by Jack Cashill
Published in WorldNetDaily.com - July 15, 2010

Blacks will know they have achieved full acceptance in America when the media begin to treat the NAACP as the hack left wing political group it has obviously become.

Now, alas, my hometown Kansas City Star treats the NAACP meeting here in KC as though it were the 2,000 th annual reunion of Jesus and the twelve Apostles.

Wednesday’s headline reads, “NAACP resolution addresses tea parties.” It should have read, “NAACP resolution smears tea parties.” In the opening lead, the reader learns that the NAACP passed a resolution overwhelmingly on Tuesday “calling on all people to condemn racism within the tea party movement.”

This presumes, of course, there was racism to condemn. A more inflammatory AP article—“NAACP accuses tea party of tolerating bigotry”—cites the incident that provoked the resolution.

U.S. Reps. John Lewis, Andre Carson and Emanuel Cleaver said some demonstrators, many of them tea party activists, yelled a racial epithet as the black congressmen walked from House office buildings to the Capitol. Cleaver, D-Mo., also said he was spit on.

This kind of nonsense may have passed muster as news on day one, but let me please reiterate what we have learned since. Please share the following with your local news outlet.

On the afternoon of March 20, the day of the Obamacare protest, Andre Carson walked along with Rep. John Lewis and one other person from the Cannon Office Building across Independence Avenue to the Capitol.

At the Capitol, Carson told reporters what happened en route. Fortunately, the audio exists. As Carson explained, the three were “walking down the steps” of the Cannon Office Building when they “heard ‘n-word, n-word,’ at least 15 times, hundreds of people, and Capitol Police finally became aware and started protecting us.”

When questioned on specifics, Carson reduced the hundreds of people to “maybe fifteen,” who were shouting "Kill the bill, then the n-word." Added Carson for dramatic flair, “Yeah I expected rocks to come.”

On the return to the Cannon Office Building from the Capitol, a larger contingent of the Black Caucus chose to avoid the tunnel, which they would normally take, and brave the racist, would-be rock throwers. They also carried at least three video cameras among them.

The Caucus members passed without incident until they reached the steps of the Cannon Office Building. There, an inattentive Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), flanked by a police officer, walked right in front of a man who had been screaming “kill the bill” through cupped hands for at least the last ten seconds.

Cleaver appeared to get caught in the vocal spray. Videos would show a visibly angry Cleaver poke his finger in the man’s face.

Roughly ninety minutes after the alleged spitting, William Douglas of the McClatchy Papers posted an article with this inflammatory headline, “Tea Party protestors scream “nigger” at black congressman.”

Douglas appears to have interviewed the “congressman” in question, civil rights icon John Lewis, but Lewis does not give him what he wants:

Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building to walk to the Capitol to vote when protesters shouted "Kill the bill, kill the bill," Lewis said.

"I said 'I'm for the bill, I support the bill, I'm voting for the bill'," Lewis said.

In his very next line, Douglas makes a reference to Andre Carson. “A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying ‘Kill the bill, then the n-word.’”

Douglas immediately follows the Carson reference with the following:

"It surprised me that people are so mean and we can't engage in a civil dialogue and debate," Lewis said.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said he was a few yards behind Lewis and distinctly heard "nigger."

"It was a chorus," Cleaver said. "In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff - they're being whipped up. I decided I wouldn't be angry with any of them."

Given the video evidence, we can see Douglas’s reporting for the Democratic agitprop it is. Lewis never hears the word “nigger.” If he had, Douglas surely would have shared it with the reader.

Curiously, Douglas quotes Carson on the most lethal of the slurs but attributes the quote only to “a colleague.” Does Carson have a reputation for lying? Or does Douglas fear that by citing Carson, he admits into evidence his preposterous claim about crowds of screaming bigots? Or both?

Instead, Douglas slides the burden onto the Reverend Cleaver who claims no more than to have heard one person say “nigger” one time, a claim that will be much harder to disprove than Carson’s.

Douglas then takes Cleaver’s “chorus” quote and makes it sound as though he heard a chorus of slurs when surely Cleaver said no such thing. The reader is left with the impression, however, that Cleaver is “the colleague” who heard “kill the bill, then the n-word.”

Douglas also implies that Cleaver was walking with Lewis from the Cannon Office Building to the Capitol when this happened, but he was not.

Cleaver accompanied Lewis only on the way back, which suggests that there should be evidence of racial slurs both coming and going. Despite Andrew Breitbart’s offer of a $100,000 reward for such a video, none has emerged either coming or going.

Jesse Jackson Jr. carried two cameras with him. Standing next to Cleaver, he pointed them at the so-called spitter. Jackson has not yet queued up yet for his 100K.

The dissembling did not end here. Immediately after the protest, Cleaver’s office put out a press release that reads in part: "The man who spat on the congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges.” The Douglas article incorporates the release.

This was all nonsense. "There were no elements of a crime, and the individual wasn't able to be positively identified,” said the Capitol Police. The video supports the police. It shows a clueless Cleaver, accompanied by a policeman, walking back to the scene of the crime and looking vainly for the “assailant.”

Kudos to the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition for passing a resolution of its own, calling the NAACP resolution “a gutter tactic of attempting to silence opponents by inflammatory name-calling.”

And Kudos to the Kansas City Star for quoting it. Now, if its editors would only put their big boy pants on and own up to their parent company’s role in the original smear.

Who is Jack Cashill?