Feckless Douche of the Week: Mark Williams

I know, I know. You were expecting Mel Gibson. Or maybe Whoopi Goldberg. But Mark Williams, organizer of the Tea Party Express, has proven himself the douchiest of them all!

This guy's got a bee in his bonnet about the NAACP condemning the Tea Party's tolerance of racism. He countered Monday on CNN's Situation Room by saying that it's the NAACP that's racist. Why? Well, for one thing, it uses the words "colored people" in its name. Also, "the NAACP is a bunch of old dusty old relics trying to stay relevant in the 21st century and they make money off of race-baiting."

The Tea Party, however, is to Williams "... a movement based on the Constitution of the United States. Therefore, it is impossible to be a racist and a Tea Partier because the Constitution is all about individual rights and civil rights." I don't think that even qualifies as pretzel logic. And I'd like to point out that denying a person's ability to be racist is, in itself, a little racist.

Wolf Blitzer, citing racist representations of Barack Obama, asked, "Should the Tea Party leaders be more assertive in disassociating and condemning these outbursts?" Williams responded, "Well, since every Tea Partier is the Tea Party leader, there is no formal organization, that's exactly what they do....After buying the mainstream media myth that they're going to find a happy home in the Tea Party, racists quickly find out that it's all about rights and that's not what racism is about. It's about America and the ideal of equality."

That might be easier to believe if there weren't so many images of Tea Partiers with signs depicting Obama as a witch doctor, Hitler or the Joker, to name but a few. Then there's the sweet little old lady holding a stuffed monkey and a sign that says, "Send Obuma Back To Kenya." I'm guessing she doesn't cry socialism when she gets her Social Security check.

Williams said it's not his job "to police the personal beliefs of everyone in the Tea Party." Fair enough. But would Martin Luther King have spoken up if the Klan showed up at his rally? I think so. When Roland Martin pressed Williams to tell racists they're not welcome in the Tea Party, he responded, "The racists have their own organization. It's called the NAACP...a bunch of old fossils looking to make a buck off skin color."

Then he and Martin showed up on Anderson Cooper 360 and did it all again. What was said? To be honest, I got distracted by Martin's penchant for using the word "epitaph" when I believe he meant "epithet." I remember Williams blaming the media again for "inviting" the racists to rallies. Blah blah blah. Listen, I'd be perfectly happy if "news" cameras stopped showing up at these events. It's the attention that feeds the movement. And the need to fill a twenty-four hour news cycle feeds the networks. It's a symbiotic relationship.

After his appearances on CNN, Williams still felt the need to share his outrage. So, on Tuesday, in an interview on NPR, Williams said, "You're dealing with people who are professional race-baiters, who make a very good living off this kind of thing. They make more money off of race than any slave trader ever. It's time groups like the NAACP went to the trash heap of history where they belong with all the other vile racist groups that emerged in our history."

Temporarily out of the spotlight, Williams took to his blog and dashed off a fake letter to Lincoln from NAACP president Ben Jealous. I refuse to link directly to his blog, so that link is to another site that quotes the entire post.

In this fake letter, the NAACP has changed its mind about emancipation. It's mind blowing. You should really read the entire post, but here's a snippet:

...The racist tea parties also demand that the government "stop the out of control spending." Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mark Williams: for your insistence you don't support racism after calling Obama an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug" (people keep records of these things, you know), for your contagious ignorance and egregious misuse of satire, you are officially Douche of the Week. Hell, you might even be Douche of the Year. Watch your back, Mel! This crazy racist is gaining on you!

*****

Update:

On Friday, Williams appeared on MSNBC and claimed that the NAACP brought offensive signs to rallies to make innocent tea partiers seem racist: video here.  TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro calls Williams the King of "Accidental" Racism.

Over the weekend, Williams removed the "letter to Lincoln" from his blog, while still protesting that it was intended as satire. Meanwhile, the National Tea Party Federation expelled Williams and his Tea Party Express. That group's spokesman, David Webb, appeared on CNN and CBS' Face the Nation and called the blog post offensive but not racist. On both programs, NAACP's Ben Jealous called bullshit on that.

Meanwhile, Williams says he's done talking about the controversy, which he says Webb has turned into a World Wrestling Style personality conflict." How long will he be able to keep his mouth shut? Stay tuned.

Previous honorees:
Feckless Douche of the Week: Rush Limbaugh
Feckless Liar of the Week: Spencer Pratt

Mel Gibson Picks On Someone His Own Size (if only on YouTube)

For the record, I feel there is nothing funny about Mel Gibson's ranting. It's unbelievable to me how many people online have come to his defense, calling his wife a sneaky, conniving woman who set him up by recording their phone conversations.

First, Mel said she deserved to be raped by a "pack of n***ers," then threatened to kill her and admitted to punching her while she was holding their child and said she deserved it. What a conniving bitch, huh? She got him right where she wanted him. (That poor little girl.)

Throw in a reference to a maid as a "wetback" and Mel is on his way to offending almost every race on earth. We already know he thinks Jews are responsible for all the wars on earth from his traffic stop years ago. Also, when his father said the Holocaust was a "fiction," Mel said, "He can back it up."

I don't know how MovieGodsLive managed to take the audio, mash it up with an old Christian Bale rant, which now seems quaint by comparison, and make something funny out of it: But I am so glad they did. The audiotape of Gibson that I listened to out of curiosity was so corrosive that I welcome this YouTube video as a Silkwood shower for my brain.



The full tapes of Mel's panting and raving are available on radaronline.com, but I don't recommend them. They're disturbing. The ravings of a man who's come unhinged and is threatening to take a bat to a woman's head and bury her in the rose garden is not easy listening.

Is there a rehab for abusive, sexist, racist assholes? If so, I hope Mel gets lifelong treatment with no chance of furlough. Because I'm pretty sure there's no cure. And it would keep him from making any more movies.

Roman Polanski: Free At Last!

NYTimes.com issued a News Alert this morning:

The Swiss government has rejected an extradition request by the United States for the film director Roman Polanski on a charge of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

The Justice Ministry said Monday in a statement that national interests were taken into consideration in the decision, and that Mr. Polanski was now a free man.

So, Mr.Polanski, you're now a free man. How wonderful for you after so many years of confinement, being unable to move about freely while serving time for your crime--oh, wait. I forgot. You've been living quite well, haven't you?

The Times alert doesn't refer to the charges as rape or statutory rape, just "having sex with a 13-year-old girl...." It's amazing how much deference you receive after plying a child with champagne and a quaalude and raping her anally and vaginally. Yes, I know, you claimed you didn't know she was so young. Sorry, Roman, forcing anyone to have sex is called rape. Or viol, våldtäkt, rzepak: whatever it's called where you're currently being harbored and hailed as a persecuted genius.

Perhaps you would have been acquitted. Mostly likely not: drugging young girls and having sex with them is generally frowned upon, even for celebrities. And you were a smart-ass celebrity, not doing yourself any favors with your attitude and subsequent flight.

It's been so long that even your victim, whose grand jury testimony can be read here, says you should be forgiven. But it's not up to her. You didn't face the consequences, as anyone else would have been required to, in order to be exonerated. The passage of time means nothing when someone has flouted the law and beaten the system by running away.

So, Mr. Polanski, if it's all that can be accomplished, I'm glad you must stay away. If your many defenders want to meet you and fête you, let them buy a plane ticket to do it. Maybe you aren't a rapist, but you're a celebrated, coddled coward. Bon débarras.