Byron York Tips Hand on Teabagger Racism Charge

Posted by The Green Miles

Teabaggers insist their hatred of President Obama has nothing to do with race. It's policy-based, they claim -- Obama is stealing our rights and bankrupting our country.

That's despite the fact that they never complained about threats to our constitution when George W. Bush was spying on American citizens, imprisoning people without charges, torturing people, etc. And despite the fact that they never complained about the skyrocketing national debt when George W. Bush was in office.

OK. Fine. So riddle me this. When Byron York was looking for someone to go on record talking about his distrust of Obama, why did he feel the need to quote a black guy?

Their attitudes toward Obama himself are complicated. No one I met expressed hatred for the president. A few had voted for him, and others, like Christy Smith, said they were deeply moved when he was elected. Many others opposed him all along. But now, the predominant mood is deep distrust. They believe Obama will raise their taxes, that he will blow up the health care system, that he will weaken America's defenses.

And they wonder who he is as a person. "The company you keep tells a lot about who you are," says Tres Berden, a truck driver from Newark, New Jersey. "With all of those associations of his, from Rev. Wright to Van Jones -- you don't know those kind of people without being one." Berden, one of the few African-Americans in the crowd, is a Democrat who now considers himself a libertarian. He voted for Obama, but quickly became disillusioned. "He isn't the person he sold us," Berden says.

If this isn't a perfect example of trying to pre-innoculate the teabagger movement against a charge of racism, I don't know what is.

Tens of thousands (er, I mean millions) of people in attendance, just a handful of them black. And when he's looking for someone to go on record expressing distrust of Obama and two associates -- both also black -- Byron York just happens to find a black person to quote?

Coincidence? Or a classic tell?

UPDATE by Lowell: Read this and see the results of all the right-wing racism out there.