Vaccines and Antibodies Against Prejudice

Jeffery Weiss at Politics Daily has an excellent column in praise of a bad bunch of folks.

There surely aren't many more famous religious institutions in America than Westboro Baptist Church or many more famous church leaders than its founder, Fred Phelps. Even if you don't immediately recognize the names, I bet you'll immediately recognize a three-word clue: "God hates fags."

Yup. It's the folks who carry their hate in the name of Jesus across the nation, to synagogues and churches, Holocaust museums and public schools, community centers and state capitals. Most notoriously, they picket the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with signs reading "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" -- because they believe that as long as America countenances sin, American soldiers deserve to die.

Westboro Baptist Church I'd like to offer a limited but real defense for the Phelpsists: They're an attenuated virus vaccine for the American body politic.

Weiss argues that the Phelpsists are like a vaccine in this way: they are so manifestly despicable and embarrassingly goofy that there is zero danger their message will spread; but they are visible and loud enough to remind us of the darkness that dwells in every human heart. Maybe that will encourage the right kind of antibodies.

For that same reason, the NAACP's recent charge of racism against the Tea Party movement was pernicious.

Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.

The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vile, antagonistic racial slurs & images. In March, respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus reported that racial epithets were hurled at them as they passed by a Washington, DC health care protest. Civil rights legend John Lewis was called the "n-word" in the incident while others in the crowd used ugly anti-gay slurs to describe Congressman Barney Frank, a long-time NAACP supporter and the nation's first openly gay member of Congress.

Missouri Representative Emmanuel Cleaver was spat on during the incident, and so it was particularly appropriate that the resolution was passed as NAACP delegates gathered in Kansas City for our 101st Annual Convention.

The problem with those passages is that, for the most part, they are entirely unfounded. The famous confrontation between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Tea Party protesters was recorded on dozens of devices. No one has produced any evidence of racial slurs. Representative Cleaver was yelled at. It's on film. Even he declined to actually say he was spit on.

Likewise with the photo evidence produced on the NAACP website. Comparing Obama to Hitler and the American Taxpayer to Jews during the Holocaust is ridiculous rhetoric, and suggests idiocy on the part of some of the protesters. Yet the same charges were made against George W. How can they be interpreted as evidence of racism?

The pitiful weakness of the "Tea Partiers are racists" propaganda in fact says something very good about America. We are at this moment remarkably resistant to racism. Even the most hysterical critics of the President recognize that racism is bad. Those are the antibodies Mr. Weiss alluded to.

Racism is very bad. False accusations of racism as a political ploy are almost as bad.

Comments

[RazorsEdge]

It is stated as fact that the N-word was hurled at John Lewis. As far as I know, he has never said this. Please provide a direct quote where he has made the claim.

[Erik Sean Estep]

KB: It looks like Breitbart counterpunched with a fabricated claim against an Obama sub-cabinet level employee. What are your thoughts about that? Excellent point about the Westboro Phelpsians, but they are on the same continuim as other clerical fascists....I would think....

[KB]

Razor: You'll have to ask the NAACP. All I did was quote them.

Erik: see my recent post on this. Breitbart's claim wasn't fabricated, exactly. But he did take a portion of a speech out of context. There is a lot of blame to spread around in that case.