THE NAACP AND THE RIGHT: SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

I don't think the NAACP gets it. The organization feels entitled to pass a resolution condemning not the tea party movement as a whole, but "the racist elements within the tea party," which, it asserts, have "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically."

Which, as many have noted, is completely and utterly beyond dispute.

But, see, the NAACP doesn't get to do things like that. The NAACP isn't allowed to issue a damning statement calling out an entire group for what that group sees as a secondary, peripheral issue.

The right, however, is allowed to do precisely that.

And so we have the St. Louis Tea Party condemning the NAACP for reasons such as the following:

... Whereas, the NAACP had an opportunity to preserve some semblance of legitimacy by standing up for Ken Gladney, the victim of a vicious racist battery conducted by a black avowed communist, even labeling him an "Uncle Tom", but chose instead to use the opportunity to mock the St. Louis Tea Party, and

Whereas, the NAACP has refused to denounce the New Black Panther's call to murder white cops and their babies, ...

Now therefore be it resolved that the St. Louis Tea Party condemns the NAACP for lowering itself to the dishonorable position of a partisan political attack dog organization....

The loud, braying right-wing noise machine will embrace the St. Louis Tea Party's condemnation of the entire NAACP for passing this resolution and for failing to infuse its policy positions with right-wing talking points. And that message will be heard on Fox and on talk radio and on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily and on a certain quitter governor's Twitter feed and Facebook page, and that noise will drown out the NAACP's voice.

Because the NAACP and the GOP noise machine are unequal -- in volume.