Oh My Goodness, Y’all. There’s an Ozark Tea Party.
Seriously, there is.
Okay, so I know you wouldn’t go brain surgeon shopping there, but this takes the cake.
The head of a Tea Party group in north-central Arkansas said a group leader who told a racist joke at a rally last week stepped down.
Richard Caster, the founder of the Ozark Tea Party, told HuffPost that Inge Marler, a member of the group’s steering committee, has left her position following an ice-breaker she told prior to a speech at a June 9 rally.
Inge at The Twin Lakes GOP
But, there’s really no reason to get upset about it. “She is a gray-haired elderly lady, and I did not want to go up and yank her off stage,” said the founder of the Ozark Tea Party.
Ms. Marler, the elderly, grey-haired lady in question, said she found the racist joke on the internet and was just using it as “an icebreaker.”
Well, shoot, that makes it okay, because, hell, Honey, there’s ain’t no racists in the Ozarks.
Look, I don’t care is she’s Methuselah’s grandmother on meth, there’s no excuse for being a racist, I don’t care how thick the ice is.
And, as to be expected, Inge is a member of the Twin Lakes Republican Party, another place you would not shop for a brain surgeon.
Thanks to Sharon for the heads-up.
No, Mr Caster, it is you who would rather focus on a single elderly lady than on the 500 people LAUGHING at her racist joke. You are NOT “good people”.
1It’s easy to tell the kind of jokes Inge told if you’re not a member of the group you’re disrespecting. I grew up under segregation in 1950s America, and I’ve seen this many times. It takes a person who understands how hurtful this type of joke is to understand that it’s not funny. It also requires empathy. Folks like Inge just lump all Black Americans, poor whites, Hispanics, American Muslims, American Indians, Asians, etc., into monolithic groups and makes no attempt to get to know individual members of these groups. Whether she knows it or not, Inge is practicing white privilege. She thinks she’s better than the groups I mentioned, but what she doesn’t realize is that she’s not. These are the same people, Juanita Jean, who talk about how “saved” and “Christian” they are while practicing their special brand of hate and exclusion. One of the objectives of Christianity is to spread the gospel. This is impossible for people like Inge to do because it’s impossible to talk to anyone about Jesus while hating, demonizing, and scapegoating the person at the same time. I’m sure Jesus would think that the racist joke she found on the internet and used as an “icebreaker” was a good thing for a Christian to do.*
2*sarcasm
You can’t spell “racist” without a “t” party.
3So sick of the racist in this country of ours! Is there some galaxy somewhere that we could ship them off to? Might as well and throw in ALL the repubs! 😉
4She might actually know some black people but not think of them as part of the bloc of BlackPeople. It’s like Reagan– show him one poor person needing help and he’d probably open his wallet, but tell him a million poor people are going to suffer under his policies and it just flew over his head.
And yeah, the people laughing at the “joke” should all get a serious smack too.
5@majii: Of course these people “spread the gospel”—just not to anyone who doesn’t look and think just like them. Look at their churches, which are mostly filled with clones. If anyone drops in who has a different perspective, they are either “shown the error of their ways” or ushered out.
I sort of imagine JJ’s church is full of all kinds of people, and they all know they can feel God’s love inside.
6This is one of the most disgusting things about these Teabagger types. They have no problem just saying whatever they think, stupidly assuming that everyone else feels the same way. I have to avoid them like the plague as I know one of these days I’m really going to go off on someone and it won’t be pretty.
7Nothing surprises me when it involves the up close and comfy relationship between the Ozarks and bigotry. I attended college up there, and at one point was asked very seriously by a Humanities professor to describe the sort of prejudice I’d experienced growing up in Houston as a Catholic, and as someone with an obviously Polish last name – in class, no less. Poor fool obviously had never even gotten a post card from any town on Hwy 90 between Houston and San Antonio. Many of my fellow students seemed genuinely curious to hear my answer, since they had little clue of what happened in such far away places in those days before cable. Other students from more worldly places such as St. Louis and Little Rock just rolled their eyes.
My response was something really eloquent, along the lines of “Huh? I mean, what the pfff….no, what the he-…..er, I have no idea what planet…..WHAT????”
Of course, this is also the same part of the world that gave Jim Bakker, John Ashcroft, and Roy Blunt their shot at stardom.
8Wait, wait, WAIT!
An elderly, grey-haired, tea party cracker lady from the Ozarks has learned to use the Internet?
Isn’t this how Planet of the Apes started?
9A gray haired elderly lady? The picture doesn’t show this. A little gray is what she is. I am a gray haired elderly man is what I am. And it is mostly gray.
10A member of the ‘steering committee? Looks like she steered that ship into an area that was NOT was NOT breakable.
JJ, making fun of these miscreants is what is needed by the entire Democrat Party. As the Readers Digest points out, Humor IS the best medicine.
Elderly mis-spoken is what occurs when one uses double negatives!!
11Can any one share how the joke was received by those at the rally? And would anyone be suprised to learn that it received applause?
12@Uncle Dave:
Here’s the audio on the Addicting Info website:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/06/14/leader-of-non-racist-tea-party-tells-racist-joke-gets-big-laugh-from-non-racist-tea-party-crowd/
13Inge grew up in Yugoslavia. I wonder if she’s in the country legally.
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