Tea party - How Bad is it for America - Well First learn to speak the language..

The death threats keep coming this fine morning.  I guess the Tea Party crew is determined to have “death panels” one way or another.  The dustup started because of this cartoon:

 
“Learn to Speak Tea Bag” ran on my usual client sites, including NPR, which really set off the guys over here, here (note Condi giving child flowers down by "donate" button), here, here and here.  Before you could say, “due to a pre-existing condition, your health coverage has been denied,” there was a full-fledged viral campaign by right-wing media outlets and blogs to jump, scream and shout about this animation.  Which, to me, is just great!

I say that not because I get some thrill out of receiving emails that are in all capital letters or have more exclamation points than letters in the alphabet, I say that because one of the most important functions of a political cartoon, or political animation, is to foster a discussion.  With thousands of comments posted, loads of emails and tweets, discussion was definitely fostered, and then some.  It’s the “then some” that worries me.

Of course discussion on the web is not known for its civility, but it finally dawned on me the strangeness of receiving death threats at the same time a crazed Somali extremist tried to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Muslim extremist, meet Tea Party extremist.  Tea Party extremist, meet Muslim extremist.

That is not to say all people who associate with the Tea Party movement are killers, just as not all Muslims from Somalia are killers.  I have very good friends from Somalia, and I have wonderful relatives in Idaho who are pro-gun, anti-government conservatives. 

People in this world, my dear Tea Baggers, are not always categorized into easy boxes of Left vs. Right, Socialist vs. Patriot. 

As a matter of fact, I myself am a left-leaning, pro-gay-marriage San Franciscan, Catholic, anti-Bush, anti-Nader guy who guts his own fish, has cut down trees with a chain saw and took political science classes with Mary Cheney.  Is your head imploding yet?

Surprisingly, one of the aspects of the animation that seems to really enrage the Tea Party set is the term “Tea Bag.”  Their claim is that the cartoon uses “bag” instead of “party” in order to take a cheap sexual shot at the Tea Party patriots. You can do your own research on the alternative meaning of “tea bag,” I won’t link to anything here.  Oh, except maybe I should link to some Tea Whatever sites that use the very term that appalls them so.  Here a bag, there a bag, everywhere a bag bag!  (Too bad the sexual angle eliminates any discussion of why the Tea Party crew thinks attempting to reform a disastrous health care system amounts to Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, etc.)

Another aspect of the rabid criticism is that NPR, an organization living high on the hog thanks to the mother’s milk of government (animal metaphors, all around!), should not be funding my anti-Tea Bagger cartoons with taxpayer money.  But alas, NPR does most of its villainous work using sponsorship, pledge drives and good ol’ fashioned Capitalism!  According to the NPR site, a tiny one to two percent of their yearly funding comes via grants from crazed Socialist organizations like the National Science Foundation, CPB and (gasp!) the NEA.  After all is said and done, the amount of taxpayer money that changed hands because NPR posted “Learn to Speak Tea Bag” was about, um . . . two-dollars and twenty-five cents.  If you want to dig deeper into NPR’s financial statements, they are publicly available here.

If that sort of taxpayer funding bothers you, you definitely should avoid any taxpayer-funded city streets, return your government-sponsored digital converter box and avoid doing business with any bank that owes its existence to a taxpayer bailout.

To all of you who have written emails and comments, I really wish I could respond to every one of you.  I truly appreciate your taking the time to write, even if we may be on different sides of the political fence.  If there is one thing that my politically mixed San Francisco/Idaho background has taught me, it is benefit of continuing a discussion even if you don’t agree.  Too often these days, the Left and the Right immediately shut down if you are deemed to be from the opposing camp.  Here’s to good discussion even if we don’t agree.

Now please don’t kill me :-)

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Tea Party

Rep Gabrielle Giffords Said of Sarah Palin's Crosshairs Ad 'There's Consequences to That Action'

The Republican Racist Monkeys Around At Sarah Palin Rally!


Root of All Evil



Richard Dawkins with a Muslim

Exposing the damage caused by Radical Feminism on Men, Women, Children, Husbands, WIves and Society....

Combatting Feminist Ms-Information

Robert Sheaffer

Refuting the Most Common Feminist Lies and Pseudo-Scholarship

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NEWS:





It's official now: Science Magazine and the University of Chicago Press own up that the



"Peaceful Ancient Matriarchy" on Crete



was just a politically-inspired fantasy. (But remember how fiercely it was defended by so many

"intellectuals" just fifteen years ago! Remember the fuss over Gimbutas, Eisler, etc.?)






Is There Anything Good About Men?



by Dr. Roy F. Baumeister.

An invited address given to the American Psychological Association on August 24, 2007,

it gives seldom-heard answers to feminists' charges that men are dysfunctional (or worse).






Bonobos are celebrated as peace-loving, matriarchal, and sexually liberated. Are they?





"Frans de Waal... who is the most frequently quoted authority on the species, has never seen a wild bonobo."



(And how did so many bonobos lose their fingers and toes if they're so "nonagressive"?)








My article in Skeptic Magazine



dissects the claims of The DaVinci Code,



with its "sacred feminine."

---

The feminist movement as we have come to know it in recent decades

is fundamentally a "con." It is as filled with falsehood, inaccuracy,

and foolishness as astrology or parapsychology. As it is considered

treasonous to criticise a sister feminist, no standards of accuracy or

honesty are ever enforced. Hyperbole and deceit thus become the formula for

success, "peer review" playing no role in reining in misinformation.

Any would-be feminist who raises scholarly objections to the rampant

misinformation (



Christina Hoff Sommers



,



Camille Paglia



,



Wendy McElroy



,



Elaine Showalter



,



Erin Pizzey



,



Elizabeth Loftus,



etc.) is branded an 'enemy of women' and is

drummed out of the movement.






Various feminists proclaim that women are 'under siege', that a monstrous

social bias against them, if not a virtual war, is going on, that women

have little respect or power (Steinem, Faludi,

Tavris, etc.) Yet the notion of the American woman as

a powerless "victim" is one

of the most absurd notions ever foisted upon anyone. American women live,

on

average, seven years longer than men. They control 86 %

of all personal wealth [PARADE Magazine, May 27, 1990], and

make up 55% of current college graduates. Women cast

54% of the votes in Presidential elections, so they

can hardly claim to be left out of the political

decision-making process!

They win almost automatically in child custody disputes. Women suffer

only 6% of the work-related fatalities (the other 94% are

suffered by men).

Women are the victim of only about 35% of violent crimes,

and only about 25% of all murders, yet

because of our society's exaggerated concern and respect for

them, special

legislation has been passed to punish "violence against

women" as if it were a more heinous crime than "violence

against men". (Feminists claim to want "equality", and

this is an example of what "equality" means to them,

i.e., preferential treatment to address their concerns).

Two out of every three dollars spent on health care

is spent on women, and even if you don't count

pregnancy-related care, women still receive more medical

care than men

- yet feminists still

holler that womens health is being "neglected", and far

too many of us credulously believe them.

Of the 25 worst jobs, as ranked by the based on a combination of salary,

Jobs Related Almanac

stress, security, and physical demands, 24 of them are predominantly,

if not almost entirely, male, which might explain why

men commit over 80% of all suicides.

(Most of these statistics

come from



The Myth of Male Power



by Warren Farrell.)




Now, if it were really the case, as

feminists claim, that men have selfishly arranged everything to be

wonderful for themselves, absolutely ignoring womens' legitimate

concerns and needs, would the above be true?

Of course not. It is much

more realistic to suggest that women have cleverly seized the upper

hand by pretending to be helplessly trapped below!

Looking at the full picture, and not the tiny, distorted one

that feminists and those they have duped present, we see a

very different picture: The American woman emerges as perhaps

the most privileged large group in history, enjoying a never-before-

seen level of affluence, power, leisure, and health, supported by

the work, discipline, and self-effacing, life-destroying exertions of

a group they have bamboozled - their men - into believing their

cries of "victimization". The links below will help you

to start finding

your way out of the familiar maze of feminist lies.




Click here to read my article,



Feminism, The Noble Lie






Take Back the Campus: refuting the



Ten Most Common Feminist Myths



(which are more accurately termed "lies," because feminists just keep on promoting them with reckless disregard for truth, no matter how many times the falsehood of these claims is pointed out to them.).






Read my article



Bill Clinton and the Gender Gap,



in the August, 1996 issue of



The Backlash



Magazine.




Read



Steven Goldberg's



article,



Feminism Against Science




.

Falsehoods about 'Domestic Violence'

In Feminist Writings, Men are "Batterers" and Women are "Victims" -



But Reality is Much More Complex







The Superbowl Battering Hoax



- first promoted by "FAIR" and by "battered woman expert" Lenore Walker.




My Debunking of Lenore Walker's



The Battered Woman,



a preposterous and indefensible work of pseudo-scholarship that has

nonetheless attained near-icon status within so-called 'Womens Studies'.




As



Christina Hoff Sommers



shows, the famous



"Rule of Thumb" for Wife Beating



is really just a feminist lie.

Laura Flanders of a group calling itself "FAIR"

(which played a major role in promoting

the "Superbowl Battering" hoax) made a big stink,



href=http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/AcademicPapers/stolen-feminism-hoax TARGET="_blank">

accused Sommers of misrepresenting facts.



Read



Sommers'devastating reply to Flanders.



(To this day, Politically Correct feminists still try to use Flanders'

accusations to bash Sommers in attempting to presuade people they believe

to be naieve, even though they know the charges aren't true.

If you show them that you've read Sommers' refutation of the charges, they'll

quickly shut up, or change the subject.)




Feminists, bolstered by oceans of phony statistics,

are now trying to seize Valentine's Day (a day traditionally for

celebrating good relations between the sexes) and re-define it as



V-Day,



a day to protest supposed systemic patriarchal violence against women.

(Feminists always have had a big problem dealing with heterosexuality.)

Fortunately,

Christina Hoff Sommers has shown



how phony their male-bashing claims are.



(It might be a good idea to check out V-day's list of sponsors and boycott them.)










Every Seven Seconds,



a Feminist tells a Lie about Domestic Violence. Noted researcher

Richard J. Gelles tries to set the record straight.




A wonderful expose' of how feminists have sabotaged and hijacked the fight

against Domestic Violence, turning it into a weapon for use in their

war against men, is found in



"Prone to Violence"



by





Erin Pizzey,



who founded the first Domestic Violence shelter in the U.K.




Feminists can only get away with claiming that "domestic violence"

equals "men beating up women" because people are unaware of the



massive documentation of female-instigated domestic violence.






Facts refuting feminist propaganda on



Family Violence



by Family Resources and Research.

'Recovered Memories' and other False Accusations Against Men

(left) In her best-selling book on 'recovered memories',



Michelle Remembers



what Satan looks like.



A debunking of Michelle's story



was published in the London Sunday Mail on Sept. 30, 1990.






My debunking of the feminist "Recovered Memories" book,



The Courage to Heal,



that has sold millions of copies, bringing

discord and misery to many thousands of families

across North America.




Feminists say that



Women Don't Lie About Rape,



but in reality no other crime has

as high an incidence of false reporting.




Dr. Ed Friedlander talks about



False allegations of child abuse



that he has encountered (and gives valuable references).

Falsehoods and Foolishness about Supposed 'Nonpatriarchal Societies'

All Human Societies, Without Exception, are Patriarchal, so Feminist

Writers Routinely Resort to Obfuscation and even Deceit to Conceal this

Embarrassing Fact






My unmasking of a well-known feminist scholar's deceptions about

a supposed



Native American Gender-Equal Society



that has been widely taught in Womens Studies classes.




In 1994 the New York Times reported the existence of

another supposed



Gender-Equal Society in the South Pacific.



But this claim appears highly dubious as well.




In The Mismeasure of Woman,



Carol Tavris



attempts to blow smoke in the readers' eyes about the realities

of male dominance.



Steven Goldberg



cuts through the fog.




Prof. Goldberg explains the



logic, and some of the fallacies,



associated with discussions of Patriarchy.




Is



Patriarchy Avoidable?



Professors Ridley and Goldberg dispute.




Some claim that



the Iroquois



represent an Exception

to Universal Patriarchy.

Here Prof. Goldberg examines that claim.




Every claimed instance of a supposed



"nonpatriarchal society"



is examined in



Why Men Rule



by





Steven Goldberg.



(Chicago: Open Court, 1994)

Not one such claim stands up to critical scrutiny.

Goddess Pseudo-History

Unable to find any "Matriarchies" in the present day, many feminists

resort to inventing an idyllic Lost Matriarchal Paradise in the

dim mists of pre-history.

Even though there is no acceptable scholarly

evidence for this, it has become an accepted fact in "Womens Studies"









Supposed 'Old Matriarchal Village' at the U.N.



Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995










My debunking of



The Goddess Remembered,



a pseudo-historical documentary widely seen on PBS during

'pledge weeks'. (Hint: If they're broadcasting this garbage,

Don't Pledge!.

Instead, call them up and explain why you won't pledge)




Read Charlotte Allen's piece



demolishing feminist/neopagan "Goddess History"



in the January, 2001 issue of



The Atlantic Monthly.






Detailed sources debunking the



Goddess Garden of Eden



myths promoted by Marija Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, etc. These are unscholarly

claims that are routinely taught in "Womens Studies" classes as

if they were established fact.

However, the newly-online



Encyclopedia Brittanica article on "matriarchy"



refutes these claims, and

states plainly that "the consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed."




The best book debunking the Goddess nonsense is



Goddess Unmasked



by

Philip G. Davis.

Read



my review of the book.






How historically accurate are the "Goddess" claims made in the best-seller

The DaVinci Code?



Not at all,



as we see in this article from a Catholic magazine.






The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory



by Cynthia Eller. "Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future."






Faces of the Goddess



by Lotte Motz.






The Pagan religions of the Ancient British Isles -

their Nature and Legacy.



by Ronald Hutton. Scholary refutations of wildly-inaccurate contemporary neopagan claims.

Pseudo-History About Witchcraft

Craving ever-greater Victim Status, Andrea Dworkin and

other feminists invented a

pseudo-history of a 'Womens Holocaust' in the Middle Ages.

Turning upside-down the tactics of the 'Holocaust Revisionists', who

claim that a real genocide never occurred, the feminists claim

to be the victims of a genocide that wasn't.

This myth, complete with a fabricated pro-feminist Pre-Christian Age,

is taught as if it were true in so-called "Womens Studies" classes.






Jack Kapicka's debunking of



The Burning Times,



another pseudo-historical documentary often shown on PBS during

'pledge weeks'. (Again: If they're broadcasting this garbage,

Don't Pledge!.)




Both women and men were

accused

of 'witchcraft,' and men make up

the majority of those accused of 'heresy.' Both groups were brutally

tortured by the Inquisition. Furthermore, most of the accusers

of supposed witches were women.

Feminist claims that witch-groups actually

existed, and were "healers", are not supported by scholarship, nor

is the claim that accused witches were actually the remnants of a

gentle, female-centered pagan religion. Historian Norman Cohn

debunks the pseudo-scholarship of Margaret Murray who is the principal

source for those "neopagan" claims, noting that Murray selectively quoted

from her sources, citing those passages tending to support her

thesis, while ignoring or deleting intervening sentences that

invalidate her claims.



(Europe's Inner Demons.



New York: Basic Books, 1975).



T.M. Luhrmann reached a similar conclusion after examining Murray's claims in



Persuasions of the Witch's Craft



(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989),





suggesting that

"those accused of witchcraft in early modern Europe were very likely

innocent of any practice."




In



Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft



(Viking, 1996),

Oxford professor Robin Briggs writes,

"Historical European witchcraft is quite simply a fiction, in the sense that

there is no evidence that witches existed, still less that they celebrated

black masses or worshiped strange gods... On the wilder shores of the feminist

and witch-cult movements a potent myth has become established, to the effect

that 9 million women were burned as witches in Europe, gendercide rather than

genocide. This is an overestimate by a factor of up to 200, for the most

reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and

1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20-25%

were men."




Click here to view a



Portrait of 3 Men Condemned by the Spanish Inquisition



(68K GIF). The caption reads: "1., Garment of one who is to be burned

alive. 2., Garment of one who has escaped being burned by confessing

before being condemned; 3., Garment of one who has avoided the fire by

confessing after his condemnation." (from an 18th-century French

history book).

Other Feminist Pseudo-History

Feminists often claim that Lady Ada Lovelace was

"the world's first programmer."

While she was no doubt very intelligent, her accomplishments have been

grossly overstated, for reasons of ideology. Read an article





debunking the feminist 'Ada myth'.



"All of the programs cited in her notes," writes Allan Bromley of the

University of Sydney, "had been prepared by

Babbage from three to seven years earlier."




Feminists also claim that Einstein's first wife Mileva Maric made substantial

contributions to his historic Relativity Theory.





Allen Esterson got PBS to withdraw many unfounded claims made in its 2003 documentary

Einstein's Wife



(and indeed the Australian Brodcasting Company withdrew the documentary itself, although US PBS did not). Many unfounded claims still remain on the PBS website.

"Womens Studies": Political Propaganda and Deception



Masquerading as "Scholarship"








Who Stole Feminism?



by Christina Hoff Sommers






Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Womens Studies



by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge.






Feminism Under Fire



by



Ellen Klein.



(



Prometheus Books,



1996.) "Modern-day feminism is intellectually dishonest and

scandalously unscholarly," says this

professor of philosophy and one-time academic feminist.




Michael Wright's critique of the use of



bogus statistics by the Womens Studies Department



at the University of Oklahoma (and the university's complete unwillingness to

hold them accountable in any way!)

The "Difference Deniers"

Under the auspices of "Womens Studies," feminists run a cottage industry of

"Difference Deniers," claiming (variously and usually inconsistently) the the

observed cognitive and even physical differences between women and men are

either



A) not real,





B) wholly socially constructed,



C) diminishing,



D) insignificant, or



E) have already disappeared!




The best-known of the Difference Deniers are Anne Fausto-Sterling, author of





Myths of Gender,





and Carol Tavris, author of





The Mismeasure of Woman.





Modern science, of course, is moving precisely in the opposite direction, documenting

more and more innate and intrinsic male/female differences with each passing year.




The noted Darwinist author (and feminist) Helena Cronin debunks the Difference Deniers:



Getting Human Nature Right.






The Difference Deniers score a Big Win:



Science Magazine pulls an already-accepted

article



by a respected developmental biologist explaining innate male/female brain differences

because it allegedly did not "lead to a clear strategy about how to deal with the gender issue."

In other words: "feminists will kill us if we run this article." (And people still talk about

an alleged 'Republican War on Science'!

Read the



censored article



here - it has been attracting a great deal of attention).








MIT brain researcher Steven Pinker debunks the Politically Correct dogma of

the mind as a





Blank Slate.








Some



references on Sex differences,



which if the Difference Deniers were correct, would be an empty list. Also, the

peer-reviewed scientific publication



Hormones and Behavior



would contain nothing but empty pages!








Sex differences in the distribution of mental ability.

(According to the Difference Deniers, such differences can't possibly exist.)















Next Page

Atheists

Master, please forgive this slave slut, She is a  poorly evolved frontal lobe










I Love this Pic.

and this one too....

Republican Party...Do we want to put up with another Bush????

The following is a list of the top ten reasons I feel the Republican party is bad for our country:

1. The Republican Party would rather give tax breaks to the rich and make up the difference by increasing taxes on the poor than work toward solving issues such as unemployment and poverty. Where is the logic in making people who don’t have money pay higher taxes than the people who have the most money?
2. The Republican Party consistently uses religion to back legislation–a clear violation of the first amendment’s protection of freedom of religion.
3. The GOP has a history of supporting war for war’s sake.
4. Sarah Palin. ‘Nuff said.
5. The Republican Party takes a pro-life stance when it comes to abortion, but strongly favors fighting wars, hunting for sport and food, and strongly supports the death penalty. Hypocrite much?
6. The Republican Party’s actions hint toward wanting a separation of classes.
7. The GOP wants to cut funding from education–so that middle and lower class families are unable to educate their children.
8. The Republican Party pretends to love America, but its only interest is lining its own pockets.
9. Many Republicans refuse to even consider the positions of others on political matters.
10. Do we really want to put up with another Bush?

---------------------------------------------------------
feminists might hate Laura because she is what they may want to be but can't admit to it, the epitome of a Renaissance Woman...Who Loves life and Men!!!!! 

-------------------------------------------------------------
Teabagger Express-Buses Full Racist Morons





New GOP "Racist" Headache
After "Barack the Magic Negro" and other GOP racial gaffes, a top Young Republican official—who hopes to be elected chairman Saturday—laughs at a racial slur about President Obama.

After "Barack the Magic Negro" and other GOP racial gaffes, a top Young Republican official—who was elected chairman Saturday—laughs at a racial slur about President Obama. The Daily Beast's John Avlon on a choice facing GOP brass: Lose the radical fringe, or never email, use social media or send out holiday CDs again. Avlon is the author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America.

Note to Republicans: Racist “humor,” the Internet, and political ambitions don’t mix. Audra Shay, vice chairman of the Young Republicans and the leading candidate to be elected its chairman on Saturday, is now the latest in a growing list of GOP officials learning this lesson the hard way, based on pictures of a now-deleted Facebook page obtained by The Daily Beast.

“This is still America… freedom of speech and thought is still allowed… for now any ways… and the last time i checked I was a good ole southern boy… and if yur ass is black don’t let the sun set on it in a southern town…”


On Wednesday, Shay—a 38-year-old Army veteran, mother, and event planner from Louisiana who has been endorsed by her governor, Bobby Jindal—was holding court on her Facebook page, initiating a political conversation by posting that “WalMart just signed a death warrant” by “endorsing Obama’s healthcare plan.” At 1:52, a friend named listed as Eric S. Piker, but whose personal page says his actual name is Eric Pike, wrote “It’s the government making us commies… can’t even smoke in my damn car… whats next they going to issue toilet paper once a month… tell us how to wipe our asses…”

Two minutes later, Piker posted again saying “Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals.”

Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker’s comments: “You tell em Eric! lol.”

Click Here to View Image of Facebook Comments


Shay now claims that she was only responding to Piker’s first comments, not having noticed the second. The eight-minute gap between the second post and her response strains the credibility of this defense.

It didn’t take long for other posters on Shay’s page to do the math. First, Derek Moss wrote “What’s disheartening is the use of the word 'coon' in 2009. Wow… I’m usually outnumbered about 500-to-1 on Audra’s threads so go ahead, lemme have it, I deserve it.” He apparently expected to be criticized as among this crowd for calling out the racist comment.

Cassie Wallender, a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation, then wrote: “Someone please help a naïve Seattle girl out, is Eric’s comment a racial slur?” She answered her own question one minute later: “Okay, why is this okay? I just looked it up. ‘It comes from a term baracoons (a cage) where they used to place Africans who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves.’ THIS IS NOT OKAY. And it's not funny.”


Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. By John Avlon. 304 pages. Beast Books. $15.95.

This was followed soon after by the chairman of the D.C. Young Republicans, Sean L. Conner, who wrote “I’m really saddened that you would support this type of racial language. ..wow! Thanks Cassie for standing up…”

Shay was silent on this exchange, but soon word started spreading throughout the Young Republican circuit, open to GOP members under 40. Significantly, Shay then “de-friended” Wallender and Conner—in the world of Facebook, that means cutting off relations—after calling her out, but kept Piker as a “friend” (subsequently, it appears their profiles are no longer linked).

“If Audra really did find these remarks to be 'outright disgusting,' then why was her response to immediately de-friend those who made statements against Eric's blatant racism?” Wallender wrote yesterday in a letter to the Young Republican National Committee. “I was blocked for stating that Eric's racist comment was "NOT OKAY. And it is not funny." Please take a moment look at the entire screenshot linked above, and ask yourself: which comment would lead you to de-friend someone, mine, or Eric's?”


In the face of the “coons” comment, Shay’s main concern seems to have been damage control. She deleted the controversial exchanges from her page (but not before screenshots were taken) and tried to tamp down the fire internally. Almost eight hours after Piker’s comments, and Shay’s ensuing “LOL”, Shay posted a Facebook status update stating that neither she—nor her Young Republican political slate—“condones the use of racial slurs on my wall…. It is not right to nor appropriate to talk that way and will not be accepted!”

At 10:31 p.m., a friend named Dale Lawson raised the P.C. defense, writing “the over reaction to it was a little amusing.” Then her friend Piker came roaring back: “I agree with dale… this is still America… freedom of speech and thought is still allowed… for now any ways… and the last time i checked I was a good ole southern boy… and if yur ass is black don’t let the sun set on it in a southern town…”

Click Here to View More Facebook Comments


On Thursday morning, the leading black conservative site HipHopRepublican.com posted a story on the exchange. One of the site’s founders, Lenny McAllister, author of the upcoming Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative), quickly released a statement of condemnation, which provoked a flurry of emails from Shay supporters and ultimately Shay herself. “Throughout most of my interaction with Audra and some of her supporters over this issue, there was a strong defense of her actions,” McAllister told me. “Audra and I eventually got to a place where she apologized to me personally about the whole incident, but others have wondered if her public statement was an apology or merely political posturing.”

More than 36 hours after the comments were first posted, Shay released a statement condemning their “disgusting” content, which she said she was “not aware of” when she posted her response. She then spends the second half of her statement pointing a finger at the real culprits for the “web of misconception and untruths”: her political opponents at the Young Republicans. “It is a disgrace that these types of political attacks are taking place and once again, it proves that my opponents will stoop to the lowest levels to steal this election from the jaws of victory.” Shay did not respond to emails sent to her personal account requesting comment.

Taken by themselves, the exchanges on Shay’s page might be dismissed as an isolated ugly incident. But there’s a pattern emerging from the fringe of the GOP grassroots. Three weeks ago, former South Carolina State Election Director and Richland County GOP Chairman Rusty DePass “joked” on his Facebook page that first lady Michelle Obama was descended from a gorilla which had gone missing from a local zoo. Days later, Tennessee state legislative aide Sherri Goforth emailed out an image labeled “Historical Keepsake”—showing august portraits of all the presidents of the United States, ending with a pair of googly-eyes peering out from a black background to symbolize President Obama. When confronted, the aide to State Senator Diane Black said only that she regretted sending the image to the wrong email list and from her government address. She was “reprimanded” by her supervisors but not otherwise punished (a forced furlough at Memphis’s National Civil Rights Museum would have been an inspired penalty). And of course, all this has taken place after Chip Saltzman’s bid to be RNC Chairman was derailed by his decision to mail out a parody CD featuring the song “ Barack the Magic Negro.”

“It seems like some of us Republicans are taking our conservative message, mixing it with personal prejudices and racist views, and calling it patriotism,” says McAllister. “You can cover cyanide with chocolate, but you still can't call it candy.”

This pattern of racial remarks from grassroots Republican politicos highlights a real problem: As the party tacks right, it seems increasingly reluctant to challenge folks on its fringe for fear of offending the base—even, in this case, by failing to immediately rebuke racist supporters on a Facebook page. Let’s say that Shay’s “LOL” response was the online equivalent of nervous laughter, the kind of passive response to racist jokes that may have once been considered acceptable in pool halls and country clubs of the past. In the Internet era, it offers indelible evidence of acquiescing to something evil in our politics. There is a fear-based paralysis, a lack of moral clarity, which is in direct contradiction to their historic role as the Party of Lincoln.

This story is still unfolding. The election for chairman of the Young Republicans will be held this weekend at their national conference in Indianapolis and a new urgency is now infusing the vote. “I saw something that was morally wrong, and as a conservative I took it upon myself as an individual to stand up, and I do not regret it at all,” Wallender wrote in her letter to the committee. “I was attacked for wanting better for Young Republicans—in my lifetime of work for the Republican Party I have never been accused of being a "RINO," until now, by Audra's supporters.”

It will be interesting to hear what Governor Jindal and other influential supporters of Audra Shay’s candidacy will say about this incident. In a response to my request for a comment from RNC Chairman Michael Steele, his communications director Trevor Francis stated simply but firmly, “This type of language is inappropriate, and is not representative of the views of the Young Republicans.”

With their party at a crossroads in the wilderness, Young Republicans have an opportunity to send a message and set a direction this weekend. Will they embrace the ideals of the Party of Lincoln, and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic?” Or turn toward the self-segregating notes of “Barack the Magic Negro?”

John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.