by Damozel | Yes, kids, it's Tax Day Eve! And it would be remiss in us not to offer another salute to the Mad Tea Party and its corporate puppeteers. John Amato observes:
Can you imagine if Tom Daschle, Paul Begala, James Carville and the late Paul Wellstone twittered and blogged and wrote op-eds for the NY Times, while Nancy Pelosi appeared on CNN and put out the call to arms as the Situation Room, Countdown, Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper promised everyone air time on their shows if they make sure to come on down to "the protests" they will be covering live, up close and in person? And it was funded by millions of dollars of the richest of the rich?
Or if it were hawked as grass roots activism and genuine representative-of-we-the-people populism?
In a piece called "Tea and Sophistry," James Wolcott notes:
In a drivelly press release masquerading as an op-ed, Glenn Reynolds did his bit to drum up the dramatic and political import of the forthcoming Tea Parties that he and his colleagues at Pajamas Media are fanfaring.The faux populism of this project is conveyed with this rhinestone:
These aren't the usual semiprofessional protesters who attend antiwar and pro-union marches. These are people with real jobs; most have never attended a protest march before. They represent a kind of energy that our politics hasn't seen lately, and an influx of new activists....
[T]he Tea Parties, heavily promoted by Fox News and talk radio, are a white-people production, which ipso facto makes them more representative to Glenn Reynolds and associates of what "real Americans" think and believe than an ocean of brown-skinned people practicing civic activism. If any of the Tea Parties have a six-figure turnout, I'll be impressed. But I suspect that you'll have to blow up the aerial shot real large--until the film grain is as big as asteroid-sized Grape Nuts--to find a black or brown face in this particular Army of Davids.
Then, of course, there's the fringe element, also so-called.
The users of a certain neo-Nazi message board that will soon invade this site with a flood of nutty racist comments have been debating these recent "Tea Party" protests, and at least one user likes what he sees....
I believe that this is the white revolution we've been waiting for....
The rest of the thread is various excited white supremacists excitedly volunteering to bring all their white supremacist buddies to the Tax Day Tea Party protest nearest them. Let's see how many of them end up on Fox's all-day intensive coverage of this grass-roots populist nationwide protest! (Gawker)
Roy Edroso points out the one invincible reason to oppose the self-styled teabaggers.
I'm not cherry-picking, folks. This is how they talk. You won't read about it
in the promo pieces, but if you go among tea partiers, that's what
you'll hear.
You can see why the high-level operatives spend most of their times talking
about grass-rootsy authenticity of the tea parties -- how they's all
jes' folks, includin' the perfessers, newspaper columnists, and former members
of Congress -- rather than about the message. They want people who don't attend
these events -- that is, most Americans -- to know that they draw crowds,
because that suggests power and gets respect. But if Malkin, Reynolds, or the
rest of them went up front and said, "We represent a national movement
that believes the Muslim pretender Barry Soweto to be a fake President, believes
the rich should hole up in a gulch with a perpetual motion machine until the
poor cry for them to rule (unless the rich
want to rule socialistically, in which case never mind), and wants paupers taxed the
same as billionaires," they might receive a different kind of
publicity than they've been getting.
In other words, the reason to oppose them is not because they are somehow not
real or summoned under false pretenses; the reason to oppose them is that
they're nuts. (emphasis added)
Yep, yep, yep: that's got the hallmark on it.
But as for being upset by these bug-eyed wingnuts, or wishing in any way to see them stopped, I find myself in general agreement with The Editors at The Poor Man, who just a few days ago wrote:
The point is, there’s a difference between openly advocating violence and calling people not nice names, or needing to calm the fuck down and stop being such a spaz, or being an idiot, or making shit up, or any of the myriad forms of douchebaggery which are the inevitable result of letting people speak their minds in our infinitely stupid democracy.
I’m not saying there’s some invincible firewall between militialand and FOX News - there certainly isn’t - but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. Being a terrorist and being a crazy loser are distinct modes of being, even if there are occassional overlaps on the reading list. Being vague about this, or purposefully conflating the two, gives cover to the former as it smears the latter. (The Toot)
Indeed, I am for the right showing "their pock-marked asses" as much as possible. How else will I know who they are and -- more importantly -- whom to mock?
And that goes double for the far right crazies. After all -- as we learned during the Bush years -- pointing and laughing casts out fear.
Krugman suggests that it's perhaps cruel to mock them. Perhaps it is The self-styled teabaggers all so full of the joy of activism and so very pleased with themselves for taking a stand in favor of those cowering "tax dollars" of theirs that otherwise will be ruthlessly exploited. You know: by being placed in the service of national health care, ensuring some degree of care for the sick and elderly, promoting education and science, and other homofasciosocialistical ideals like that.
And speaking of pointing and laughing....
Here’s the general storyline: Paultards and other “radical libertarians” are claiming that the Tea Party concept has always been their protest idea, for like infinity years, and that it was a damn good one too (got Dr. Cong. Paul elected president no?) until these fucking corporate-backed fucks, the mainstream Republican electoral apparatus, started laundering money into some “AstroTurf” (fake grassroots HA HA!) fat cat Establishment entities and hijacked the brilliant tea bag concept, (somehow) turned it into a joke, blasted it on Fox News, and fucking ruined fucking everything AGAIN WILL THESE PEOPLE EVER LEARN?...
Here are some funny pictures from the defeated Georgia Paulrandlibertruthcessions, who have to sit through that git Sean Hannity at their co-opted Atlanta party tomorrow. (Wonkette)
See what I mean? One douchebag --- er, I mean teabag; of course I meant teabag -- may look much like another to you and me, but that doesn't mean they do to each other.
More jollity at Memeorandum....
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