Clearing my name

One of my ex-favorite bloggers is Glenn Reynolds, the author of the Republican blog "Instapundit", one of the oldest on the net. I had him pegged as an independent-libertarian voice during the Bush years; boy was I wrong about that. As soon as Obama got elected, Reynolds was revealed to be an epic partisan hack. I swear, after reading his blog you'd think Barack Obama is responsible for bad weather. Anyway, if you search for my name ["Nicholas Klemen"] on google, you'll find a bunch of results for several people but the top one is my name on an instapundit post. This was an email I sent to Glenn Reynolds, which he posted on his blog. Since his site gets a ton of traffic, that is the top search result you see on google for my name.

Reynolds was one of the driving forces behind the tea party movement. Presumably to diffuse claims of racism at tea parties, Glenn wrote this post, which includes pictures of 4 black people and some commentary (including my attached email at the bottom). This was Reynolds' attempt to disprove the notion that racist sentiment was a driving force behind the tea parties. Which, incidentally, a great deal of it obviously was. You just can't generate this kind of emotion and fear in people without a hefty dose of xenophobia and/or racism to supplement whatever else you're selling. The tea parties are a direct continuation of Sarah Palin rallies held in the 2008 election, with the same mob mentality, hysteria, and irrationality. This is still going on, with the "birther" crowd that is convinced that Obama isn't a citizen. Xenophobia and racism go hand in hand, but the former has less social taboo so it is the preferred anger outlet for PR-concerned tea partiers who don't want people to perceive them as racist. But I digress. So Glenn Reynolds puts my email on his blog:

Lefty reader Nicholas Klemen writes: "You found photos of 6 black people at tea parties! Thats proof that there isn’t any racism going on at the protests. Take that Dems! Keep up the good work."

Here was Glenns response:

"Well, there wasn’t any sign of racism at the Tea Party I attended, nor have I seen any reports from anywhere else. All I’ve seen are bogus claims of racism from apparatchik lefties who are — as Bob McManus predicted a month ago — hitting this note for lack of anything else to say, and because it’s their tired response to anything threatening. That’s not the moral high ground you’re standing on, Nicholas. It’s just a big ol’ pile of crap."

Keeping in mind that Glenn Reynolds is a law professor, notice that there is serious disconnect between my jab and Reynolds' response. Glenn spends his entire rebuttal to my email by arguing that there is not racism at the tea parties: he didn't personally see any racism, the left is making bogus claims, and Bob McManus had the foresight to cover their asses a month in advance. And hence, the disconnect - my email didn't claim that there was racism at the tea parties. I was just mocking his attempt to try to disprove such claims by posting pictures of minorities. If Joseph Goebbels had taken a few pictures of Jewish people at the Nuremburg Rally, does that somehow alleviate the Nazis from accusations of racism?

Anyway, it turns out that this is the guy who runs teaparty.org:


Awesome. Palin 2012! Anyway, I am not certain that the guy in this photo is a racist. He certainly may be, but it's not like this sign is proof. However, what can be clearly deduced from this photo is that the guy is exceptionally stupid. First of all, he didn't spell the racial slur right. Although to be fair, phonetically it does look right, which is what we would expect in the case of a person used to hearing the word but who has never actually read it. Second, he thought that it would be OK for him to bring something like this out in public. Third, he didn't realize that this sign jeopardizes his political cause. A smart racist is going to recognize that the tea party movement will be taken more seriously if they are able to conceal the fact that it is racist. Clearly, this guy just didn't get the memo. He needs to read more Instapundit.