The day after the April 15 "Tea Parties", rightwing enabler extraordinaire Ross Douthat wrote:
They resemble nothing so much as the anti-war protests during Bush's first term. The claim that they don't have an organizing premise strikes me as obviously wrong: They're anti-bailout, anti-stimulus, anti-deficit, and anti- the tax increases that will eventually be required to pay for the current spending spree, and complaining that they don't also have a ten-point plan for reforming Medicare and Social Security reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of protest marches, I think.
So many lies, so little time. But it's not the lies per se I'm concerned with-it's the misperception that there's really any difference in kind between Douthat and the Tea-Bagging yahoos with their "show me your REAL birth certificate" signs. They weren't out there protesting economic policy policy-as anyone reading their signs could plainly see.
They were out their in an identity politics rage, the bottom line of which was "Don't believe your lyin' eyes! Barack Obama is evil! Evil! Evil! And not a real 'Murican like us!
And Douthout was in there, in The Atlantic's august electronic tower, saying, "Don't believe your lyin' eyes! They're rational, salt-of-the-earth political actors. They're real 'Muricans same as you or me!"
The notion that this pathetic band of yahoos--drummed up by weeks of rants on Fox News and talk radio-had anything in common with the tens of millions who protested against Bush's war is just the sort of ludicrous lie that's intended to distract from the core fraud being perpetrated here-the fraud that Douthout and the mob are anything but the fingers and the opposable thumb of the same bloody fist. It's just like when William F. Buckley and Brent Bozell wrote their book defending Joe McCarthy while he was in full frothing-at-mouth-mode. They exist only to work together as one, and all their pretense to higher learning, critical analysis and sophistication is nothing but a sham.
Like many progressives, I've been laughing a lot about the GOP's tea-bagging antitaxation demonstrations planned for tomorrow. But childish jokes aside, here's why these protests are so insidious. They will provide a staged, corporate lobbyist-sponsored moment for Republicans and Fox News personalities to amplify their specious objections to President Obama's tax increase for the rich, while furthering their own right-wing conspiratorial claims about liberal values. By usurping and bastardizing an iconic event from the American Revolution, they offer an ersatz grassroots movement from the right--complete and utter AstroTurf--in an attempt to reclaim the national spotlight.
As Think Progress's Faiz Shakir exclaimed last night on Fox Business as he ripped the network a new one:
These tea parties are a sham. The reason they're a sham is because they're directed by lobbyists here in D.C. ... And on top of that, you've got this network, Fox News, which is advocacy - pushing this, promoting this with all of its heart. And it is not a grassroots movement when you have Jonathan Hoenig, Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren promoting this up the wazoo. That is not a grassroots movement.
When I was a kid in Philly, Veterans Stadium was known as a "career-killer" because the cement-like AstroTurf wrecked the knees and ankles of so many promising baseball and football players. Let's hope tomorrow's AstroTurf movement turns out to be a career-killer for all the lunatic Republicans and hedge fund directors and Fox shock jocks who make the wild accusations that Obama isn't from our country, or that evolution is a lie.
That was Rachel Maddow yesterday during the first of two segments she did on "Tea-bagging." And it's true. The stuff she was talking about is virtually parody-proof. The folks writing the scripts for the GOP base these days are better than the folks at SNL. By a mile.
Yesterday, David wrote a very strong diary, "Are We Making Irrelevant Conservatives More Relevant?" in which he expanded on a discussion he had had with Rachel on the radio show he is guest-hosting. And he made a good argument questioning the wisdom of continuing to focus so much on political figures who wield no real political power. It's an important argument, and we definitely need to question whether we're not just doing the same old thing we've been doing, simply because it's familiar and it feels good. But I think there's something more that needs to be considered as well.
STATE BLOGS
