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The Chair of the Sumter South Carolina Tea Party posted — and then quickly pulled — a post on her Facebook page earlier this month that joked about throwing the Obamas out of a helicopter, reports TalkingPointsMemo.com. Shery Lanford Smith posted the joke on her Facebook page on August 11th. The page has since gone “private.” In the joke, the Obamas are on a helicopter talking about how they could make people happy if they threw money out the window. The pilot says: “I could throw both of them out of the window and make 256 million people very happy!” Smith added: “If you’re one of 256 million, PASS IT ON.” Smith reportedly pulled the joke after the Sumter Item contacted her about it.
“It’s just a joke,” she told the Item. “I had no idea it would be an issue.” The Sumter SC Tea Party’s page is now also defunct
SIDEBAR: Bytch please you knew exactly what you where doing and who you wanted to see it. Joke or funny my azz that is straight up bullshyt. How would she feel or the Tea Party members started to come up missing, would you find that as Facebook humour. Oops forgot your educated folks that know what your doing at all times!
In a speech this week during his organization’s annual convention, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous railed against restrictive state voting laws, likening their rise across the country to the days of Jim Crow. “Our voting rights are under attack because we had a great breakthrough — the election of a black president,” said Jealous to convention attendees in Los Angeles. “It was followed by a great backlash.”
Former President Bill Clinton made a similar assessment earlier this month, as did Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), about laws either pending or recently passed by dozens of Republican legislatures — laws that, among other measures, require specific photo ID at the polls, shrink the period for early voting or demand proof of citizenship just to register. Democrats argue that state-issued photo-ID laws particularly stand to disenfranchise racial minorities, the poor and the young — all groups that are less likely to have the documentation. In Wisconsin alone, half of African-American adults are currently ineligible to vote under the tightened requirements.
While Democrats have been speaking out against the changes for months now, they’re fighting back, too. At the state level, the Democratic governors of New Hampshire, North Carolina, Missouri, Montana and Minnesota vetoed voting legislation that passed their state legislatures. Last month, a group of 16 senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to examine new voting laws to ensure that they will not have a discriminatory impact on voters. The Congressional Black Caucus also appealed to the Justice Department.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chair of the Democratic National Committee, has been sounding the alarm on the matter since taking up the Democratic National Committee mantle in May. She talked to The Root about what else her party is doing to thwart voter-ID and other restrictive legislation, the majority of Americans who don’t see any problem with it and how she feels now about never-ending Jim Crow analogies.
The Root: Several members of Congress have urged Attorney General Eric Holder to review voter-ID laws and their implementation. Has the Justice Department responded?
Debbie Wasserman Schultz: The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has assured Americans and members of Congress that the Voting Section is looking very closely at the laws that have recently passed. They’ve acknowledged the concern that both I and others have expressed about the potential for these laws to have an undue and disproportionate impact on racial minorities and the poor. I trust that Tom Perez and Attorney General Eric Holder are reviewing these laws very seriously.
TR: Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the DOJ is required to review changes to voting procedure in certain jurisdictions. Wasn’t the department investigating anyway?
DWS: Section 5 says that states with Section 5 counties in them have the affirmative obligation to submit any change that they make to DOJ for review, and those changes have to be precleared. But there’s a problem. In my state of Florida, for example, we have five Section 5 counties, and the state is in the process of trying to implement the law that they just passed, which definitely impacts voting rights. But they have not submitted it for Section 5 review and preclearance. So there definitely needs to be greater DOJ oversight, and that’s why it’s important that the Voting Section take a close look at this.
TR: Do you want to see the laws that have passed overturned, or is the concern more about how they’re implemented?
DWS: The bottom line is that we want every eligible American to be able to cast a ballot and have their ballot counted. Things like voter-ID laws, restrictions on voter-registration drives, rollbacks on early voting and the rest of these Republican-sponsored laws only serve to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote.
If you just take voter ID laws as an example, they’re written in such a way that only a small number of specific types of ID are accepted. When you consider that 11 percent of American citizens, and 25 percent of African Americans, of voting age don’t have a current government-issued photo ID, it’s clear that the effect and the intent is to deliberately exclude many hundreds of thousands of eligible people. And quite frankly, it targets certain kinds of eligible voters, given their propensity to vote for Democratic candidates versus Republicans.
TR: Speaking of voter-ID laws, polls show that most Americans think they sound perfectly reasonable. How does that national resistance affect your approach to this issue?
DWS: You explain to people that what photo-ID laws really do is severely limit a large percentage of eligible voters [getting] to the ballot, either because of cost or because they simply don’t have an easy way to get the ID that states are requiring. On top of that, there is already a very thorough ability for voters to have their identity checked through address checks, in which they have to prove their address when they originally register, and sophisticated signature-matching identification that I believe is in every state now.
Republicans say voter-ID laws are used to prevent voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent. In every study that’s been done, and every review of election results, it’s become clear that you’re more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to find evidence of voter fraud.
TR: Some governors have vetoed the bills that passed their state legislatures. But in states where they’ve already passed, do you have a game plan for informing voters that are the most affected?
DWS: Education is the key. When a new photo-ID law passes, voters need to be made aware of what the requirements are and what their rights are. To give you another example in Florida, we had a permanent absentee ballot list, and they’ve changed it so that everybody has to sign up again. So even though we think they’re patently unfair and go against the Voting Rights Act, we’re in the process of educating people about the changes in the law.
At the DNC we have our voter-protection department that works year-round on voting-rights issues, and one of their most important projects is working with our field operation to educate voters. We just had a National Day of Action where we let people know how to register, made them familiar state by state with all the ways that they can vote, what they need to bring when they vote and especially about changes to their state laws. On just that one day, we registered 7,000 eligible Americans to vote.
TR: This is usually framed as a Democrat-versus-Republican issue, but given the financial cost of implementing these laws, have there also been Republican governors coming out against them?
DWS: Unfortunately, there really haven’t been. Despite all the evidence that shows how unnecessary and harmful photo-ID laws and other changes like this are, Republicans continue to advocate for them. What’s ironic is that they are expensive — they add millions of dollars, in some cases, to the cost of administering elections. And the party that continues to harp on the need to make significant cuts in the budget has no trouble supporting unnecessary changes in voting laws across the country that actually cost more money. Not only do they not care about making sure that everybody has access to the ballot, but it demonstrates how disingenuous they are about making sure that we can reduce our deficit.
TR: Last month you retracted a remark you’d made comparing voter-ID laws to Jim Crow policies. Since then, President Bill Clinton and others have used the same language. What are your thoughts on this analogy now?
DWS: You know, the bottom line is that these are very serious changes, and I think it’s important that people understand just how many problems will be caused by the changes in these laws. The language that we use to describe them is far less important than people understanding what laws were changed, why they were changed and how they can get around the hurdles that Republicans are throwing in their way, so that they can get to the polls and have their votes counted.
My old pal Paul Delaney, a fellow contributor to The Root, recently asked me what kind of speech I thought Barack Obama’s Republican challenger would make to a mainstream black audience during next year’s presidential campaign.
It’s a good question because every four years, the GOP and its standard-bearer reaffirm their determination to go after every vote, including those of black America — and then proceed to prove their insincerity.
When they appear before black organizations, they are less interested in appealing to black voters than in convincing fence-sitting whites that despite their party’s historic addiction to race-baiting tactics, it’s OK to vote for them. Their intent, described perceptively by Denton Watson, the biographer of NAACP legend Clarence Mitchell, is to show that they “will talk to all sorts of Americans and not exclude anyone.”
Given those parameters, what kind of speech might the Republican champion deliver if she or he addressed, say, the NAACP?
The candidate might start out trying to score points for candor by addressing the NAACP’s charge last year that there are racist elements within the so-called Tea Party movement. Then he or she could move on to an attack on Obama before winding up with an exposition of his or her own ideas and an impassioned show of solidarity with the idea of racial equality.
I’ve pulled together a political stump speech using actual quotes from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; and businessman Herman Cain, the only African-American hopeful in the GOP field. Here goes:
“I have been called a sell-out, an Uncle Tom and shameless because I disagree with this president’s policies. Those who are calling me those names have probably never been to a Tea Party event, and I doubt officials of the NAACP have attended an event either. Those that would like to join the name-calling parade should save themselves some time. In my grandfather’s vernacular, ‘I does not care!’ ” –Cain
“It’s a false accusation that Tea Party Americans are racist. Any good American hates racism. We don’t stand for it. It is unacceptable.” –Palin
“This president ran on a campaign of hope and change, but his change is not working. Over 4 million Americans lost jobs in 2009, the unemployment rate has gone from 7.6 percent in January 2009 to 9.5 percent in June 2010, the unemployment rate for black Americans is over 15 percent and not getting better, and the national debt has increased exponentially to over $13 trillion since January 2009.
“Tea Party people are not racist. They are patriotic Americans who want the greatest country in the world to remain the greatest by exercising their right to make their voices heard. This isn’t about race. This is about results, and the results by this administration are missing in action.” –Cain
Runaway projectiles have always made for intriguing character studies — think Speed or Runaway Train. Unstoppable is that kind of movie, and it’s based on true events to boot: how a choo-choo — owing to a combination of incompetence and bad luck — becomes an unmanned missile (a half-mile of fuel and flammable toxins) rampaging at 70 mph through the depressed burbs of Podunk, Pennsylvania. Early rescue attempts fail, so Johnny-on-the-spot engineers Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) and Will Colson (Chris Pines, a/k/a the new Captain Kirk) jump into the mix but must battle their yin-yang differences as well as the steel beast. The film saddles the impromptu duo with carloads of backstory, but the actors are on their game — and that includes Rosario Dawson, who adds a deft touch as the track manager fighting corporate inanity. As for director Tony Scott, who’s always been all over with his camera and cut-happy edits, he here finds a rhythm that delivers suspense from nose to caboose.
Jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, whose career spanned six decades and included acting, composing and participation in the U.S. civil rights movement, died of unknown causes on Saturday at age 80. Her death was first reportrd by the New York Times.
She was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday. She had a very long and productive career and continued to perform until the time of her death. She often could be found at the Blue Note in New York City.[1]
With Ivan Dixon, she co-starred in Nothing But a Man (1964), an independent film written and directed by Michael Roemer. She also co-starred with Sidney Poitier and Beau Bridges in 1968?s For Love of Ivy[2], and received a 1969 Golden Globe nomination for her appearance in the film.
Abbey Lincoln also appeared in the 1956 film The Girl Can’t Help It, for which she famously wore a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes and interpreted the theme song, working with Benny Carter.[2]
She sang on the 60?s landmark jazz civil rights recording, We Insist! – Freedom Now Suite (1960) by jazz musician Max Roach and was married to him from 1962 to 1970.[3] Especially since this album, Abbey Lincoln was connected to the political fight against racism in the United States.
She worked with other jazz musicians like Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins, Jackie McLean, Clark Terry, Stanley Turrentine, Wynton Kelly, Cedar Walton, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Ron Carter, Miles Davis and made albums with Stan Getz, Mal Waldron and Archie Shepp.
In 1990 she played the role of young Bleek Gilliams’ mother in the Spike Lee movie Mo’ Better Blues[4] who was very insistent that Bleek, played as an adult by Denzel Washington, come inside their house and practice his trumpet instead of playing outside with his friends.
In 2003, she received the National Endowment for the Arts NEA Jazz Masters Award.
Talk show host Dr. Laura (Schlessinger) quickly and predictably bowed to public pressure and apologized for her on air N word laced diatribe. The apology is not good enough for the National Urban League. It demands that Talk Radio Network pull the plug on her show.
Dr. Laura is a soft target because she’s a white woman that seemingly sprinted way over the line of racial etiquette. It was a no brainer that the League would rage against her. She got the same treatment that the pack of white celebrities, politicians and public figures that have used the N word.
But Dr. Laura is not of that ilk. In fact, she got it right about the word, or more particularly who uses it, condones it, and even glories in it. And that’s the legion of black comedians and rappers that have virtually canonized the word.
They sprinkle the word throughout their rap lyrics and comedy lines; and black writers,and filmmakers go through lengthy gyrations to justify using the word. During a panel discussion at the Summer Television Critics Association tour in 2005, Aaron McGruder, creator of the popular comic strip, Boondocks, defiantly told the audience that he’d use the N’ word as much as he pleased in his comic strip and in his series on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. If folks didn’t like it, well tough, said McGruder.
Dr. Laura
N word users and apologists serve up the lame rationale that the more a black person uses the word, the less offensive it becomes, which is precisely the point Dr. Laura picked apart. They claim that they are cleansing the word of its negative connotations so that racists can no longer use it to hurt blacks. Comedian-turned-activist Dick Gregory had the same idea some years ago when he titled his autobiography, Nigger. Black writer, Robert DeCoy also tried to apply the same racial shock therapy to whites when he titled his novel, The Nigger Bible.
The black N word apologists tick off an endless storehouse of defenses to justify use of the word. They claim that that it is a term of endearingly or affectionately. They say to each other, “You’re my nigger if you don’t get no bigger.” Or, “that nigger sure is something.” Others use it in anger or disdain, “Nigger you sure got an attitude.” Or, “A nigger ain’t s….” Still, others are defiant. They say they don’t care what a white person calls them since words can’t harm them.
The black N word apologists tick off an endless storehouse of defenses to justify use of the word. They claim that that it is a term of endearingly or affectionately. They say to each other, “You’re my nigger if you don’t get no bigger.” Or, “that nigger sure is something.” Others use it in anger or disdain, “Nigger you sure got an attitude.” Or, “A nigger ain’t s….” Still, others are defiant. They say they don’t care what a white person calls them since words can’t harm them.
They forget, ignore or distort one thing. Words are not value neutral. They express concepts and ideas. Often, words reflect society’s standards. If color-phobia is a deep-rooted standard in American life, then a word, as emotionally charged as nigger, will always reinforce and perpetuate stereotypes. It can’t be sanitized, cleansed, inverted, or redeemed as a culturally liberating word. Nigger can’t and shouldn’t be made acceptable, no matter whose mouth it comes out of or what excuse is tossed out for using it.
There are still dozens of daily examples where whites (and other non-blacks) taunt, and harass blacks by calling them nigger, spray paint the word on their homes, businesses, churches, physically assault and even murder blacks. In the FBI’s annual count of hate crimes in America, blacks still make up the overwhelming majority of victims.
The N word reigns supreme at the top of the stack as the favorite racial epithet hurled at blacks during these crimes. Even when the word isn’t used, the sentiment is that blacks are still fair game to be abused and dehumanized, and the N word reinforces that belief. The word nigger is and will always have grotesque and deadly meaning to them. And, even if some blacks do occasionally go off the deep end and wrongly harangue whites for using the word, maybe that’s because nigger, pricks agonizing historical and social sores.
A handful of black activists have waged war against the N word. Their target is those rappers and writers that have turned the N word into a lucrative growth industry. They have been the exception. Blacks have been more than willing to give other blacks that use the word a pass. The indulgence sends the subtle signal that the word is hardly the earth-shattering, illegitimate word that black and white N word opponents brand it.
Dr. Laura gave no public hint before her spew of the word that she is a closet bigot who routinely uses the word in reference to blacks. But she didn’t have too. The obsessive use of and the tortured defense of the word by so many blacks gave her the license to use the word without any thought that there’d be any blow back for doing it. She was wrong and got publicly called out for it. But that doesn’t make her rationale or her explanation for using it any less valid. Dr. Laura got it right about the N word.
Mark Williams, the tea party leader who wrote a blog post this week calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) racist, has been “expelled” from the National Tea Party Federation.
Williams wrote the blog post on Thursday in response to the NAACP’s Tuesday declaration accusing the tea party movement of tolerating racist elements in its midst (see The Upshot’s rundown on the week of attacks and counterattacks here). It was written as an imaginary letter to President Abraham Lincoln and accused the NAACP of being racist for using the word “colored” in its name. When some reacted to it in outrage, Williams deleted it from his website, declaring it time to “move forward.”
The National Tea Party Federation apparently decided to move forward without Williams. Spokesman David Webb said on Face the Nation this morning that Williams and his Tea Party Express had been pushed out because Williams’ posting was “clearly offensive.”
The tea party movement has been growing in influence in American politics since it began as a series of rallies in 2009. Candidates endorsed by local and national organizations that are a part of the coalition have won surprising victories over establishment Republican Party candidates in states like Kentucky and Nevada.
Part of their challenge, however — especially in handling broader debates about what they “are” — is that there isn’t a single Tea Party that speaks for all tea party activists. Rather, there are dozens of national and local organizations that loosely coordinate and all emerged in opposition to Wall Street bailouts that occurred under Presidents Bush and Obama and what they perceive as the Obama Administration’s efforts to expand the role of government. The question of whether or not it also has racial motivations has dogged it since the beginning.
National Tea Party Federation’s expulsion of Williams and the Tea Party Express could be the first of many internal disputes to define the national tea party identity.
thxs Golis
Whoa, it’s going down. And that’s putting it mildly with the situation between Tom Joyner and Tavis Smiley.
Simply put, Joyner, who served as co-host/MC, along with Angela Bassett at theMcDonalds365Black luncheon at the Essence Festival on Friday, is flat out saying that Tavis Smiley along with his “side-piece,” Cornel West is responsible for the climate that’s made it comfortable for Obama haters like Time magazine’s Mark Halperin to call President Obama a “dick.”
The reaction to Joyner’s commentary is bound to be “interesting” to say the least and it’ll be surprising if it doesn’t set off a firestorm of reactions in Black America and beyond.
Like we said, this is definitely a “Whoa!” moment. Based on the tone of the piece, one can only wonder if there’s something really personal coloring Tom’s comments as well. What do you think?