Taxpayer-funded smear merchants.
(Newsbusters) — Ellis Cose was a liberal Newsweek columnist on black issues from 1993 to 2010, and now has a book out on improving racial attitudes called The End of Anger. Naturally, the book was plugged on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation on Tuesday afternoon. Even as Cose argued he was pleased that racism isn’t accepted in any mainstream political group, and tried to insist not every Tea Party activist is a racist, he insisted “let’s be adult here” and acknowledge the Tea Party “appeals to an older, conservative, in many cases racially prejudiced group of people….
Cose replied:
COSE: Well, I mean, talking first about Donald Trump, I mean, I share the reader’s – the viewer’s — listener’s, I should say, dismay that these idiotic comments got as much play as they did. And I also agree – I have no idea whether Donald trump’s a racist or not, but he was certainly appealing to racial-related fears. My point is not that this kind of nonsense has disappeared. It’s clearly going to be a part of the American framework for as long as I expect to be alive, in one way or another.
What I argue and what I maintain is true is that the sort of societal, official condonement of explicit racism has disappeared, which is to say that even the Tea Party – which, again, appeals to an older, conservative, in many cases racially prejudiced group of people – and then again, let me be very clear. I’m not saying everybody, as far is – who’s a Tea Party supporter is a bigot. I think there are not people who are not. But I think they do appeal very fundamentally, as well, to a lot of people who are.
And that is a reality. But even with the Tea Party – and I spent some time talking to various Tea Party leaders in various places, and I even did a long, lengthy interview with an African-American member of the Tea Party. And what they argue is that their appeal is not about race. Their appeal is about the role of government. It’s about the role of enlarged institutions in society, and so forth and so forth and so on. Now, let’s be adult here. We know that race plays a role in at least some of the attitudes that some people bring to the Tea Party. That’s not going to disappear. What’s different about this moment in history, I think, is that we have said, as a nation: We don’t accept blatant racism.