Leave it to Fox News to search high and low to try to find any way possible to position the tea party activists as being more diverse than they are in reality.
Sorry, but trying to portray the tea party people as some kind of diverse body miserably fails the laugh test. Frankly, sprinkling in a few specks of pepper in a mine of salt does not constitute any kind of real mixture. Of course, if you work for Fox and you can find a few black people who are conservatives then that forms diversity in a sea of angry white faces. There’s nothing wrong with being a black conservative, but I do find it disturbing when black conservatives gleefully allow themselves to be pimped out as models for a diversity-challenged organizations diversity. Lloyd Marcus and William Owens (and even a few hundred others) do not qualify this tea party movement (which obviously was nonexistent for all the previous white presidents) as diverse.
This all brings me to the tea party diversity story Fox News is trying to push on its Web site. So, the headline reads: “Black Conservatives Take Lead Role in Tea Party Movement” and the subheadline of this piece written by Judson Berger reads: “Though the tea party movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity, minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.”
So, the subheadline seems to scoff at the notion (“its supposed lack of diversity” the article reads) that the tea party movement lacks diversity, but at the end champions that the tea party movement is “attracting a more diverse crowd every day.” That strikes me as a bit of a contradiction, but I guess we’re all entitled to our opinions (Fox News just dishonestly passes its opinions off as legitimate news).
Here is an excerpt from the Fox News story:
To Marcus, President Obama’s policies perpetuate that dependency. That’s why, he says, it baffles him and other black conservatives when the tea party movement is dismissed as somehow anti-black, as a rowdy bunch of ignorant, white protesters who have it in for the nation’s first black president.
“This is the nicest angry mob I’ve ever seen,” Marcus said.
Marcus is one of a number of black conservatives who have joined up with, and helped lead, the conservative tea party movement since its inception. Though the movement has attracted criticism for its supposed lack of diversity — MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently called the groups “monochromatic” and “all white” — those minority activists who are involved say the movement has little to do with race, and that it is attracting a more diverse crowd every day.
“I think a lot of black people are waking up from their Obama night-of-the-living-dead fog,” Marcus said. “They were walking around like zombies going Obama, Obama, Obama.”
Right, you keep believing that Lloyd.
Marcus, I have no doubt, is genuine and strong in his conservative beliefs. There’s nothing wrong with being black and conservative. There is something wrong with allowing yourself to be used by a group that is largely opposed (and/or avoided) by the majority of blacks and minorities. Sadly, however, he is blinded by his own ideology that he misses the racial element. Of course the tea party people like him. He is the black man who functions against most black people. So, of course they are going to like him and welcome him mostly with open arms. He (in the minds of the tea party people) helps them deflect the racial politics. It’s version of the “I’m-not-racist-because-I-have-black-friends” defense.
Fox News, as expected, has rushed to the defense of the tea parties to once again prove its media brand of conservative activism.
Once again, Fox news uses its platform in the media to aid the Republicans and tea party activists … all while claiming to be “fair and balanced” with its programming.
Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/19/black-conservatives-lead-role-tea-party-movement/
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