So you don't think the Tea Party is racist?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This billboard, below, appears on I-70 in Grand Junction, Colorado. The Daily Sentinel reports:

A Grand Junction billboard depicting President Barack Obama as a terrorist, a gangster, a Mexican bandit and a gay man is getting national attention.

The billboard, erected along the I-70 Business Loop between 28 1/2 and 29 roads sometime Monday, depicts the four "Obamas" sitting around a table with playing cards showing only sixes bunched in groups of three.

Also on the table is a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a liberty bell, a toy soldier and a statue of Justice holding a balance.

Beneath the Obama caricatures are numerous rats, some of which are labeled as the IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed. Sitting above all that is a line, "Vote DemocRAT. Join the game," which is positioned between two vultures, one of which is labeled the U.N. and the other with the name Soros, a reference to George Soros, a major national Democratic financial supporter.

It's not known who paid for the billboard, but the "artist" is a local guy named Paul Snover, a "constitutionalist libertarian," teabagger, and 9/12er. It's pretty clear what the billboard is all about, and it's being criticized by both sides:

Mesa County Democratic Party Chairwoman Martelle Daniels called the billboard racist and homophobic, while her GOP counterpart, Mesa County Republican Party Chairman Chuck Pabst, called it "juvenile."

"It's beyond disrespectful," Daniels said. "You would like to think that we all would show respect for our commander-in-chief, but this is just beyond that. It's racist, it’s homophobic, and it's really cowardly."

Like Daniels, Pabst said he doesn’t like it because it doesn't help further intelligent dialogue about the president or his policies.

"That kind of political positioning and statements, I think, are in bad taste," Pabst said. "It's reprehensible and disrespectful, and that's not what any honorable person would put forth. To ridicule somebody in this manner is juvenile." 

But of course it's just what you'd expect from the Tea Party and, whatever Pabst's sensible protests, from today's GOP, which is now pretty much aligned with Tea Party positions and priorities, however ugly they may be.

And this billboard just puts all that ugliness together in one place: Obama as black, Obama as Mexican, Obama as gay. It's a one-stop display of right-wing bigotry.