Reverting To Type
by digby
They’re losing their thin veneer of civilization:
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) claimed Saturday that healthcare protesters at the Capitol directed racial epithets at him Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as they walked outside.
Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus along with Lewis, told The Hill that protesters called the lawmakers the N-word.
Tea Party protesters held a rally outside the Capitol on Saturday, which included speeches by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and actor Jon Voight, and then proceeded into the halls to lobby members at the 11th hour.
Lewis was one of the leaders of the civil rights movement alongside Martin Luther King. Jr.
Asked if racial epithets were yelled at him, Lewis responded, “Yes, but it’s OK. I’ve heard this before in the ’60s. A lot of this is just downright hate.”
I have it good authority that there’s a lot of this coming over the phone lines too, “ni**er” being the preferred epithet. At the end of the day, plain old bigotry and racism is what this frothing frenzy against health care is all about. And in their frustration at not getting their way, their white supremacist slips are showing:
“It was absolutely shocking to me,” Clyburn told the Huffington Post. “Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday… I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”
“It doesn’t make me nervous as all,” the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. “In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else.”
Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:
“A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care… it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.”
Of course it isn’t just racism. There’s the homophobia too, of course
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Everything you needed to know about this hateful movement is expressed in this one story. It wasn’t just one bigot. The entire crowd of Teabaggers erupted in laughter. Hell of a movement Dick Armey has created – after all, he called Barney Frank the same thing, “fag,” back in the 90s.
Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you faggot.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.
At one point, Capitol police officer threatened to throw a group of protestors out of the building but that only seemed to inflame them more; and apparently none were ejected.
These are the same people who showed up for the Palin rallies screaming “kill him:”
This is not a spontaneous uprising of disaffected citizens who are angry about bailouts. This is the base of the modern Republican party, same as it ever was.
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