The Country Club Plaza, however, sits in the middle of a predominantly white, heavily Democratic neighborhood. If the riots prove a regular event – “KC police brace for return of unruly youths to Plaza” – this neighborhood could collapse. The “unruly youths” can’t tell a tea partier from a metrosexual.
If there was any one individual at the center of the smear of the tea-party protest on March 20 outside the Capitol, it was Kansas City Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (pictured right).
In the original McClatchy report posted 90 minutes after the incident, “Tea Party Protesters Scream ‘Nigger’ at Congressman,” it was Cleaver who uniquely heard the slur and Cleaver who was uniquely spat upon. And so “Spittlegate” was born.(Cleaver lied and everyone knows it. — Ed)
McClatchy’s Kansas City Star ran with the McClatchy story and spread the poison. The following day its normally sober editorial page columnist ratcheted up the already inflammatory reporting by insisting that “some tea-party supporter spat on Cleaver Saturday on Capitol Hill because the U.S. congressman is black.”
This past Saturday, even the Kansas City Star had to take notice when, according to a Plaza spokesman, some 900 youths roamed the Plaza streets, “destroying property, pushing people as they walked down the sidewalk and spitting on people.”
Spitting on people? The Star does not mention whether the people were spit on because they were white or beaten because they were white or robbed because they were white. In fact, in a 2,000-word summary article, the Star does not mention race in any which way at all.