In what is largely being called an epic fail, the Tea Party held their Uni-Tea Rally in Philadelphia over the weekend. Organizers were expecting 1,500 to 3,000 attendees yet fewer than 500 people showed up.
After the Sherrod-Gate flap, the Tea Party group held a "Uni-Tea" convention to celebrate the movement's diversity.
The slogan for the event, which was held at the Independence Mall and included live bands, was "United Tea Party For All Communities."
Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jillian Rayfield at Talking Points Memo, a political website, took the trip and were disappointed, saying: "It was billed as the most diverse tea party rally ever. For three hours Saturday afternoon, we waited for the diversity to show up."
One of the speakers at the rally was Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger who originally released the edited version of Shirley Sherrod's speech online. The Sherrod-Gate architect stated that the election of President Barack Obama has not improved the country's discourse on race.
The irony is just so delicious.
This past weekend's rally consisted of black, white and Hispanic speakers who promoted the Tea Party's themes of limited government and spending restraint. Another prominent theme was that mainstream news organizations cannot be trusted.
At one point, Breitbart told the crowd to hold up their cameras to demonstrate that members were watching news organizations "because we don't trust you."
Let me get this straight, the man who promoted a doctored video that turned out to be a total sham wants Americans not to trust the mainstream media who ultimately showed that his doctored video was a sham? Extraordinary.
"We have to be one," Breitbart said. "We can be many, we can be the sum of our parts, but we cannot abide by this dividing people into every different race and every different sexual orientation and poke and prod these people ... every electoral cycle in order to get them to vote for the Democratic party. It's cynical politics."
At the same time the Tea Party is using race-baiting and fear-mongering solely for political gain, he is proclaiming that he represents a party of unity. They use distortions and falsehoods to play in to people's worst fears in the name of reclaiming power and he says the Democrats are the ones dividing people. Did he happen to see the delegates at the Democratic Convention in 2009 and compare them with the delegates at the Republican Convention in 2009? This is almost brilliant in its pure lunacy.
No party is unblemished in their handling of cultural and social issues. There will be no party that pleases everyone all of the time, but there is a difference between legitimate policy differences and dangerous, disingenuous rhetoric.
There is something scary about the underlying anger of many who claim to want to "take their government back," and Breitbart uses every trick in the book to capitalize on it. Maybe it's not all about race. Just mostly.
I refuse to believe that all of these folks who sat idly by for the last 8 years while our country went down the crapper suddenly just happened to get the political holy ghost the exact year a black man was elected president.
If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Even Andrew Breitbart. And he knows it.
28-July-10 - An Ohio woman who helped counsel countless couples experiencing marital discord was found stabbed to death on Monday. The suspect is her husband.
27-July-10 - Mocienne Petit Jackson, a Netherlands woman who claims to be the child of pop sensation Michael Jackson and Diana Ross' sister, Barbara Ross, has filed documents in a Los Angeles court, according to TMZ.
23-July-10 - Could it be that Rangel simply forgot the rules? Did it slip his mind that he wasn't supposed to use his letterhead to get corporate donations for a building named after him, as charged? That's not the Charlie Rangel I knew, but that Rangel will surely be exposed when his trial starts.
23-July-10 - R&B heartthrob Brian McKnight, who was accused of being a long-lost baby daddy to a 14-year-old Florida boy, is not be the child's biological father.
22-July-10 - Staying out of trouble is not an easy feat for rapper Foxy Brown, who was arrested in Brooklyn on Wednesday for violating an order of protection, according to TMZ.
23-July-10 - A child pyromaniac is suspected of murdering his mother and siblings, setting fire to his home, and then slitting his own throat with a razor.
22-July-10 - Ieshuh Griffin is a legislative candidate from Wisconsin who seems willing to do whatever it takes to get elected. In the five words that candidates are allowed to put on the ballot to describe themselves, Griffin put the phrase, "Not the white man's b*tch."
21-July-10 - DeFarra Gaymon, a father of four and the CEO of Credit Union of Atlanta, was shot to death in a Newark, N.J. park known for male prostitution.
20-July-10 - Snoop Dogg and his wife revealed to People Magazine that the discovery that their then-6-year-old daughter, Cori, had lupus helped bring their family closer.
