TX GOP Chair Outraged Over 'Oreo' Reference Sends Cookies to Dems

DALLAS, TX —It would be funny, if it wasn't so serious.

Fully grown adults are sucking up the media air time with new and old tropes, trying to see whose phony outrage moves the needle of public opinion first.

The latest example is Allen West, Texas Republican Party Chair, who had a pair of packaged Oreos delivered to the state's Democrats offices after he took offense at a remark made by Lamar County Democratic Party Chair Gary O'Connor.

In flashy scrawl, a handwritten attached note read, “Enclosed you will find (2) packages of Oreo cookies to share and enjoy. Please forward one package to the disgusting racists over at the Lamar County Democrat(sic) Party.”

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The brouhaha erupted over a now-deleted social media posting by O'Connor, who dropped the "O" bomb as a disparaging epithet to describe Tim Scott, the Black Republican U.S. Senator who delivered the GOP rebuttal to President Joe Biden's address to Congress last week.

The insulting term is meant to describe an African American who may appear to be Black on the outside, but inside harbors views more commonly associated with whites. In Handmaid's Tale terms, that makes such a person a traitor to their race of origin.

All of this comes as a response to Scott's claim in his response to the President that "America is not a racist country." As a result, Scott has also been called an "Uncle Tom," a reference to the slave-era novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The term is meant to describe a Black person who appeases white oppressors.

But while public indignation consumes twice its mass in media oxygen, the real problem festers and grows as lawmakers in Texas and around the country move to limit how, where, when and ultimately who gets to cast a ballot in our historically "free and fair"elections.

Those moves continue unabated and don't generate nearly the headlines as Texas Republicans demanding O'Connor's removal following his ill-considered Oreo remark. In an attempt to blunt criticism, O'Connor did offer to resign, an offer rejected by county party Democrats. For their part, the County Democratic Party said that going forward, the debate should continue with “anti-racist, pro-reconciling attitudes and language.”

But West did not stop there. On Twitter, he made accusations about the historic racism of the Democrat(sic) Party that, while true on a technicality, misled anyone who doesn't know history.

Yes, it's accurate that Southern Democrats were opposed to integration and were guilty of trying to keep institutionalized racism in place. What's also true, and West conveniently omits, is that after Lyndon Johnson had passed and signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, thereby ending codified racism and dismantling a host of Jim Crow laws, he privately admitted that passing the laws meant "we've lost the South for a generation."

Just as LBJ predicted, Southern Democrats and their inheritors abandoned the Democratic Party to become the very Republicans now looking to limit access to the ballot box, especially for people of color.

But instead of talking about the issues — and the introduction of laws meant to resurrect Jim Crow in spirit if not in name — we're talking about West's ruffled feathers. He says Democrats fear “independent-thinking Black men and women as a threat,” and throws shade at Black Democrats as “sellouts.”

In West's view, Democrats should “stop calling everyone else white supremacists and racists and all of these other things, because you — the Lamar County Democrat Party, the Texas Democrat Party — you’re the real racists, and I despise you.”

Maybe both sides could benefit from a time out — with a cookie, some milk and a nap.

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