Sen. Schumer Rehearses the Blame the Extreme Tea Party Rhetoric

From the The Washington Examiner article by Susan Ferrechio (via Drudge):

"Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic Senate leadership, got on a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning without realizing the reporters were already listening in. Schumer thought he was on a private line with four Democratic senators who were to talk with reporters about the current budget stalemate.

"Schumer instructed the group, made up of Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, to tell reporters that the GOP is refusing to negotiate.

"He told the group to make sure they label the GOP spending cuts as 'extreme.'
"'I always use extreme,' Schumer said. 'That is what the caucus instructed me to use.'

"Someone must have finally told Schumer that the media were listening and he stopped talking midsentence.

"Here's a bit more of what he said about House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, according to my notes.

"'The main thrust is basically that we want to negotiate and we want to come up with a compromise but the Tea Party is pulling Boehner too far over to the right and so far over that there is no more fruitful negotiations,' Schumer said on the call. 'The only way we can avoid a shutdown is for Boehner to come up with a reasonable compromise and not just listen to what the Tea Party wants.'"

"Schumer described Boehner as 'in a box,' over the budget negotiations.

"The four senators came on the call after Schumer abruptly went silent and followed Schumer's script closely."

The Democrats have pretty much become the party of identity politics and the party of smearing the opposition. How proud they must be...

NAACP to Vote on Declaration that Tea Party is Racist

Apparently the NAACP believes that espousing federal fiscal responsibility and respect for the Constitution is racist.

From ABC News story by Huma Khan (h/t Pat at And So it Goes in Shreveport):

"The nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization will vote on the resolution Tuesday during its annual convention in Kansas City, Mo.

[...]

"'We're deeply concerned about elements that are trying to move the country back, trying to reverse progress that we've made,' NAACP spokeswoman Leila McDowell told ABC News. 'We are asking that the law-abiding members of the Tea Party repudiate those racist elements, that they recognize the historic and present racist elements that are within the Tea Party movement.'

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in coordination with 170 other groups, including labor unions, is planning a protest march in Washington, D.C., Oct. 10 as the next step in building momentum against the Tea Party.

"The 'One Nation' march is designed as an antithesis to the Tea Party, and it's about 'pulling America together and back to work,' McDowell said."

So Leila McDowell is suggesting that "law-abiding" members (What Tea Party member is not "law-abiding?" Which Tea Party members have been arrested for violent political activities?)of the Tea Party essentially admit the "inherent racism" of their movement, "historic and present" (Historic? Just how old is the Tea Party movement? Less than 18 months, right? Did McDowell just cut & paste this statement from her standard "white guilt" NAACP press release kit?), and then step aside so that NAACP and Leftist political groups can continue in their "building momentum against the Tea Party." All in the name of... what?... good race relations, I guess.

Funny. The NAACP didn't seem to take exception when Kenneth Gladney was (at least) kicked while on the ground and called a n*gger by a White man from the SEIU. In fact, Missouri's branch of the NAACP held a rally in support of the White man and his co-defendant-- where they denounced Gladney as an "Uncle Tom" (video here). Apparently Blacks perceived as conservative don't deserve anything from the NAACP except insults and derision. That's good race relations for you...

By the way Ms. McDowell, perhaps you can explain to us all about this declaration at the Missouri NAACP rally. "I mean that we call him [Kenneth Gladney] a Negro in the fact that he works for not for our people but against our people. In the old days, we call him an Uncle Tom. I just gotta say that. Here he is, ironically the day after a young brother, a young man, I didn’t mean to call him a brother, but on the front page of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, ironically, he’s sitting in a wheelchair, and being kissed on the forehead, by a European. Now just imagine that as a poster's child picture, not working for our people.." Was this an example of "pulling America together and back to work"? Please, tell me.

And then, of course, there's the video of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party leader King Samir Shibazz's shouted declaration that "I hate white people! All of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate him!" This is in addition to his more widely reported statement "You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!" (video here) Is a highly publicized NAACP condemnation of that forthcoming? None that I know of. But I guess statements like that don't qualify as "explicitly racist behavior" in the NAACP's book.

I am so tired of the racist Tea Party rhetoric. The evidence that the ABC article cites is the hotly debated "racial epithets thrown at members of Congress" issue (racial epithets heard by no one, including cameras' audios, except by the members of Congress in question), have "engaged in explicitly racist behavior" (no specific examples given), and "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically" (references to a few anti-Obama signs showing him as a monkey and a picture with someone holding a sign saying "undocumented worker" below a picture of Obama-- I didn't know the birther movement was inherently racist...). If the Tea Party engages in explicitly racist behavior (such as NBPP), why is it that there are only a few, highly contested examples of it?

Strange, huh?

UPDATE: Conservative pundits have responded to the NAACP's with various posts over at Big Government:

"I Condemn the NAACP: Get Back to Freedom" by R. Dozier Gray

"The NAACP should, in my opinion, be about freedom of thought, expression and existence for all people. Instead, NAACP seems desirous of only protecting thought and expression that agrees with them. I think that is wrongheaded."

"I Condemn the NAACP" by Maria Stroughter

"What saddens me is that this organization chooses to focus on imaginary slights, while real threats to this country exist in the form of New Black Panther members who have been caught on tape intimidating voters with billy clubs. Rather than condemning this behavior, it is largely ignored by the NAACP and a presidential administration that continues to refuse to prosecute such."

"Chicago Machine Democrats Deserve NAACP Condemnation, Not Tea Party" by Cedra Crenshaw

"As the NAACP prepares to condemn the tea party movement for phantom 'explicitly racist behavior', the Department of Justice and the NAACP overlook actual instances of explicitly racist behavior by the New Black Panther Party. Blatant disregard for actual racist behavior shows the NAACP to be nothing more than a tool of hard leftists; hard leftists who are intent on creating exploitable divisions."

"NAACP Is Not At All Serious: They’ve Missed the Real Issues" by LTC Allen West (USA, Ret.)

"This NAACP Resolution is consistent with the Obama administration tactic of demonizing and blaming someone else for your own failures and shortcomings, and not take responsibility and accountability."

"The Racism of the NAACP" by Jeff Dunetz

"Take for example this rant by SEIU Executive VP Gerry Hudson where he portrays African-American workers as easy dupes 'it doesn’t take a whole lot to argue African-American workers to another place,' and stereotypes those white workers are 'so f***ing rabidly racist.'"

"Essentially he is saying that the black people he represents are all weak-minded idiots and the whites are all racists. In the old days the NAACP would have blasted Mr. Hudson for his racist comments about Blacks and Whites. But these 'ain’t' the old days."

"Tea Party Preempts NAACP" by Bill Hennessy

"At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s false and defamatory statement to the organization’s Washington bureau. We took this action because we will not stand for their lies.

"The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

Smaller federal government
Lower taxes
Fiscal responsibility
National security
Federalism

"Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried. In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism."

"Black Activists Condemn NAACP Resolution Against Tea Party Movement" by Bob Parks

"As the NAACP plans to use their group’s prestige to bash the tea party movement, members of the Project 21 black leadership network are urging delegates at the NAACP’s national convention not to turn the NAACP into a pawn for progressive political bosses.

"'As a frequent speaker at tea party rallies around the country, I can assure the NAACP that the tea party movement’s concerns are about President Obama’s policies and not his race,' said Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. 'I’m deeply concerned that the NAACP is being used as a political tool to do the dirty work of the progressive movement. Instead of criticizing tea parties, the NAACP would be better served denouncing the racist comments made by a member of the New Black Panther Party and their voter intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in the last presidential election.'"

UPDATE 2: The NAACP has, unsurprisingly, passed passed the resolution condemning the Tea Party.

According to KansasCity.com (h/t Jacobson at Legal Insurrection):

"Late this afternoon the NAACP passed a resolution calling on all people — including tea party leaders — to condemn racism within the tea party movement.

"Passed on the fourth day of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual convention in Kansas City, the resolution also urged people to oppose what it said was the tea party’s drive 'to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.'"

According to Jacobson:

"As originally proposed, the resolution was to call upon 'all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.'

"The NAACP shut down the video feed and barred cameras from its vote, but reportedly the resolution was scaled back slightly, to use the term 'racist elements in the Tea Parties.'

"Make no mistake, either under the original or the revised version, the NAACP has placed itself firmly within the Democratic smear machine which for two years has been attempting to portray all opposition to Obama's policies as racist.

"The purported basis for the resolution is that racist signs and epithets have been hurled at Tea Party rallies. I have addressed this before. While any such behavior should be, and has been, condemned, we are talking about a literal handful of incidents out of millions of people attending thousands of rallies carrying hundreds of thousands of signs.

"Moreover, the notion that the Tea Party movement stands for turning the country back to a pre-civil rights era is a gross and disgusting distortion, and an outright falsehood. A lie is a lie and the NAACP is lying."

[...]

"The target of the NAACP is not so much the Tea Party members, but other blacks. The NAACP seeks to isolate the Tea Party movement from a natural constituency, black social and economic conservatives. The resolution puts any black who associates with the Tea Parties at risk of being labeled an Uncle Tom or some of the other race-based epithets hurled at black conservatives by black liberals."

I'm very glad that Jacobson brings up the notion that the NAACP's actions are most directly directed at Black Americans and not so much at the Tea Party itself. By painting the Tea Party a racist group, the NAACP places even more pressure on Black Americans to conform to the NAACP's Leftist political agendas. This is the same strategy employed for many, many years by Black political leaders and activists.

The Coffee Party Part 1: AstroTurf Started by "United by Obama" Operator Annabel Park

There's a lot of buzz regarding the Coffee Party. Both the The New York Times and Washington Post have run articles that are clearly trumpeting this group.

From Kate Zernike's NYT article:

"Fed up with government gridlock, but put off by the flavor of the Tea Party, people in cities across the country are offering an alternative: the Coffee Party.

"Growing through a Facebook page, the party pledges to 'support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.'"

[...]

"The slogan is 'Wake Up and Stand Up.' The mission statement declares that the federal government is 'not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges we face as Americans.'"

[...]

"'We’re not the opposite of the Tea Party,' Ms. Park, 41, said. 'We’re a different model of civic participation, but in the end we may want some of the same things.'"

[...]

"Ms. Park and chapter organizers said they would invite Tea Party members to join their Coffee counterparts in discussions. 'We need to roll up our sleeves, put our heads together and work it out,' she said. 'That’s, to me, an American way of doing this.'"

The Washington Post went a step further and gave Coffee Party USA founder Annabel Park an open forum during a live Q&A. In that forum Park had to answer softball questions like:

"Wall Township, N.J.: I think this is a wonderful idea, and a long time in coming. Our politicians need to know that we also have a voice. Annabel, will you be helping in going beyond the Internet in your organizing? In other words will you consider public gatherings?

"Thanks

"Annabel Park: Yes, the Internet is a tool for organizing a grassroots movement focused on building communities where people feel safe to engage in civic discourse. We will do 2 things.

"1) We will organize public gatherings. One of the events that we are planning is a national coffee house day on March 13th, in which we will encourage our existing and soon-to-form chapters to facilitate informative and civil dialogue about issues that affect all of us, collectively. We will ask them to report back to us on what consensus they reach, and take action from there.

"2) We will figure out how to use technology to create collaborative environments for Americans to engage in problem solving, and discuss specific policy approaches.

"Vienna, Va.: I think there is an intersection between the Tea Party and the Coffee Party. I think that both groups understand that corporate America has too much influence in our government.

"The insurance companies and others making massive money off health care are the ones pushing back on changes to that system. The utilities and oil companies don't want caps on carbon because the status quo works just find for them.

"If we could come together and beat back the 'Lobbyist Beast' our representatives would have to represent us and not corporate interests. How could we join forces and roll the corporate lobbies back?

"Annabel Park: I do think there is room for us to work with people who are currently in the Tea Party, especially in the area you mention. To do this, we have to go through a process. We have to sit down with people who identify with the Tea Party movement with the goal of reaching understanding.

"It is true that both groups feel that the government is failing us in many ways. I think if we examine the language that some in the Tea Party have been using, there are some things that are alienating to many of us in the Coffee Party: the extreme rhetoric, and the hostility toward the federal government. We would have to ask them tone this down, so that we can focus on actively listening to one another and problem-solving."

[...]

"Herndon, Va.: How do you account for the phenomenal explosion of interest in just one month, as attested by the more than 15,000 fans on Facebook?

"Annabel Park: The Facebook fan page captured the spirit of the time. Many of us had the same thought: the tactics being employed by the Tea Party movement are not likely to produce solutions to the problems that we face as a nation, and we urgently need an alternative.

"It's very hard to get people to rally around a new idea. But here I am reminding them of something that they already know: that we are all Americans. We should not divide ourselves over differences of opinion. We need to be one community. Our democracy is what unites us as a people. We must protect it, and to protect it we must engage in the political process, respecting the reality that we are diverse nation with diverse points of view.

[...]

"Oak Hill, Va.: Hi Annabel: In some respects I thought the article made too much of the 'similarities' between the Tea Party and the Coffee Party....could you give your perspective on the key differences? Thanks.

"Annabel Park: A key difference is in our emphasis on the democratic process, on respectful and civil engagement with one another and with our elected officials.

"In the current climate, too many Americans are afraid to participate, and find the process itself too alienating, because it is dominated by people with extreme opinions and extreme tactics.

"It's hard to speak up when others in the room are screaming.

"So in the end, we may want some of the same things, but we our hoping our journey getting there will be very different.

"Philadelphia, Pa.: Is the Coffee Party turning out to align to a specific party --Republican, Democrat, or another party -- or is it striving for non-partisanship?

"Annabel Park: We are purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization. That is our strength and we plan to use it to facilitate a collaborative process that would encourage people to come together as a community, checking party affiliation at the door.

"Many of the people who have found refuge in the Coffee Party community are among the 53% of America who supported candidate Obama's vision for our nation's future. They are disconcerted by the vision that is being expressed through some of the Tea Party activities and some of their leaders' statements. But we do have a number of Republicans and many, many independents who reject what they see as the politics of division and obstructionism.

"Arlington, Va.: I disagree that the main problem is lack of consensus between the extremes of the left and right. I think the problem with the political process (and the reason for Americans' dissatisfaction) is the degree to which Congress passes bills to please large corporations, regardless of which politicians have been voted for. How does the Coffee Party deal with this fundamental problem?

"Annabel Park: We do feel like we need to make fundamental changes in our government's relationship to Wall Street and the corporations. We feel that the interests of ordinary Americans are not being represented well enough because we have a democracy with a loophole. The constituents that are most organized end up dominating the process, and corporations have the resources to pay thousands of lobbyists to spend their time influencing our government. This is fundamentally unfair and undemocratic.

"The only way to close the loophole is for voters rise to their civic duty. They have money, but we have the votes. No one gets elected without votes.'

"Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. washingtonpost.com is not responsible for any content posted by third parties."

Boy, that sure sounded like a political discussion with contrary views, didn't it?

I love that editor's note. No kidding? WaPO had editorial control over the discussion? Gee, do you think? I've heard more convincing questions from the shills at Obama's "town hall" meetings... "Do those mean old signs make you feel bad, Mr. Pwesident?" asks the child of an Obama campaign worker (and donor) in the Portsmouth "town hall." "How do kids know what’s true? I don't understand... Explain it to me, Mr. Pwesident. Pwetty Pwease..."

Park's discourse clearly betrays a few fundamental talking points being pushed by certain members of the Democratic Congress and various Left-leaning organizations such as the OFA, MediaMatters, etc.

First, that the Tea Party is made up of rabidly angry people. "A key difference [from the Tea Party] is in our emphasis on the democratic process, on respectful and civil engagement with one another and with our elected officials." Since this a "key difference," clearly Park see the Tea Party as engaging disrespectful and uncivil discourse.

Second, that the Tea Party hates the Federal government and that the belief that the Federal government is too large and ineffective necessarily equates to hostility toward it. From Park "I think if we examine the language that some in the Tea Party have been using, there are some things that are alienating to many of us in the Coffee Party: the extreme rhetoric, and the hostility toward the federal government." Park uses no examples, of course. Just voices the conviction that what she believes is so.

Third, that lobbyists and the spectre of evil but unspecified Wall Street corporations are ruining our democracy. "We do feel like we need to make fundamental changes in our government's relationship to Wall Street and the corporations. We feel that the interests of ordinary Americans are not being represented well enough because we have a democracy with a loophole. The constituents that are most organized end up dominating the process, and corporations have the resources to pay thousands of lobbyists to spend their time influencing our government. This is fundamentally unfair and undemocratic."

It really should come as no surprise then when it is revealed thatthe real Annabel Park is far from the mere hard-working, concerned citizen image that she cultivates and that the NYT and WaPo present. The fact is she's a campaign worker for Obama and other Dems and little else.

Although both the NYT and WaPo trumpeted Annabel Park as the founder of the Coffee Party via Facebook page, neither deigned it worthy to mention that Annabel Park is also rooted in Obama's United for Obama and other highly organized Left-leaning associations. Fortunately, Prof. William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection did a little research on his own.

From Jacobson:

"Park is a former Strategy Analyst at the NY Times who was one of organizers and operators of the United for Obama video channel at YouTube:

"'A Korean-American filmmaker is in charge of creating video clips that are playing a role in increasing support for Senator Barack Obama, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.


"'"I found that people have little understanding of the change that Senator Barack Obama is advocating. I thought from my experience in using videos for civil movements that videos would be the best way to promote the need for change and for Obama. That's why I decided to work for the Obama campaign," Annabel Park said.

"'Joining the contest in December last year as chief of a promotional video team, Park has produced some 20 five-minute video clips which have generated a positive response. A clip interviewing actress Kelly Hu in support of the senator was viewed some 10,000 times, and a music video called "Oh Bama" drew wide attention. She has also produced Spanish-language videos to draw support from Hispanics.

"'The 40-year-old Park is leading an Obama promotional section on video-sharing site YouTube with around 10 other volunteers.'"

Huh... So an Obama campaign worker, who incidentally appears in the "Oh Bama" campaign video, is organizing a, in her own words, "purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization." Is this a joke?

Park's call for unity are also rather hard to take. A few quotes from Park in both the WaPo Q&A and NYT article. as examples of her inclusiveness: "We have to sit down with people who identify with the Tea Party movement with the goal of reaching understanding." And "But here I am reminding them of something that they already know: that we are all Americans. We should not divide ourselves over differences of opinion. We need to be one community. Our democracy is what unites us as a people." And '"We’re not the opposite of the Tea Party. We’re a different model of civic participation, but in the end we may want some of the same things."

Now let's look at some of her Twitter messages (all of these are among those gathered at posted by Legal Insurrection): "we must deal with reality instead of indulging the paranoid fantasies of the #teaparty. join #coffeeparty" Or this one: "we're not going to take this tea crap anymore. let's work for change!" Or perhaps you might enjoy this one: "Stop the bad punditry! Stop reading tea leaves. We will overwhelm the polling stations in Nov. We want change! We want change!"

I guess this is indicative of Park's attempts to "facilitate informative and civil dialogue about issues that affect all of us, collectively. [emphasis mine]" Or perhaps this is her way of illustrating, by example, her contention that "[i]t's hard to speak up when others in the room are screaming." Especially when they're screaming via Twitter "We want change! We want change!"

Left Coast Rebel has more on Park's connection to the Democratic Party's campaign machine. From the blog:

"Jacobson broke Annabel’s association with United for Obama, but there are far more. According to the Washington Post in 2008, she started by campaigning for Democrat Senator James Webb in 2006. Since then, she has been associated with a large number of leftist groups including, Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, Asian Americans for Obama, and she started the 121 Coalition. If you include her friend Eric Byler, co-director with Annabel of '9500 Liberty' a Michael Moore-esk liberal documentary, you can add in APA Five and Asian-Nation.org. Eric Byler also did the filming for the Coffee Party’s homepage video. Both Annabel and Eric recently did a workshop for the APA Five on community activism. Perhaps, there was something already in the works?

"As has been pointed out by many today, Annabel also has a large number of MSM contacts. She previously worked as a Strategy Analyst for the NY Times and has been interviewed a number of times prior to the Coffee Party’s break out Washington Post article. Here is Annabel being interviewed in the Washington Post in 2008. Here she is with Anderson Cooper of CNN."

So how many Tea Party members were interviewed in 2007 by Anderson Cooper? How many have their picture taken with Obama (pic available at Left Coast Rebel post)? Grassroots... Yeah, right...

The "Coffee Party" is the very definition of AstroTurf. It doesn't stand up even under casual scrutiny. Annabel Park is a professional campaigner and a standard Leftist shill/activist. This is apparent in with the smallest amount of digging-- digging which The New York Times and Washington Post seem unwilling to do as they trumpet Ms. Park and give her forums to spread her message. Of course, they seemed rather unwilling to do that with the Tea Party as Frank Ross points out.

Know the truth.

AP Reports on Tea Party

The AP actually gave a reasonably fair article to the nationwide Tea Party protests. Story here.

Honetly, I'm a little surprised since the L.A. Times has played down large Tea Party protests in the past.

Why is the Left Afraid of Tea Parties?

I am fascinated by the Left's fear of the ongoing Tea Party protests.

William A. Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection has an interesting post here. He catalogs a few of the various smears from sources such as the New York Times and Media Matters. Jacobson also, significantly, notes that his posts regarding Tea Parties received great amounts of attention. Jacobson writes "my post Tea Parties Are Sooo Scaaary generated more hits for me from more sources (blogs, posting boards, elsewhere) than almost any other post I have written." I would hazard to guess that his most recent post "Liberal Doughboys Afraid of Tea Parties" will likewise garner much attention.

Over at And So it Goes in Shreveport, Pat has noted at upswing in troll activity on her blog. From my own perusing on her blog, I've noted that much (though certainly not all) of the rancor seemed directed at Tea Party posts. Very few posts regarding Tea Parties were left unchallenged.

What I find interesting is that the Left seems so intent on discrediting the protests. Despite the fervent spitting the Left indulged in during the Bush presidency, conservatives largely ignored such protests. While Cindy Sheehan (spelling?) and other anti-war demonstrators were featured prominently on CNN and in other mainstream programming and newspapers, I cannot recall any concerted effort by the Right to discredit their concepts of protest. Sure, the protesters weren't on too many conservatives invites and private discussions were generally disparaging and even personally insulting. They certainly wished they would go away. Michelle Malkin and other conservative pundits and bloggers went so far as to research the protesters' backgrounds and presented their cases, and confronted them on the issues being broached. No one that I know of attempted to infiltrate and shill their way into their discrediting their right to protest. No one I know of attempted to label them as a dangerous bigot, separatist, or revolutionary. Maybe this did happen, but it must have been on a small enough scale that the media did not report it.

Yet, we get lines such as these with great regularity. "The Tea Party movement represents a real danger to the tenets of democracy Americans have embraced for centuries." And then "These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown" (both are quotes posted in Legal Insurrection's "Tea Parties are Sooo Scaaary"). And this comment from someone unsure of how to work the shift key, or maybe it was e.e. cummings: "huh? i'm a liberal and i've been all over the coverage of tea baggers. most of what i've seen is complete mockery of the teabaggers (have you seen all the videos?). no one i know is 'scared' of the demonstrations, they're looking forward to them. i know i am."

Why the exaggerated sneering bile? Why the over-compensated fear?

Once again I think of Shelby Steele's beautifully reasoned essay "Why the GOP Can't Win With Minorities" in the Wall Street Journal. Steele writes, "When redemption became a term of power, 'redemptive liberalism' was born -- a new activist liberalism that gave itself a 'redemptive' profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism's classic focus on individual freedom. In the '60s there was no time to allow individual freedom to render up the social good. Redemptive liberalism would proactively engineer the good. Name a good like 'integration,' and then engineer it into being through a draconian regimen of school busing. If the busing did profound damage to public education in America, it gave liberals the right to say, 'At least we did something!' In other words, we are activists against America's old sin of segregation. Activism is moral authority in redemptive liberalism."

I think Steele is quite correct in tying the Left's activism directly into its sense of moral authority. And, if he is to be believed, then it can be seen that Tea Party protests are a direct affront to the Left's sense of moral authority. When conservatives get together to protest, despite the shunning of most of the MSM, despite the best efforts of Media Matters et al to derail them, and despite the inclination of most conservatives to avoid public displays of political activism, an ugly confrontation begins. Now the Left must not only defend itself from the protesters' oppositional view, but also must defend against the moral authority they see inherent in activism.

Yet, Tea Party protests are indeed quite different from the Left's. First the ranks of the Right are not swelled with professional protesters and organizers the way that the Left's are. Tea Parties, for all their disorganization, varied purposes, and at times misdirected anger, are truly amateur affairs. In that way they gain legitimacy. They are truly citizens' products and not the photo-ops of ambitious, low-ranking politicians, well-paid race-baiters, and B-list celebrities.

Being decidedly unhip also adds to Tea Parties' genuineness. After all, not too many people are going to show up and participate because it's the cool thing to do.

Most significantly though, this sort of protest is different in that it doesn't denigrate others for the reclamation of moral authority. While the liberal activist seeks forgiveness (Steele's white redemption) by ironically declaring minorities inferior and in need of largess, by assaulting the opposing views of others in order to reaffirm the rightness of their own, the Tea Party protester is unfettered by such leftist sensibilties. The Tea Party protesters are united by issue, not by the need to prove their morality. And that is something to be proud of.