I know, right? I’m as confused as you are! To cleanse the palate, three enjoyable minutes from today’s presser organized by the Tea Party Express — which was, of course, the outfit headed until recently by Mark Williams. This is, in other words, a case of minority tea partiers not only standing up for the wider movement but for the TPE specifically. Awfully bold of them to do so given the invective that’s bound to come their way, but then I’m sure they’ve been dealing with that for years. What’s another week?

Update: Dave Weigel covered the presser for Slate and confronts a dilemma: How derisive can he be towards conservative subjects in his new digs? On the one hand, he’s a reporter, not a commentator. On the other hand, they’re conservatives. And media whores!

Jackson spoke calmly, giving the crowd some time to applaud his jokes, sporting the same tan suit/black shirt combo he wore for the cover of his book, The Big Black Lie. Looking on were more than a dozen black conservative activists from organizations that are known, if they are known at all, as the ones booked on cable news to give the Other Perspective when race and politics take over the news cycle. It was a snapshot of the reverse-racism grievance industry, a far-flung and much-interviewed network of black conservatives who profess to believe—as Stephen Colbert professes, less seriously, to believe—that racism can be ended in America if people stop obsessing over it.