As Karoli already explained here, Rep. Alan Grayson has been under attack by the right for daring to tell the truth about the fact that the so-called "tea party" is no more popular than the Klan, and for sending out a fundraising letter attacking these wingnuts for their racist rhetoric we've been hearing from them since the day President Obama was elected.
So who better to bring in to attack Grayson than Fox's favorite Florida TeaBircher, Allen West. As our friend Ellen over at News Hounds explained "Allen West has no business attacking Alan Grayson over incendiary race comments."
But West is hardly in a position to be criticizing anyone else’s rhetoric. He has a long history of incendiary attacks, including incendiary racial rhetoric, that ought to disqualify him from judging anyone else’s. For example, as Mother Jones wrote:
He has suggested that Democratic leaders—whom he calls “chicken men”—“get the hell out of the United States of America”; considers drivers with Obama bumper stickers “a threat to the gene pool”; and says black Democrats are trying to keep his fellow African Americans “on the plantation”—and he’s the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” helping them to escape.
But Kelly File host Megyn Kelly had no problem using West to attack Grayson. She didn’t even tell her viewers about his history. She introduced him merely as, “Fox News contributor and former Florida Congressman, Lt. Colonel Allen West.”
“Sir, your reaction to this ad,” Kelly began, as she settled her face into a look of disapproving consternation. She shook her head in further disapproval as West said he grew up in the south with the Klan as a presence. For some reason, West (and presumably Fox) thought that gave West extra cred to attack Grayson. West said, “This is despicable. This is demeaning. This is disgusting."
But without even stopping for breath or even explaining what was so wrong with Grayson's email, West immediately turned the discussion into a racial attack on civil rights leaders and Democrats.
We all know that Alan Grayson is pretty much a sensationalist and he can continue to say things that are over the top but my concern is where’s the NAACP and Ben Jealous? Where’s the National Urban League and Marc Morial? Where is Rep. John Lewis, who is from Georgia, who marched with Dr. King, who as I was growing up, was my representative as a young man in Atlanta, Georgia. Where are the voices of the Congressional Black Caucus, Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?
Because obviously what we are seeing now is the party, the Democratic Party that created the Ku Klux Klan and also created that symbol of the burning cross is obviously still proud to have that symbol being displayed and, you know, to all of us in the black community, and those of us also as Constitutional conservatives in the Tea Party, we have to be outraged and this hypocrisy cannot continue to stand.
That’s right, Grayson should have known that only conservatives can make racial attacks!
Not that Kelly noted this hypocrisy coming from her own guest. She was too busy looking moved by his racial sensitivity. “There are certain things you don’t, you don’t touch in American politics, you don’t mess around with,” she said with a show of delicacy. “Equating somebody to a member of the KKK, that could be one of them.” Yes, if only Grayson had shown the decency to say that the Tea Party wants to keep Americans on the plantation instead!
Go read the rest of the post linked above. As Ellen explained there as well, Kelly doesn't have any more room to criticize anyone on the issue of racism than West does.
