Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams kicked out over 'Colored People' letter
BY Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, July 18th 2010, 4:18 PM
Nelson/APTea Party Express leader Mark Williams has offered up insulting rants regarding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. Mark Williams, the flamethrower leading the battle against the Ground Zero mosque, was kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation Saturday for a racist blog post.
He shrugged off the diss, calling it "grandstanding" from a "minor player on the fringe."
A California radio host and leader of the Tea Party Express, Williams had labeled the Manhattan boro president a "Jewish Uncle Tom" and President Obama an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug."
But when he posted a satirical letter supposedly from "the Colored People" to President Lincoln praising slavery, that apparently crossed the line.
The federation, an umbrella organization that claims to represent 85 Tea Party groups, kicked out Williams' group when it wouldn't fire him.
"We have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote," federation spokesman David Webb said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
He called the letter - written after the NAACP called on Tea Party leaders to oust racists from their ranks - "clearly offensive."
In the voice of slaves, Williams wrote: "Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.
"We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"
He went on to say blacks don't want taxes cut because "how will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?"
In a press release, the National Tea Party Federation says it ordered the Tea Party Express to kick Williams out and say so "prominently" on their Website. They did not.
Williams' response: who's the National Tea Party Federation anyway?
"There are internal political dramas amongst the various self-anointed tea party 'leaders' and some of the minor players on the fringes see the Tea Party Express and Mark Williams as tickets to a booking on Face the Nation," he said.
"There is no tea party leadership; every tea partier is a tea party leader."
The federation says it represents more than a million activists in 85 groups.
Williams' Tea Party Express is one of the most influential in the conservative movement. It has reportedly raised $2.3 million this year, helped elect Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts and organized a rally in Nevada that featured a rare Sarah Palin speech.
Williams stepped down as chairman last month to concentrate on leading the fight against the proposed Lower Manhattan mosque, which he called a monument to the 9/11 attackers to "worship the terrorists' monkey-god."
He called Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who backs building the mosque, a "Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned rat on Anne Frank."
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/07/18/2010-07-18_tea_party_express_leader_mark_williams_expelled_over_colored_people_letter.html#ixzz0u8b7NwNd
