WaPo Civility: 'Knock Every Racist and Homophobic Tooth Out of Their Cro-Magnon Heads'

On Monday morning, the Washington Post decried the "hideous display" of Tea Party protests, but it sounded pretty foam-flecked on Wednesday as Post Metro columnist Courtland Milloy was expressing violent rage on the front of the Wednesday Metro section against the Tea Party protesters:

I know how the "tea party" people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.

But wait: when Rep. Emanuel Cleaver describes to Milloy being "spat" on, it sounds not like an intentional loogie, but like overenthusiastic yelling. He described it to Milloy as a man "who allowed saliva to hit my face," which sounds unintentional, if not well-mannered:

Cleaver told me: "I said to this one person, 'You spat on me.' I thought he was going to say, 'Hey, I was yelling. Sorry.' But he continuing yelling and, for a few seconds, I pointed at him and said, 'You spat on me.' "

How about pointing and declaring: "Spit in my face, fist in yours"? But that's just me.

Cleaver, 66, is a Methodist minister who organized the Kansas City chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (a civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy).

Cleaver grew up in a house in Texas that had been used as a slave cabin only one generation before, became a congressman serving on the House committee on Homeland Security -- and gets spit in the face from some tea party racist.

And he refuses to press charges, no less.

"I would prefer to believe that the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face was irrational for a moment," Cleaver said.

Have mercy. The preacher walks the walk.

Can you imagine a man like Milloy demanding the police arrest someone for "allowing saliva to hit my face"? Or knocking their teeth out for "allowing saliva to hit my face"? Milloy’s racial animus is on Red Alert, but no editor at the Post suggested he count to ten. They must have wanted it this angry.

Milloy seems upset that the black congressmen at issue were so calm. But many conservatives don’t think it’s calm to compare their opposition to nationalized health care to membership in the Ku Klux Klan. That’s worse than catching a little saliva in the face. Milloy channeled the race-baiting of Rep. Jim Clyburn, who said these protests weren’t about health care:

"It reminds me of that period in our history right after Reconstruction," Clyburn said, "when South Carolina had a black governor and the political gains were lost because of vigilantism, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan."

Earth to Karnak Clyburn: stop mind-reading your smears. Milloy's headline claimed "congressmen exhibit grace, restraint" -- but this charge is disgraceful and shows zero restraint. It's reckless and unwarranted. You can bash the guy with the "white slavery" sign. But it's not accurate to tar every caucasian conservative with a brush of Klan white.

And Milloy is sick of the "victim-whiner mentality" of the tax protesters. We're not living in the 1870s.

Milloy added: "Of course, black people are not supposed to have such memories. Forgive -- and forget; that's what we are supposed to do. See, we live in post-racial America now, with a black president and all. So, if anybody is racist, it's black people."

Milloy flat-out lied in the piece that when Democrats alleged these vile remarks, "none of their own ever stands up and declares that such practices are morally wrong."

Do they have any copy editors checking facts at the Post? What a hideous display.