Oh no the tea baggers aren't racist, no not at all. . .

. . .I'm struck by this picture that has made the rounds on the on internet today. First I saw it on Wonkette and then Gawker which linked me to The Washington Independent. It is a photo of tea bag leader, Dale Robertson, who is photographed with a sign feature the "n" word, (who cares if it was mispelled).

Now Robertson is not just some run of the mill tea bagger, he actually operates the website TeaParty.org, so you could actually call him a leader in the tea bag movement.

This photo illustrates why I have no tolerance for those in the media, such as Bill OReilly of FOX NEWS aka FAUX NEWS and Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, who take offense to folks who make fun of the tea baggers.

The tea bagging movement, while not created as a racist movement, definitely is dominated by a bunch of whacko bigots. This movement is just as much as about hate as it is about patriotism. As a matter of fact the patriotism is used by the tea baggers to mask their hate.

FORGET GLENN BECK: the UPS Store has temporarily halted buying ads on Fox News Channel as a whole

While I'm definitely thrilled to see the success of Color of Change's threatened boycott of companies that advertise on FOX NEWS CHANNEL (FNC) during the Glenn Beck Show, I'm more excited by this line from the Associated Press article on the effort:

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"This is a good illustration of that conundrum," said Rich Hallabran, spokesman for UPS Stores, which he said has temporarily halted buying ads on Fox News Channel as a whole.
-snip-

Now does this mean that the UPS Store will stop advertising on FNC completely? Who knows. But what it does mean is that the boycott on Beck is making advertisers really evaluate where they advertise and hopefully this is the beginning of a new era in broadcast advertising, a new era in which personalities are not rewarded for spreading lies and hate.

I do feel that the AP and others do the public a disservice when they group MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman with FNC's Beck and Sean Hannity because the reason for the backlash is not liberal/progressive vs. conservative, its about responsible rhetoric vs. irresponsible rhetoric.

By drawing this comparison we are being led to believe that they all do the same thing, they don't. Folks like Beck, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs are not problems because they represent a conservative point of view, they are problems because they use misinformation and outright lies to divide us. I am no fan of MSNBC's MORNING JOE, but while Joe Scarborough has not entirely avoided misinforming, this show for the most part is responsible when it comes to dealing with some of our most divisive issues of our time.