« | Home | »

News, Talk

Trash-talking back to the Tea Baggers

by Ron Taylor | 8, Add your Comment | Apr 8, 2010

The Mid-South Tea Party in Tennessee is demanding an apology from U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen after the Memphis Democrat likened tea baggers to Ku Klux Klansmen “without hoods and robes” and said Sarah Palin, in black leather at a John McCain rally, was “dressed like Elvis in the comeback event in Hawaii.”

What apparently set off Cohen, a Jewish attorney who once told the New York Times he votes “like a 45-year-old black woman,” was the incident before the House health care reform vote in which two African-American congressmen, including civil rights hero John Lewis, were spit on and called the N-word. “We saw opposition to African-Americans, hostility toward gays, hostility to anybody who wasn’t just, you know, a clone of George Wallace’s fan club,” he said on The Young Turks, a liberal radio talk show on the Internet and satellite radio.

Mark Herr, a member of the Mid-South Tea Party, which picketed Cohen’s office, declared “The Mid-South Tea Party has never and will never condone or participate in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazism.”

Mark A. Skoda, founder and chairman of the Memphis Tea Party, called Cohen’s remarks “hate speech” that’s “beneath the dignity of the office” in an interview with the Commercial Appeal.

One avowed tea bagger was less politick, sending the obligatory death threat, which read in part:  “If our tea parties had hoods, we would burn your ass on a cross on the White House front lawn.”

Even some fellow Democrats cringed at this Cohen crack about Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain:  “When I saw John McCain stand behind Sarah Palin, he looked more like a captured soldier in North Vietnam than he did a United States senator. It was very sad.”  Former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who is running against Cohen in the Democratic primary, called the comment inappropriate.

According to the Commerical Appeal, Cohen said his remarks about McCain were intended to be understood as praise for an American hero. He said he was saddened that McCain had to ask Palin to “leave her post watching for Russians coming across the Bering Sea” to stump for his Senate re-election against “a Glenn Beck clone.”

printer friendly


Note: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for the agreed-upon rules of civility. Comments do not reflect the views of LikeTheDew.com. Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click here to report a violation.

8 Responses to “Trash-talking back to the Tea Baggers”

  1. AMB says:
    April 8, 2010 at 11:06 am

    I love this guy!

    Reply
  2. Billy Mallard says:
    April 8, 2010 at 6:23 pm

    Well here’s a ringing tribute: “The Mid-South Tea Party has never and will never condone or participate in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazism.”

    Reply
  3. Ed Jones says:
    April 8, 2010 at 6:36 pm

    Just so everyone is clear, referencing members of the Tea Party movement as “tea baggers” is an intentional, insulting reference to the practice of inserting ones balls into someone else’s mouth or elsewhere. If you are using the phrase intentionally as an insult then it is good if everyone here understands the full extent of it. If not you might want to reconsider.

    Ed Jones

    Reply
    • Ron Taylor Ron Taylor says:
      April 9, 2010 at 1:53 am

      Obviously, I need to start going to porn sites that have words rather than pictures. (I was perhaps 20 before I learned what “muff diving” meant and maybe 35 before I heard about rimming and fisting.) Thanks for inspiring me to do some quick research on “tea baggers.” I see there are several definitions and explanations for the term, including the one you mention, which is not the one I meant. Nor did I mean “one who bags tea,” nor another, from Urban Dictionary: “A person who is unaware that they have said or done something foolish, childlike, noobish, lame, or inconvenient.” What I meant, I believe most of our readers would agree, is explained in this Wikipedia reference: “The appellation tea bagger emerged after protesters displayed placards using the words ‘tea bag’ as a verb.” Sure, the term “tea bagger” has also been used as epithet and insult, much like “mainstream media.” And we all know what the definition of “mainstream” is: “The ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.”

      Reply
  4. George says:
    April 9, 2010 at 9:04 am

    It’s curious that Mr. Herr didn’t mention Fascism as something the baggers would not participate in or condone.

    Reply
  5. Greg says:
    April 16, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    Just found this link. NBCs Kelly O’Donnell interviewing an African-American participant at the Washington D.C. Tea Party rally on April 15th. His answer speaks volumes: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/04/16/nbc_reporter_to_black_man_at_tea_party_have_you_ever_felt_uncomfortable.html

    Reply

Leave a Comment

What is CAPTCHA and why do I have to enter it to post a comment?

Quick answer: Look at the picture (below) that contains letters. Type those letters in the CAPTCHA Code box.

Longer explanation: Our comment system now requires a CAPTCHA test (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" for all comments (unless you have registered and are logged-in). CAPTCHA is an image of letters that is dynamically generated (click the speaker icon to hear it or the arrows to load another test that may be easier to read). The letters, because they're part of an image and not text (e.g. text that you could cut and paste), are difficult for a spambot or other computer program to read. Yet, a person has little trouble reading the letters in a captcha image and then typing them into the form. Using a captcha test on our website is a great way to ensure, for instance, that a person and not a spambot is filling out a web form (we used to get 100 or so spam comments every day which our volunteers had to wade through). Also, a captcha can make it difficult for a person to continuously resubmit form information and overwhelm our comment function. If you hate CAPTCHA, just register on LikeTheDew.com and login (registration is on the bottom left of our home page) and you won't be stopped by CAPTCHA.

You can add images to your comment by clicking here.

Related Posts

Ron Taylor
Ron Taylor
About the author Ron Taylor: Ron Taylor was born and raised in Georgia and worked more than 40 years at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a reporter and editor and as an online producer for ajc.com and AccessAtlanta. He served for a time as the newspaper's regional editor, overseeing coverage of the South. He is co-author, with Dr. Leonard Ray Teel, of INTO THE NEWSROOM: AN INTRODUCTION TO JOURNALISM and has conducted workshops in the Middle East on feature writing.

Last 5 posts by Ron Taylor