The TEA Party: Enough is Enough
I appreciate a good movement as much as the next guy. I love a grassroots swell and a freshly formed band wagon with enough room for even the most armchair of supports and fair weather of fans to hop aboard before the central transfer to the next “big thing.” Give me a bunch of halfcocked concepts and a catchy jingle and I’ll kick back and watch that rickety bucket run itself all the way in to oblivion, joining it’s trendy forefathers in the meme stream graveyard. Couple this with my overt and unabashed distaste for political circus performing and the attention grabbing, politically incorrect if not unapologetic sound bite machines in the Republican parties screaming “fire” in a meat locker, and you’ve got the makings for one of the greatest shows on Earth outside of a back alley snuff film peep show at 50 cents a minute. Unfortunately, the TEA Party, an epitome that gets me literally (No, I did not mean literally) harder than Georgia Pine, is still rolling on down the road despite itself, and again finds itself parked out on street corners and in front of government buildings screaming for…something, anything, if not everything and still nothing.
The Tea Party started in late 2009, but really burst on to the scene in 2010 with Tax Day protests outside anything resembling a government building, including one unfortunate misunderstanding that led 150 people to protest the unfair taxation in this country in front of a Denny’s in Topeka, KS. After some real movement in the pubic eye, and the appearance of the pseudo-homely, folksy tundra wisdom of one near vice president turned reality star, Sarah Palin, the party began to gain political ground. Whatever ground they have been able to grab in the political arenas has been helped as much as it’s been hampered by the very party itself and it’s elected officials and unfortunate choice in public mouthpieces.
It’s all in the campaigning they do as a “party.” If you go to the Tea Party Patriots website, one faction of the now fractured party, you find some of their ideals and what they stand for. Their slogan, or mantra, or whatever you might call it, is as follows:
“A community committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded!”
The exclamation point is theirs, not mine. So they are united, they are committed to the Constitution, and they are excited. Ok, maybe they aren’t Tebow excited, but they are pumped enough to outline their mission statement with an implied pounding of fists on desks invented for the purpose of this punchline.
What I have also gathered from my direct contact with these people, is that they are basically Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh fanboys and girls that would give Glenn Beck a blowjob behind the aforementioned Denny’s if given half a chance. They are fairly fundamentalist, Christian, founding father/log cabin Republican racists, homophobes, and fairly hateful of liberals. Compromise is not an option. If politics was war, these people would happily exercise their God-given right to refuse quarter to liberal soldiers in a second. They think the US is their home, and liberals can fuck off and die. So…I guess they are open to compromise and fresh ideas then? Shoulder to shoulder, I gather, is with like-minded, old white people who are afraid of everything that doesn’t attend their local Evangelical church potluck with casserole in hand every third Sunday after sermon.
Now, before you go thinking that this is just some unsubstantiated claim form some liberal in every derogatory sense of the word, I implore you to shut up and read. This is a library, and you need not be muttering to yourself like an idiot in the stacks. If you’re reading this in a Starbucks, though, then go ahead and laugh you pretentious Berkley trust fund baby because you’re not my demographic either. Grab your summer scarf and your Birkenstocks and walk around the Hashbury with an unearned sense of belonging.
This is some Kung Fu grip G.I. Joe action figure stuff. Facts are included. Fifty-nine percent of all Tea Partiers are male. Only twenty-three percent are under 45, while nearly thirty percent are over 65. Eighty-nine percent are white. Ninety-five percent are either Republican or Independent, while seventy-three percent describe themselves as conservative. Eighty-three percent are either Protestant or Catholic, but oddly (and not surprisingly enough) only thirty-eight percent attend weekly church services. Oh, and fifty-eight percent of them are armed. It’s a passing point, but I felt that with all that other white Christian BS, I needed to complete the cliché trifecta with a reference to being well armed…for protection. Riiiiiiggghhht, “protection.”
I often get a laugh from how non-Tea Party Republicans talk about this fractured faction of exceptionally right leaning Suzie and Stan Homemakers. It’s like they are talking about an alcoholic brother or a cousin that hasn’t been right after getting kicked by that mule two summers back. They’ve got some great ideas. They have a lot of passion, something we need more of in the Republican party today. They are fired up. They are just decent, hard-working Americans that think this country is on the wrong path. (side note: Why is it that I always feel like I’m being inherently insulted when this is said? These Republicans are decent and hard-working? What about me? Do I maybe think we need to be on a different path as a country? Well, I guess I don’t get any love because I’m liberal and am not inclined to put a Hitler mustache on a picture of Obama and fill in the white spaced with poorly spelled, vague statements about taxes and cap and trade. OK, got that out. Let’s continue.)
I always like to think of the Tea Party as a person. Whenever I can, I like to personify nouns and ideas. I’m able to better get a handle on a problem if it’s got a face. When I think of the Tea Party, I see a sweet old Grandmother. You know, the kind of woman who is beloved on the neighborhood block. She is at every social gathering, and is never in short supply of fresh lemonade and cookies. The kind of woman who every kid in the neighborhood calls Grandma. Her husband passed long ago, her kids all moved away. She has a cute, meandering story for every occasion from when she was a child. Nothing gets her down, and a smile is always just hook and loop away as she knits on her porch in the summer evenings. Then you talk to her after a couple of Manhattans and she lets slip the N-word with a venomous spit and a scowl when you bring up the Johnsons one street over and you realize she’s a racist old bat who reminds you suddenly more of the wench from Hansel and Gretel even though the unassuming smile is back and she’s knitting away as if nothing was amiss.
That's Sarah with an "h," ya hear?
You can package it any way you want, but hate is hate. It can be screaming on a city street holding a sign splashed with heinous references to the most evil men that our President apparently is just one missing razor away from resembling, or it can be hidden under a hand-made afghan in a rocking chair in a small, midwest town and it’s all the same. The Tea Party may have itself a Michelle Bachmann, a Sarah Palin, and some national recognition as a perfect opportunity in April to rail against the “obamination” this country has become, but it will never be anything but b-roll during televised debates on MSNBC and FOX. Same video, different adjectives.
I do have to give credit where credit is due, though. They are still around. They have people, followers, an out dated website (a political party “must have” in 2012), and a PR team that can spin anything in to a crisis and an all-out attack on the nation’s values and Constitution. I just don’t think that people of this angry and closed-minded position will ever understand that this is a diverse nation.
I know that from the inside of a local Tea Party community organization meeting it may look like a very united if not pasty, homogenized country, but unfortunately this is a place so damned diverse you need a genealogist with a Geiger counter to figure out what most of us are made of. I’ve met these people, tried to make sense of their signs, and I’ve looked in to their faces, and there is little there that I can understand.
I get it, some of the angst and frustration, I feel it for them and Republicans after all–Oh hell, for shitty Democrats, too–but the further division of this country and the resistance to possibility and development of new ideas since the good old days of the late 1700’s is a little obtuse and fearful for my liking. Thanks, but I’ll let necessity be my mother, and with change comes the necessity to adapt or die. That’s not me talking, that’s science. Then again, nearly ninety percent of you are religious…so that’s probably falling on ears deaf to anything that’s not from scripture. So, protest on my nostalgic homophobes and middle class anarchists. The Republican party might be a bit embarrassed of you in public since that mule kicked you and you aren’t acting right in front of people, but in private they love you, because your crazy Christian fear-votes count just as much as anyone’s that hasn’t lost a couple of marbles.
Housewives, and all manner of the vainly misguided that think they look better with a skin tone just this side of Oompa Loompa. To achieve this Wonka workforce color you subject yourself to the bed and the booth on a weekly basis.
The House, of Ill-repute, That Brown Built
Oct 25
Posted by Wes
Zero hour is approaching, leaving Whitman and Brown with no choice but to take off the gloves; they are also throwing low blows, elbows, and head butting in an effort to gain the upper hand. Both camps in the running for Governor of California have deteriorated from ads and speeches outlining what the can do for you to underhanded tactics of what the other candidate is willing to do to you. Whether it is inadvertent name calling, smear ads, or even the occasional cross-dressing bassist, both parties have been savvy in waiting until the summer to paint each other with brushes that should be reserved for undercard cock fight promoters and dog fighters.
Public debates have been held recently, the last of which was mediated by Tom Brokaw Tuesday Oct. 12, and so far the candidates have spent more time defending their respective scandals and gnashing teeth than speaking about serious issues and constructive plans; or at least that is what is grabbing the headlines. Debates have been mired by uncomfortable admissions, defense of past actions (or inactions), and apologies to one another or the California public for “unfortunate” or “inexcusable” choices. One of my favorite things about these debates is watching to grown adults dig at one another with thinly veiled backhanded insults, while rarely looking at each other as if their opponent is not 25 feet from them on a televised debate.
Whitman has probably had more of her own scandal than Brown. Whitman’s first hurdle was the explanation of her complete lack of a voting record coupled with the fact that she was not a registered republican until very recently. She did a very poor job of defending this saying she was too busy, moved around a lot, and remembers voting at one point, though proof of this was not forthcoming. Whitman then had to try and defend her ridiculous amount of personal expenses and contributions to her campaign, now in excess of 140 million dollars (a record for personal campaign donations), leading me to believe she cannot garner the public favor she needs in the form of donations, or she is simply not even trying to appeal to the public. Then there is the bad hyperlink in a twitter message from her campaign on the 18th this month that linked readers to a mildly traumatic youtube video of what appears to be a cross-dressing man playing a bass guitar to some Asian pop song; http://bit.ly/bNCAV, wow Meg, epic fail.
Until after the primaries Brown was almost completely inactive in his campaigning like some meditating monk biding his time. He had little funding, had not officially filed the paperwork to run for Governor and seemed to not even know what was happening while people like Campbell, Poizner, and Newsom came and went. Jerry did have the incident of secretly recording a conversation with a reporter, which a staff member copped to and stepped down in an act of deflection and contrition. Brown spent the early part of the race not doing anything, since he had no real opponent on the democratic side, outside the self-destructive philanderer Gavin Newsom, and just watched as Whitman defiled Poizner every chance she got going in to the Primaries on radio, TV, and junk mail campaigns. He has been totally Ninja in waiting for the right moment to conjure up his arsenal of weapons and overwhelm Whitman in the final months, leaving her well-paid staff to scramble for a shred of ground to stand on.
More recently the bar has been lowered with awful and degrading TV campaign ads with each candidate chopping the legs out from under one another. One accused of raising taxes, the other wanting to destroy the central delta, and another basically accusing Meg of selling out our kids for eliminating capital gains tax for the rich. What more it is not even intelligent rhetoric or BS. All the ads are color coded and designed to leave you with little information but carefully crafted words which out of context mean almost nothing. Ads throw a ton of information at you and even if it may be wildly misleading they are almost all within the legal rights of the candidate despite being inexcusable and unconscionable. Gurus whip up quick and flashy ads with appropriate toning and music accompaniment. Think I am off? Watch any ad on youtube and you will find dark colors, black and white pictures, and foreboding during the accusations, but when it cuts to the ads sponsor the lights come up, everyone is smiling and even fonts may change to show more eloquence and humanity in an ad; like the candidate lives in a warming filter with baskets full of kitties and their opponent eats babies in the night to keep poll numbers high in the rural counties.
Brown’s camp took the morally gray area lead by dropping the bomb of the illegal immigrant that worked for Whitman for nine years; this has rocked her camp, being that she has taken no prisoners with her position on immigration. Enter the charming Gloria Allred, a professional phlyarologist known for salacious and shocking defense of some of pop culture’s most questionable characters. Known for her association with cases like OJ, Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, Scott Peterson, and not to mention the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases; Gloria has made a name for exploiting her pulpit as much as defending the almost indefensible. The moment she stepped up and put her client of television to point her out as an illegal alien with no thought to her possibly getting deported or jailed, Gloria stamped this circus with her seal of “ridiculous.” I am convinced that deep inside Allred is a greasy, portly ambulance chaser from Brooklyn ornately decorated in gold jewelry and an ill-fitting suit with a law degree from a fly-by-night online University, trying to break out; think Danny DeVito in The Rainmaker.
Brown stumbled in to another classless move after the immigrant fiasco in the form of another private conversation caught on tape. After leaving a voicemail for a union representative Brown and his advisors thought the call had ended…it had not, and during a private conversation an as not yet revealed campaign member suggested that Whitman was a “whore” in reference to her willingness to do anything for a union endorsement. Brown was heard saying he was willing to go along with calling her that. (would that make the Governor’s Mansion “The Best Little Whorehouse in Sacramento” if she wins, and her Dolly Parton in this scenario?) If Whitman were a male candidate this would have been laughed off without a second thought, being that she is a “she” he apologized for his comment at the most recent debate which fell on deaf ears. Whitman took the opportunity to skewer Brown saying that it was not about her, it was that the California people deserved better than name calling and slurs. Her campaign issued a statement when the recording was turned over to Whitman’s team by the union rep, saying that the word and context was an affront to not only Whitman but all California women; what this comment had to do with housewives in Temecula I will never know. Despite this egregious, albeit cathartic foible, Brown is somehow leading Whitman in a very recent Rasmussen poll 50% to 44% of likely voters; either “whore” hasn’t retained its hutzpah in our age or all too many of you agree with the sentiment.
I don’t take an issue with this comment and have no problem with the Brown camp calling her a whore in a private conversation. I would not have a problem if Whitman called Brown an asshole or a mean old fucker, privately. Why does this not matter? They are private conversations amongst team members and vilifying the enemy is an act of bonding for a cause. I am sure the candidates think things much worse than what we hear. When I was coming up as a little tike I played little league baseball and we had one opponent that was sponsored by Fuddrucker’s Restaurant. Amongst our pre-pubescent teammates we called them “Ruddfucker’s” as a way to laugh, emasculate them, and bolster our confidence. Am I equating these politicians with 11 year old children or vis-a-versa? No, but it’s a convenient correlation is it not?
Political campaigns all start out the same with civility and never directly addressing one candidate or another, but they quickly degrade in to English duels with one candidate walking up, slapping them with a glove, and challenging them to a match of pistols in the form of late round debates. But what we are seeing here in California, and to a greater extent across America in so many races, is a race that has degraded in to an illegal bare-knuckle fight in an abandoned parking garage, or maybe it’s more of a bum fight in a urine stained Skid Row alley over a porterhouse. From campaign start to finish candidates today seem to be devolving from upright walking homo-sapiens to the level of poo-chucking apes; I would go even further and suggest that if you look hard enough at a mid-term election circa September humanity will discover the long sought “missing link” with a American flag pin in its lapel.
What does this say about us? Well, we love a good show, shocking moments and sub-human behavior; look no further than our fascination with Jersey Shore. In these closing weeks all over the country campaigns are firing off both barrels to sabotage their opponents. Pundits are criticizing and scrutinizing for the good of their party, and Obama is doing all he can to save the party majority…though we are only one band away from relegating this majority to the past tense (and maybe it’s for the best). With Whitman and Brown it is just another race, but this one is for the 8th largest international economy and the most populous state in the union at a pivotal time; you think they would keep the name calling to a minimum given the gravity. Either way you go, with liberal Jerry Brown or the newly minted conservative Whitman, someone is going to have some buyer’s remorse, but as time dwindles down and the candidates get desperate the show is nothing more than a couple of people hamming it up, wild-eyed grins on their sweat soaked faces doing a frantic version of the shuffle in stolen tap shoes.
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