No, I’m not talking about Park 51.  I’m talking about Glenn Beck and his rally at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28.  On the 47^th anniversary of the “I Have A Dream” speech, the party of White Christian Racists will be having an orgy of hate in the shadow of the Great Emancipator.  Does he have a right to do it?  Of course he does.  Should he do it?  If his aim is to tweak his nose and say “up yours” to the civil rights movement, then I guess he should.  The message is simple:  White Christian racists, the GOP is right there with you.  We feel your pain.  We share your hate.

Don’t believe me?  From the mouth (or the orifice of your choice) of Beck:  “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. It is an abomination.”  Reclaim it?  How?  From who?  And the man who called President Obama a racist thinks he has any standing to talk about civil rights?   My irony meter just exploded.

In case you’ve been asleep, the GOP has been courting racists with more passion than Pepe LePew.  Even Michael “Oreo” Steele admits as much: “The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them.  For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.”

It used to be much more covert.  Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, MS, where civil rights workers were murdered.  It was a wink and a nod to racists that “yes, we’ll keep those uppity blacks in their place”.  It was dog whistle politics in those days.  Subtle enough to offer plausible denial, yet obvious enough to be unmistakable.  The Republicans have traded in their dog whistles for train whistles, as we’ve seen in 2010.

Look at the Tea Party rallies.  Look at the pictures of the crowds.  Imagine your bathtub filled with hot chocolate.  Throw in one mini marshmallow.  Now imagine the colors are reversed.  You get the idea.  What were they so enraged about?  That poor people might get health care.  That some of “them” might benefit at “our” expense.  The ralliers were stupid enough to swallow all the crap about “socialism”, but the plan that passed was nothing more than the Republican alternative to Hillarycare in 1993.  What made the moderate GOP plan of 1993 turn into a satanic takeover of the health care system in 2010?  That it was proposed by a black president.

Look at Shirley Sherrod.  A dishonestly edited video promoted by the unscrupulous blogging whore Andrew Breitbart was used to discredit a mid-level black government worker.  This gave way to such a feeling of white resentment and victimhood that both the NAACP and the Obama Administration gave her the bum’s rush before finding out all the facts.  The Republicans had their black scalp.

Of course, lower class whites fear more than blacks.  They also fear Mexicans.  Those illegal immigrants, taking the jobs that they won’t do, getting fake social security cards and paying SS taxes that will never get them benefits.  Those Mexicans who have babies here and those babies becoming “anchor babies”, paving their way for their parents to infest the United States.  The solution:  Repeal the 14^th Amendment!  Does it matter that parents of “anchor babies” are not given preferential status to immigrate for years?  Does it matter that most parents of “anchor babies” have been living in the US for years?  Does it matter that the 14^th Amendment has absolutely no chance of repeal?  Of course not!   What does matter is ginning up fear of Scary Brown People among lower class, poorly educated whites.

Now there’s all the controversy over the “mosque” near Ground Zero, or as it has become, The Altar Of Perpetual Victimhood.  OH MY GOD, MUSLIMS!  NEAR GROUND ZERO!  To be upset over this, you need to be hopelessly ignorant or a major-league bigot, preferably both.  Apparently they can’t understand that the motivations of the 9/11 terrorists were political, not religious.  Or that they come from a splinter faction of Islam.  Or that many of the 9/11 victims and first responders were Muslim.  Or that it isn’t even a mosque.  Or that you can’t see Ground Zero from the site.  Or that there is already a mosque within four blocks of Ground Zero.  Or that the imam in question is a moderate hired by the State Department to reach out to the Muslim world.  Or that the imam condemned the murder of Daniel Pearl and attended his funeral.  No, their thought process goes like this:  “Grrrr...   Og hate Muslim....  Og smash!”  Now we’ve got people across the country fighting construction of new mosques anywhere.  We’ve got people actually suggesting an amendment to ban Islam in the US.  Unbelievable.  Now we see a black man accosted by an angry crowd for looking Muslimish.  We see a Muslim cabbie, a proud citizen of the US for over twenty years, getting stabbed for admitting his religion.  When do we start sewing crescents on the clothes?  When do we build the gas chambers?

The recent round of anti-Muslim hysteria has given rise to another round of “OH MY GOD, OBAMA IS A MUSLIM!”  The best response to this was Colin Powell’s, who simply asked “so what if he is?”  I guess they didn’t get any traction whining about Obama’s former Christian pastor (a marine veteran who tended to Lyndon Johnson), so they decided to reignite the faux Obama-is-a-Muslim outrage.

So after all this, who is going to be the beacon of light and “reclaim” the civil rights movement?  None other than Glenn Beck.  Assisted by the Wasilla Hillbilly.  Maybe Laura Schlesinger will show up and toss the n-word about.  I’m sure Fox “News” will exaggerate the size of the crowd by several orders of magnitude.  Their cameras will seek out the few black faces in order to give the appearance of inclusion.  Make no mistake about it, this will be a White Power rally.  In the presence of Abraham Lincoln.  On the anniversary of the greatest civil rights speech in history.