Tea Party Coloring Book Prompts Death Threats

A Missouri man is reportedly receiving threatening messages after his company, Really Big Coloring Books, published "The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids."

Wayne Bell of Clayton, Mo., says he's receiving harsh messages from people apparently angry over his company's latest work, a coloring book which tells the story of today's tea party movement with passages like “When taxes are too high, the high tax takes away jobs and freedom.”

“Nobody said ‘Wayne Bell, I’m coming for you and I’m going to do this to you’,” Bell told local CBS affiliate KMOX. “But when people say to me (online) ‘We’re going to give you a chloroform headlock’, or they say ‘Let’s try the inner-city ice cream truck method on this guy’…I mean, we’re reading this in the blogosphere.

“I don’t even know what the ‘inner-city ice cream truck’ thing means.”

"We're not really making a political statement," Bell said, adding that his company also publishes coloring books on the Rockettes, Cirque du Soleil and President Obama.

As a result, Bell has been forced to keep his store's doors locked with a "Please Knock" sign.

“We have talked with our legal department, and they said ‘Hey, what can you do? You’re in the publishing business, you made a book that’s political, get over it!’,” Bell said.

On the bright side, Bell says it’s quickly become his store’s all-time best-seller.