The Tea Baggers are really doing themselves proud, calling Barney Frank a faggot, spitting on Emanuel Cleaver, yelling ‘nigger’ at civil rights hero John Lewis and Rep. Andre Carson, and generally being disrespectful towards any congressperson they encounter. This is the face of Palinism, folks. This kind of stuff may be present below the surface at all times, but the McCain-Palin campaign gave them a pathway to get organized and the nod and the wink to give them permission to be open about it.
I think Jim Clyburn put it all in perspective:
“A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a ‘ni–er.’ And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.“It was absolutely shocking to me,” Clyburn told the Huffington Post. “Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday… I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”
“It doesn’t make me nervous as all,” the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. “In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else…”
Remember John Lewis:
I’d like to meet the people who called him a ‘nigger’ today.
