Well, first of all, it would be “Imagine if the Tea Party Were Black,” because the verb would be in the subjunctive mood.  But leaving that aside for a moment, imagine if someone took the punchline from a pulp legal thriller that was treacly and hackneyed ten years ago and turned it into a way-too-long post about how Tea Partiers are a bunch of racist redneck rubes.

Well, no, you don’t have to imagine it, here it is.  I don’t have a dog in this fight, mind you, I haven’t gone to any Tea Party events and aside from a general sympathy to limited government principles do not have a political agenda other than voting for divided government.  However, I’m a little baffled by why Tea Parties need to have a racial angle any more than any other random collection of elderly white people need to have a racial angle.  Instead of “Imagine if the Tea Party Were Black,” we could “Imagine if a Jimmy Buffett Concert Were Black,” for instance.
Says Tim Wise:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government?

Well, I don’t have to stretch my feeble imagination that hard.  Granted, this was in Philadelphia, not D.C. and Northern Virginia.  And the New Black Panther Party doesn’t advocate revolution or anything crazy like…  Oh, whoops.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about the New Black Panthers scaring a couple of blue hairs at a polling station in Philly, but if you’re going to get worked up about one, seems like you should get your knickers in a twist about both.
Says Tim Wise:

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: ‘He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.’ Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Really?  I mean, you’re not serious, right? Oh, you are? Let’s just agree that expecting rational political discourse from musicians is like expecting my 2nd grade niece to give me reasonable relationship advice.  Occasionally she’ll have some out-of-the-blue Chauncey Gardner moment, but she gets most of her insights from iCarly, so it’s fair to say the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low.

Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to ‘suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.’ This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.

And this is the part where I cut and paste a bunch of crazy crap that Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said.  Oh, who am I kidding.  Just go Google “Jeremiah Wright,” most of it is some flavor of kooky.  Who cares what pastors have to say about anything?  My pastor told me to save myself for marriage, and I’m only doing that because no woman will have me.

Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been ‘destroying’ the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to ‘hang ‘em high.’

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but going back to the Rev. Wright, he said that the Jews weren’t letting Obama speak to him.  And Jesse Jackson called New York Hymietown.  And Al Sharpton said “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”  Al Sharpton also said “White folks was [sic] in caves while we was building empires…. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it,” in remarks to students at Keane College.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that I don’t really have to imagine what would happen if black people behaved in ways that were analogous to the Tea Partiers.  It’s already happened, and America shrugged and said “I have very strong feelings about Jersey Shore that I would like to share with you.”

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