(CNN) – In a "personal note" posted on his blog Friday afternoon, a well-known face of the national Tea Party movement announced that he has removed a controversial post which mocked the NAACP's criticism of the conservative grassroots movement.
Earlier this week and apparently in reaction to an NAACP resolution regarding racist behavior exhibited by some attendees at Tea Party movement events, Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams published a satirical, mock letter from NAACP president Benjamin Jealous to the late President Abraham Lincoln.
"Dear Mr. Lincoln," an earlier version of the blog post read, "We [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People and we demand that it stop!"
In the "personal note" on his blog posted Friday afternoon, Williams explained his decision to remove the controversial mock letter.
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(CNN) – The war of words between the NAACP and the Tea Party movement has reached a new level, with the spokesman for a national Tea Party organization penning a controversial blog post and a representative of the NAACP calling the post "a feeble attempt at satire" and offensive.
In an effort to mock to the NAACP's recent criticism of the Tea Party movement, Mark Williams, a conservative radio talk show host and spokesman for the Tea Party Express, published a post on his blog that is a mock letter from NAACP president Benjamin Jealous to former President Lincoln.
"Dear Mr. Lincoln," the blog post reads, "We [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us [National Association for the Advancement of] Colored People and we demand that it stop!"
The mock letter continues by taking on several core beliefs and positions of the Tea Party movement including the conservative movement's desire to end bailouts of big business, to reduce the size and scope of government, to reduce government spending and to cut taxes.
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"A clear pattern of behavior has emerged over the last 16 months," Tea Party activists Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin write in an op-ed published Wednesday on the Politico website. "According to liberals, if you disagree with their thinking, and if you disagree with the Obama administration, you are not only wrong, you are a 'racist.'"
Related: We don't tolerate racist behavior, Martin said
Before pointing to charges of racism leveled against former President Bill Clinton during his wife's pitched primary battle against then-Sen. Barack Obama, Meckler and Martin state "The left has a long history of using the race card. It has been pulled on people across the political spectrum."
"This card is generally played when all else has failed," they write. "It was inevitable that it would eventually be used aggressively against the tea party movement."
Meckler and Martin point out that national Democrats have referred to their increasingly influential movement as a bunch of disgruntled voters, nothing more than "'astroturf,'" "a flash in the pan that would disappear overnight," and "an 'angry mob.'"
But, the two write, the real motivation for the recent attacks on the Tea Party movement is political survival during an election year.
"The Obama White House and liberal interest groups are hitting the panic button as they read weekly polls showing diminishing support for their radical big government issue agenda, and a weariness for the politics of division."
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Washington (CNN) - The organizational leader of the Republican Party is outright dismissing claims from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that the Tea Party movement is rife with racism.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele also said, in a statement, "Enough with the name-calling."
Steele is responding to the NAACP's resolution, passed on Tuesday, that condemns the Tea Party movement for what the NAACP believes is rampant racism from many activists. As head of the RNC, Steele - the organization's first African-American chairman – is essentially pitting the Republican Party against the nation's oldest civil rights group on this specific issue.
(CNN) - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin published the following message on her Facebook page on Tuesday night:
The Charge of Racism: It’s Time to Bury the Divisive Politics of the PastI 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.” The charge that Tea Party Americans judge people by the color of their skin is false, appalling, and is a regressive and diversionary tactic to change the subject at hand.
President Reagan called America’s past racism “a legacy of evil” against which we have seen the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights. He condemned any sort of racism, as all good and decent people do today. He also called it a “point of pride for all Americans” that as a nation, we have successfully struggled to overcome this evil. Reagan rightly declared that “there is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country,” and he warned that we must never go back to the racism of our past.
Washington (CNN) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has passed a resolution that condemns what it feels is rampant racism in the Tea Party movement. Members passed the measure on Tuesday at the NAACP's 101st annual convention being held in Kansas City, Missouri.
Tea Party activists have swiftly denounced the action as unfounded and unfair.
The resolution pits the nation's oldest civil rights organization, with a storied history of wins on behalf of racial justice, against a grassroots conservative movement that has won some recent political races and is flexing its muscle in Republican circles.
“We take no issue with the Tea Party. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy,” NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous said in a statement.
Washington (CNN) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has passed a resolution that condemns what it feels is rampant racism in the Tea Party movement. Members passed the measure on Tuesday at the NAACP's 101st annual convention being held in Kansas City, Missouri.
Tea Party activists have swiftly denounced the action as unfounded and unfair.
The resolution pits the nation's oldest civil rights organization, with a storied history of wins on behalf of racial justice, against a grassroots conservative movement that has won some recent political races and is flexing its muscle in Republican circles.
“We take no issue with the Tea Party. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy,” NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous said in a statement.
Washington (CNN) - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has passed a resolution that condemns, what it feels, is rampant racism in the Tea Party movement. Members passed the resolution on Tuesday at the NAACP's annual convention being held in Kansas City, Missouri.
The action pits the nation's oldest civil rights organization, with a storied history of wins in various bouts for racial justice, against a grassroots conservative movement that has won some recent political races and is flexing its muscle in Republican circles.
Washington (CNN) – On Tuesday the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will offer a resolution to its members condemning what it believes to be rampant racism in the Tea Party movement.
The resolution could pass on Tuesday or later this week as the nation's oldest civil rights organization holds its 101st convention in Kansas City over six days.
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous talked to CNN about the controversial, loose-knit groups that espouse a commitment to the Constitution.
"The Tea Party movement knows that there are tens of thousands of dedicated racists and ultra nationalists in their ranks," Jealous said. Those groups "must be repudiated by the regular, law-abiding members or they must take responsibility," Jealous added, saying "they can't have it both ways."
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