Let’s say you’re the head of the NAACP. You’ve watched your organization’s relevance decline for years. And, in recent times, more and more people have noticed that you’ve been bartering away your moral authority for political power, letting yourself become pretty much the chattel of the Democratic party. And then you find that in addition to your relevance, you’ve also lost a huge hunk of credibility with the incredibly inept way you handled the whole Shirley Sherrod fiasco. What do you do to regain some of your footing?
I don’t know if there’s a correct answer, but I do know there’s one really, really wrong one:
This is what is known in professional circles (I won’t say what profession) as “doubling down on stupid.”
If anything, the NAACP should see some kinship with the Tea Party. Both groups’ origins revolve around people feeling a sense of powerlessness, of resentment against government oppression, and uniting peacefully to demonstrate their numbers and their moral commitment to improving their lot and fulfilling the promises and principles of the nation.
Instead, the NAACP, for whatever reason (I’m going to go with naivete — they’ve certainly showed plenty of that) has bought into the whole “the Tea Party is the new face of the Klan” line of bullshit the liberal establishment is trying to push, and sees this as their way of reliving their glory days.
They chose poorly.
They’re standing on a banana peel, trusting their safety to people who have no sense of loyalty, and who will throw the NAACP under the bus the instant they become inconvenient — in the model of their leader, President Obama. Their sole interest in the NAACP is in using what remains of that group’s moral capitol to advance their own agenda — to discredit the biggest genuine grass-roots movement in the United States in decades.
They’re standing on that banana peel, and they have no idea that they’re doing so. And they have no idea that they’re being roped into a fight by con artists and cowards and frauds, trusting in the shield of their history to keep their targets from hitting back as they poke and bludgeon and harangue the Tea Party people.
A lot of Tea Party people will have no qualms about shoving back, and then that banana peel will assert its presence.
I’m not one of those people, though.
I’d have a very, very small qualm about it. I’d even feel bad about it.
Briefly.
Before I shoved real hard.
And then I’d really, really try to keep from laughing.
