Jimmy Breslin: Tea partiers are like Kennedy's killer Sirhan Sirhan, are racists filled with 'madness'

By Warner Todd Huston

For those that thought faded journo Jimmy Breslin had passed on to his great reward, fear not for ol' Jimmy is back and this time he wants you all to know that you Tea Partiers are wild-eyed racists filled with madness. Heck you are all as crazy as Bobby Kennedy's killer Sirhan-Sirhan, you Tea Partiers are dangerous, and prone to riot and your inflammatory air is disturbing Jimmy's retirement. Shame on you.

In a rambling, maudlin piece for Harper's Magazine, Breslin, a former Newsday columnist, took after the Tea Party movement in a thinly veiled attack that compares the "national air" today to those days of race riots and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. Breslin feels that the Tea Party movement is a dangerous element obviously about to turn the country into yet another seething cauldron of violence.

Without actually naming the Tea Party Breslin invokes some of the most turbulent times that America has seen in his lifetime and intimates that those times are returning due to the "mob" he sees in the streets today.

He begins his piece shrilly claiming that the national air today is like "claws of madness" that "swipe through the sky," the same madness that resulted in Bobby Kennedy's 1968 assassination. He then recites a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes who warned that laws could not prevent inciting lies from being spread.

"Claws of madness," and false statements spread? Why what ever could Jimmy be talking about? Perhaps reading on will reveal his hidden message? If you are curious, his next paragraph pretty much answers the question.

And now in New York they are turning an empty lot of the old World Trade Center and a mosque that isn't built and probably never will be, into national fear. Omaha fights the mosque in Manhattan! Some foamer named Jones says he burns the Koran, and he actually is treated as news. All day on television yesterday you had the aimless babbles of this Beck, who looks like he eats Bibles.

Ah, it is you Islam haters that are the problem, don't you see? You are the "they." You racists, you inciters, your rubes, you brainless Beck fans. You are all dangerous, you understand? Why if this keeps up, your actions might cause trouble. Your kind of hate might even inspire violence. Those poor, innocent Muslims should cower in fear from your racism and hate. You have no justification for your false fears. Why, you slack-jawed haters act as if someone flew some planes into a building killing thousands or something. You are ridiculous.

Oh, but Jimmy isn't done. He also wants you Tea Partiers to know that you have "double barrels of a Low IQ and High Color Fear." Jimmy also thinks you Tea Partiers are about to kill some leaders... or something. Because your actions have done so in the past, you see? In those times, Breslin says, "We had chunks of our Democracy ripped up and leaders lost and the worst rising." You Tea Partiers are "the worst rising," of course.

Now you must know that Tea Partiers are a "mob" that is "hoping for tragedy" to strike. You are all standing "over us waiting for the return of the worst of memories," Breslin tells us.

Then Jimmy flashes back to the JFK assassination. You see you dangerous Tea Partiers are replicating the time when shadowy forces killed a president. Jimmy tells us, "there were these big inflammatory ads about the evils of President John Kennedy and the lousiness came out of the radios and television, small whispers when matched with what we have today..." So, those "big inflammatory ads" about the "evils of President John Kennedy" were his downfall? As far as Jimmy Breslin is concerned, they were.

Why is that relevant today? Why because you evil Tea Partiers listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, of course. You monsters are setting up the next JFK-like "national air," you see?

Oh, but Jimmy isn't done invoking carnage and claiming that you Tea Partiers are just on the edge of perpetrating it. We have one more assassination to go and Jimmy doesn't miss it nor does he fail to compare it to you Tea Partiers. Jimmy gravely reminds us of, "when the skies screamed nameless revenge and hurled James Earl Ray into Memphis to shoot Martin Luther King and that night, when riots broke out everywhere." And why is this relevant? Let the genius of Jimmy Breslin inform you:

And all day yesterday, while they squalled and broke out poor Jesus at rallies to help them promote race and baseline dumbness, many could barely wait for September 11th, when they can act as owners of the place where the World Trade Center stood. Look around; they say they are victims but they appear to be just another mob trying to take us apart.

Yes, its you Tea Party members that are dangerous, says Jimmy Breslin. You are standing ready to "take us apart."

But let's take a minute to pause from ol' Jimmy's purple prose, shall we? Can you think of any of the thousands of Tea Party rallies that have devolved into violence? Can you even remember one where, say, effigies were burnt to incite the crowd? Can you even think of one were any litter was left, much less property damage perpetrated like those riots of the 60s? For that matter can you think of even one Tea Party rally that has looked like the anti-WTO or anti-war protests going on today where flags are burnt, store windows are broken, and cars lit afire? Not even one?

Can you think of any Tea Party events that resulted in violence? Well, at least any violence committed by the actual Tea Party goers and not the liberal protesters that shadowed them?

In fact, there hasn't been any violence committed by the millions of Tea Party attendees over the last year and a half. Not a single incident. Yet Breslin is going apoplectic about your rallies. He fears you and not radical Islam. How many thousands have the Tea Party killed?

You can answer that.

But let us not imagine that Jimmy Breslin is an outlier, here. Jimmy Breslin is voicing the concerns of every left-wing Democrat, every so-called journalist, every extremist in the anti-war movement, and every enemy of the United States planning the next 9/11. He and they see no danger from the left and no danger from radical Islam. You Tea Partiers are the danger. You are the hatemongering, anti-Americans poised to destroy the country.

Remember that in November, won't you?

© Warner Todd Huston