NPR Execs Slammed For Calling Tea Party "Racist". Why?

No, seriously. Why are they being slammed? I'm not going to get down with the Zionist comment. That's a little too far for me. I mean, whether or not Jews control the media or not is kind of irrelevant and sounds like scare tactics steeped in some kind of anti-semitism at most, fearmongering at least when it's usually brought up. I disagree with Schiller's stance on defunding NPR as well, but the other stuff seems spot on.

Where have these people been the last year or two? While not everyone in the Tea Party is racist, it sure does attract a vast amount of racists. It's no secret that they tend to be right-wing Christian xenophobes who obviously slept through most of their woefully inadequate high school history classes (not to mention just chose to read up on any of that after high school). I've dealt with them before in conversation--thankfully only on the internet. My own husband has disowned a cousin and an uncle for their covertly racist, Tea Party bullshit. The ideology is so thick, that there was no need for them to censor their bullshit at all, even though we have biracial children.

Schiller is seen on a videotape during a luncheon with men who were posing as members of the fictitious Muslim Action Education Center.

Among Schiller's comments: Tea Partiers are "Xenophobic, I mean basically they are; they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people." (Source)

What's the big deal again? I guess we've forgotten last year's attacks on plans to build a mosque a few blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. The Tea Party were on that like white on rice, using their "America Fuck Yeah" antics and capitalizing on a tragedy to push an agenda that was extremely xenophobic, not to mention Anti-Muslim in many ways.

Did we forget their mania when they thought President Obama would take away their guns? Have we forgotten their right-wing Christian agenda? Why do we have to mind our tongue when we are dealing with a brand of people who are wholly undeserving of that much courtesy? They ARE racist charlatans. Just check the study:

Surveyers asked respondents in California and a half dozen battleground states (like Michigan and Ohio) a series of questions that political scientists typically use to measure racial hostility. On each one, Tea Party backers expressed more resentment than the rest of the population, even when controlling for partisanship and ideology. When read the statement that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites," 73 percent of the movement's supporters agreed, while only 33 percent of people who disapproved of the Tea Party agreed. Asked if blacks should work their way up "without special favors," as the Irish, Italians, and other groups did, 88 percent of supporters agreed, compared to 56 percent of opponents. The study revealed that Tea Party enthusiasts were also more likely to have negative opinions of Latinos and immigrants.(more here)

I've long since believed that the little snide remarks about the Tea Partiers simply are not enough. They need to be openly discredited and attacked. Someone NEEDS to speak up against them, and they need to tell the truth. I am disheartened that Schiller left, and while I understand NPR doing what they did, when will we have people call a spade a spade? These people have been able to survive largely because they haven't been called out for the troglodytes that they are. This organization has survived this long by bully tactics and fooling the public into believing they aren't venomous vipers hellbent on turning the country back to archaic principles.

So, if they can't say it, I will. The Tea Party IS racist, xenophobic, obsessed with guns and pseudo-Christian to a harmful, unproductive degree.

It is what it is.

Tim Wise: NPR Was Wrong to Fire Juan Williams

I hate to belabor a point, but this Juan Williams thing has been bugging me. Not that I'm losing sleep over it or anything, but it's like I've been having this conversation all week and all through the weekend. The thing that bugs me about it, is that the people with whom I've been engaged over this, fail to see it the way like I do.

Not that I expect you to agree with everything I've said; nope, never that. However, in my opinion, if there's anything the Juan Williams debacle has shed light on, is that hypocrisy isn't partisan. I rail against right-wing hypocrisy on this site, and I'd be just as blind as our right-wing counterparts to not point out leftist hypocrisy.

This from Tim Wise's Bikini Liberalism: Juan Williams, Implicit Bias, and the Trouble With NPR:

Yet what had Williams done, exactly? He acknowledged his own biases, and then explained the fallacy embedded therein. He was being honest, and in so doing, demonstrating an important fact that the nice white liberals who predominate at NPR try to deny, especially for themselves. Namely, that even the best of us can be taken in by racism, by religious bias, by ethnic chauvinism, by prejudice. No matter our liberal bona fides, the bottom line is this: advertising works, whether for selling toothpaste, tennis shoes, or stereotypes.

Putting aside for a moment the irony – after all, much of the most crass anti-Muslim invective has been provided by the very people at FOX who pay Williams’s bills – the point remains: no one can completely avoid ingesting some of that to which we’re subjected when it comes to racial or religious “others.” Years of research bears out this fact, indicating that wide majorities of us have internalized implicit biases against all types of people: African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, women, LGBT folks, persons with disabilities, and others. Not because we are bad people, let alone bigots, but because we’re imperfect beings who despite being pretty decent, nonetheless can find ourselves stuck in the cognitive traps laid for us by the larger culture.

Like for example, remember when Bill Maher used the word "nigger" on Larry King several weeks ago in a conversation on Tea Party racism? Well, I don't recall any of my leftist brothers in arms taking issue with him using the word. Of course not; Bill, like all white liberals are the epitome of what is right about white folks.