Last week, the NAACP demanded that Tea Party leaders “repudiate [the party’s] racist elements,” but on ABC News this morning, Vice-President Joe Biden sort of disagreed: “I wouldn’t characterize the Tea Party as racist,” he said. “There are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their protests, that have expressed really … unfortunate comments. But it is not a racist organization.”
Interestingly, shortly after Biden’s comment, the Tea Party itself admitted that, come to think of it, maybe some of its members are racists, formally expelling conservative commentator and former Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams. Why? For writing a blog post in response to the NAACP that satirized a fictional letter from “Colored People” to President Abraham Lincoln. (It read: “We Coloreds have decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves … that is just far too much to ask of us Colored People!”) Tea Party spokesman David Webb called the post “clearly offensive.”
Perhaps the party has yet to inform Sarah Palin that Williams actually is, by their own account, quite racist. She remarked, earlier this week, “I am saddened by the NAACP’s claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America’s Constitutional rights are somehow ’racists.’”
’Tea Party Federation kicks out Williams over blog post’ [CNN]
’Vice President Joe Biden defends Tea Party against ‘racist’ claims’ [NYDN]
