An Aug. 5 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr reports that “Black conservative leaders from around the country gathered in Washington on Wednesday to denounce the NAACP for its resolution charging that elements of the Tea Party movement are racist,” at an event “organized by the Tea Party Express.” But Starr is silent on the reason the Tea Party Express held this event — an effort to counter racially inflammatory remarks by own of its own former officials.
Mark Williams is the Tea Party Express spokesman (and former vice chairman of the PAC that operates the group) who wrote a blog post mocking NAACP president Ben Jealous and portraying blacks as wanting the return of slavery so whites will take care of them. Tea Party Federation publicly repudiated Williams and kicked the Tea Party Express out of the movement. As TPM points out, Williams was unmistakably the reason for the Tea Party Express event, even though nobody on the podium would admit it.
Even though this history is key to the event in question, Starr doesn’t mention any of it.
In a related article interviewing event attendee Alan Keyes — in which he asserts that “President Barack Obama and liberals in Congress are promoting a dependence on government that mirrors slavery” — Starr also fails to mention the Williams incident, even though he was not afraid to talk about it and even criticized Williams over it, and even though Starr describes Keyes as among “more than a dozen other black conservative leaders at a gathering in Washington to condemn accusations by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement has a racist faction.”