Feckless Douche of the Week: Mark Williams
I know, I know. You were expecting Mel Gibson. Or maybe Whoopi Goldberg. But Tea Party Express organizer Mark Williams has proven himself the douchiest of them all!
Mark Williams at Tea Party Rally
This guy’s got a bee in his bonnet about the NAACP condemning the Tea Party’s tolerance of racism. He countered Monday on CNN’s Situation Room with the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue gambit, saying the NAACP is racist. Why? Well, for one thing, it uses the words “colored people” in its name. Also, “the NAACP is a bunch of old dusty old relics trying to stay relevant in the 21st century and they make money off of race-baiting.”
On the other hand, Williams describes the Tea Party as “… a movement based on the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, it is impossible to be a racist and a Tea Partier because the Constitution is all about individual rights and civil rights.” I don’t think that even qualifies as pretzel logic. And I’d like to point out that denying a person’s ability to be racist is, in itself, pretty racist.
Wolf Blitzer, citing racist representations of Barack Obama, asked, “Should the Tea Party leaders be more assertive in disassociating and condemning these outbursts?” Williams responded, “Well, since every Tea Partier is the Tea Party leader, there is no formal organization; that’s exactly what they do. . . . After buying the mainstream media myth that they’re going to find a happy home in the Tea Party, racists quickly discover that it’s all about rights and that’s not what racism is about. It’s about America and the ideal of equality.”
That might be easier to believe if there weren’t so many images of Tea Partiers with signs depicting Obama as a witch doctor, Hitler, or the Joker, to name but a few. I won’t show the image of a sweet little old lady holding a stuffed monkey and a sign saying, “Send Obama Back To Kenya.” I’m guessing she doesn’t cry socialism when she gets her Social Security check.
Williams said it’s not his job “to police the personal beliefs of everyone in the Tea Party.” Fair enough. But would Martin Luther King have spoken up if the Klan had attended his rally? I think so. When Roland Martin pressed Williams to tell racists they’re not welcome in the Tea Party, he responded, “The racists have their own organization. It’s called the NAACP…a bunch of old fossils looking to make a buck off skin color.”
Then he and Martin showed up on Anderson Cooper 360 and did it all again. What was said? I was distracted by Martin’s penchant for using the word “epitaph” when I believe he meant “epithet.” I remember Williams blaming the media again for “inviting” the racists to rallies. Blah blah blah. Listen, I’d be perfectly happy if “news” cameras stopped showing up at these events. It’s the attention that feeds the movement. And the need to fill a twenty-four-hour news cycle feeds the networks. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
After his appearances on CNN, Williams still felt the need to share his outrage. So, on Tuesday, in an interview on NPR, Williams said, “You’re dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It’s time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history.”
Temporarily out of the spotlight, Williams took to his blog and dashed off a fake letter to Lincoln from NAACP president Ben Jealous. I refuse to link directly to his blog so that link is to an article in The Guardian that quotes the entire post.
In this fake letter, the NAACP has changed its mind about emancipation. It’s mind-blowing. You should read the entire post, but here’s a snippet:
…The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.
Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?
Mark Williams: for your insistence you don’t support racism after calling Obama an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” (people keep records of these things, you know), for your contagious ignorance and egregious misuse of satire, you are officially Douche of the Week. Hell, you might even be Douche of the Year. Watch your back, Mel! This crazy racist is gaining on you!
Previous honorees:
Feckless Douche of the Week: Rush Limbaugh
Feckless Liar of the Week: Spencer Pratt
Some racists are involved with the Tea Party Movement, but racists are everywhere in every organization. And it does seem that the NAACP is trying to be newsworthy itself by passing this resolution.
@Doug: Part of NAACP's purpose is to fight racism. It's everyone's responsibility, in my opinion, to point out racism wherever it occurs.
The Tea Party gets singled out for the many racist banners members carry. As long as there is racism, it will be newsworthy to report it and condemn it. And I'd like to add unexamined ignorance to the list of things that needs to be dragged into the light and exposed for the blight that it is.