UnitTea Totals
by digby
TPM’s coverage of the UNI-TEA party, featuring racial healer Andrew Breitbart, is very droll:
Among those who did make it, for most of the time the numbers of non-white faces could be counted on two hands, and maybe a foot.
The same can’t be said for the group who went up on the event’s small stage. Organizers promised the most diverse cadre of speakers ever to grace a tea party rally, and they delivered. For the most part their message was the same: tea partiers are not racists and never were — but liberals are.
“The more liberals talk about race, the more they show who the real racists are,” right-wing blogger Andre Harper told the crowd. “It’s 2010. The tea party has officially moved on passed the race issue. The liberals can have it.”
Apparently, Uni-Tea wasn’t only bridging the racial gap. Brendan Kissam and Matt Hissey wandered into the event carrying signs that said “proud gay conservative” and “freedom is fabulous.” They said they were “the Gayborhood’s envoy to the tea party.”
The pair said the tea party is welcoming to their minority group, too. “The Tea Party is accepting of everybody,” said Hissey, adding that “Skin color diversity — that’s not real diversity. Everyone here has a different life experience.” Hissey recognized that the tea party “might be against gay marriage,” but that’s ok, he said, because he is too.
Uni-Tea reached out the hand of tea party acceptance to young people, too — in the form of white conservative rapper Hi-Caliber and a band of veterans called The Bangers. “This reaches out to the 18-34 year-olds,” organizer Jeffrey Weingarten said. It should be noted that Weingarten was successful in getting at least one 18-34 year-old to join him for the day: his son, Freedom Weingarten.
David Webb, an African American top official with Tea Party Federation and the man who shamed Mark Williams and the Tea Party Express for being racist a couple weeks ago, emceed the event and told the tea party crowd that it didn’t matter if only a few minorities joined the cause.
“I didn’t realize that any movement everywhere had a minimum daily requirement of black people to be legitimate,” he said.
In his speech, Andrew Breitbart, echoed the sentiment, blaming the liberal-media “cabal” evident in things like JournoList for suggesting that there have been moments that tea partiers have appeared to be less than 100% welcoming of blacks.
Most of the emphasis was on how not-racist the tea party is. But one speaker, African American conservative blogger Vanessa Jean Louis, offered some solutions for what conservatives can do to reach out to African Americans.
“Black people are very conservative,” she told TPM. “I think the problem is with the packaging of the message. So if we can talk about issues, instead of you know, left talking points and right – wing talking points, if we could talk about the issues, then that would really resonate.”
Louis said there was a simple explanation for why there aren’t more black tea partiers.
“Typically the conservative movement is predominantly white,” she said…
The long-term effect of what was essentially a small group of white tea partiers gathering to be told by minorities that they’re not racist is unclear. But organizers said they accomplished a lot at the event, and said that more Uni-Tea rallies are planned for the future.
Read the whole thing. Nearly every sentence is equally entertaining.
Update: Susie was there and came back with a great report.
The crowd was serenaded by The Bangers and their American Heroes and Patriots Tour™ (featuring appearances by Rita Cosby), a mediocre rock band with song lyrics like “Thank God for you/You protect us from terror.”
The lead singer urged people go up to any veterans at the rally “and give him a big hug.” Then he exhorted the crowd: “The left will never be right” and announced ear plugs would be distributed to the crowd “for the left ear only.” (Get it?)
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