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations.
When the Tea Party uprising gathered force last spring, Mr. Stewart saw painfully familiar cultural and rhetorical overtones. Mr. Stewart viewed the questions about Mr. Obama’s birthplace as a proxy for racism, and he was bothered by the “common message of intolerance for the opposition.”
“It’s either you’re with us or you’re the enemy,” he said.
Mr. Stewart heard similar concerns from other civil rights activists around the country. They could not help but wonder why the explosion of conservative anger coincided with a series of violent acts by right wing extremists. In the Inland Northwest there had been a puzzling return of racist rhetoric and violence.
Mr. Stewart said it would be unfair to attribute any of these incidents to the Tea Party movement. “We don’t have any evidence they are connected,” he said.
Still, he sees troubling parallels. Branding Mr. Obama a tyrant, Mr. Stewart said, constructs a logic that could be used to rationalize violence. “When people start wearing guns to rallies, what’s the next thing that happens?” Mr. Stewart asked.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I sent this e-mail to NYT:
David Barstow's article about the people in tea parties has this quote: "They could not help but wonder why the explosion of conservative anger coincided with a series of violent acts by right wing extremists."
It is journalistic malpractice to print a statement like that without giving at least two examples from this alleged "series of violent acts by right wing extremists."
It's tantamount to Fox News saying, "Civil rights researchers could not help but wonder why the NYT's poor circulation numbers coincided with a series of rapes perpetrated by reporters investigating their leads."
OR
"Fox News can't help but wonder whether the NYT's editorial staff has stopped beating their wives yet."
If somebody printed that you would rightly sue them for libel - unless NYT's editorial staff has been proven to be wife-beaters.
Please update the article to include precisely what "series of violent acts by right wing extremists" you are talking about. To do less is journalistic malpractice.
I love the ‘pussling’ thingie. It’s overused but what the hell, always good for a laugh.
Image: Somebody with their mouth open in pretend puzzlement, slightly waving their hands, ‘puzzled’ as hell. this makes the other person go into long, elaborate explanations of the obvious, all of which the ‘puzzled’ person knows already but chooses to ignore.
In other words, a fake, bogus, phoney stance.
It should have been listed as one of the ‘Games People Play’ in that deservedly famous book.
Has one tea partier been arrested for anything yet?
I’m so sick to death of folks playing the race card. I wonder if Obama wasn’t chosen for that VERY convenient reason. I don’t care what color his skin is, I’d still feel the same about his destruction of our nation.
eeek. pussling = puzzling.
sorry sorry.
I thought pussling was very appropriate. lol.
Sometimes I have to laugh when my typos make just as much, if not more, sense than what I meant to type.
Yesterday I meant to type “re-education camps” and accidentally typed “red-education camps”. Clearly God has a sense of humor. lol.
Dammit! I wanted that to remain a secret! Now EVERYONE is going to want to go there.
“If somebody printed that you would rightly sue them for libel - unless NYT’s editorial staff has been proven to be wife-beaters.”
I don’t believe that is true... You would have to prove that they “could” help but wonder. Kind of like me saying “I think you are guilty of (pick a crime). My statement was that I “think” it; not that you were guilty of it. It’s pretty hard to prove that I didn’t think it...
That was the card that kept the Clintons from being able to push hard on Obama’s shadowy life story.
If you look at “Prairie Fire”, written and published in 1974 by Ayers, Dohrn, and other WU members (found at http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/ ) it shows that the Black liberation movement was tied in with WU.
And if you look at http://article.nationalreview.com/374927/wright-101/stanley-kurtz you’ll see how being black and hating America come together in the minds of people like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Barack Obama - and how, in the name of multi-cultural education, hatred of America is taught but won’t be criticized because criticizing Black “culture” (like Wright) is racist.
Oh, I see. That’s how they get around saying that crimes were committed without having to use the “allegedly”.
Sick.
Nidal Hasan ALLEGEDLY went on a shooting spree. Abdulmutallab ALLEGEDLY tried to blow up a plane. Al Qaeda ALLEGEDLY committed the 9-11 attacks.
But as long as somebody is WONDERING WHY there’s been a huge rash of green monsters coming out of the earth and eating whole houses and spitting out the ping pong tables, there doesn’t have to be an “allegedly” or any corroborating details in a NEWS story (not editorial).
Yep. Except when the SEIU brown-shirts show up and start attacking people.
What does he mean, “start”?
“When people start wearing guns to rallies, what’s the next thing that happens?” Mr. Stewart asked.
That’s easy. You DON’T have Obama inspired SEIU thugs beating anyone up!! Next question.
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