A boor culled

LITTLE ROCK — “. . . . [O]ne hater doesn’t make a party-any more than the hateful things we heard said about the last president proves Democrats are congenitally vicious.”

-Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in an editorial in Monday’s paper IT WASN’T very surprising that the NAACP would accuse the Tea Party of racism. If you’re going to disagree with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-about anything-you’re going to get hit with the Racist! mud pie now and again. It’s the way race hustlers operate. It’s the way the NAACP keeps its members riled and ready to debate/ organize/vote/write a check. Just as its president admitted last week when he leveled his charge of racism against the Tea Party. To quote Benjamin Jealous: “My hope is that our members leave fired up and focused and ready to organize. . . .”

Charging the opposition with racism is SOP for the NAACP. Nothing newsworthy about that. The NAACP long ago ceased to be part of a grassroots civil rights movement, the way the Tea Party sprang up, and became just another Washington special interest in thrall to the Democratic Party.

What’s newsworthy is that, right after the NAACP’s Racist! resolution against the Tea Party, a right-wing radio type proceeded to make the NAACP look good by comparison.

Dispatches say somebody named Mark Williams has been kicked out of the Tea Party for some stupid remarks. Let it be noted that the Tea Party is scarcely a tightly organized national organization like the NAACP. It’s more a great outcropping of uncoordinated local protest, and has had the good sense to stay that way in the main. It’s as decentralized as the NAACP is centralized. There’s no one party line. Anybody can walk into a rally. But what national organization the Tea Party does have showed enough sense the other day to throw Mark Williams out. His kind of rant would embarrass anybody associated with him.

To clear up any confusion, no, this guy is not the Mark Williams who plays Mr. Weasley in the Harry Potter movies. This particular Mark Williams is some guy on the radio you may never have heard of. But that was before he wrote an ugly little letter addressed to Abraham Lincoln titled, “Colored People.”

You guessed it: In response to the NAACP’s accusation that Tea Party members are racist, one wannabe Rush Limbaugh set out to prove the NAACP right.

We’ll not bore you with Mr. Williams’ alleged prose and proven insults. Suffice it to say that Benjamin Jealous now has more ammunition to use the next time he wants to accuse the Tea Party of having a racist element. To wit: Mark Williams.

Conservatives all over thank you, Mark Williams. More specifically, we’d thank you to be quiet.

And we thank the Tea Party for kicking you out of its ranks.

Here’s what would be newsworthy, too. Indeed, it might be worth frontpage coverage: If the NAACP, instead of smearing the Tea Party, were to pass a resolution against a really racist organization, the New Black Panther Party. And point out how the Panthers’ voter intimidation, duly recorded on video, has got the gentlest of treatment from Barack Obama’s-and Eric Holder’s-new Justice Department. Now that would be, as Paul Harvey used to shout, NEWS!

WE ATTENDED a Tea Party rally in Little Rock not that long ago-incognito. That is, we took off our press badge. After more than an hour of mixing with the crowd, just as if we were decent folks, we heard not one comment critical of black folks. Yes, there were quite a few critical of the president of the United States, but those comments had nothing to do with his race, only his policies.

That’s the way it should be in the United States. A popular, and populist, movement comes around, and Americans peaceably assemble and express grievances. It’s the American way.

What’s also very American is for somebody on talk radio to make an ass of himself.

Then catch hell for it.

The whole process still seems to work.