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You youngun’s may not remember this, but way back in ought-3 some of our big thinkers thought that invading Iraq was an awesome idea if for no other reason than all of the evildoers would go there to fight in the War That Would End All Wars Until The Next One and then they wouldn’t have time to blow up the Mall of America. This was called The Flypaper Theory and it was quite popular with the people who weren’t going to act as evildoer bait, that job falling to American servicemen and women, those lucky duckies.
Seven years later, here on the homefront, we face another war, this time against an invader of our own; a wily Kenyan socialist who was shoved down America’s throat with a mere 53% of the vote which, according to Democrats in teh Senate isn’t even close to a majority. And, because of this Nubian “Obomination”, Real Americans are drawn to the flypaper that is the Tea Party just like bees are drawn to flowers, flies to poop, and fat people to the deep-fried Snicker booth.
In case you haven’t heard, this is not going so well:
Though the movement is still trying to shore up its credentials as a grassroots power that’s here to stay, the so-called “fringe” and its accompanying antics continue to give critics fodder.
“Obama, to me, is a socialist. He’s a Muslim and all he wants to do is bankrupt us and run us into the ground,” Ken Schwalbach of Escanaba, Mich., said at a rally on Friday.
[...]
Some suggest Obama wants to keep Americans unemployed so that they become dependent on government-run programs. Lenin and Stalin have become catchwords to describe Obama in the speeches denouncing his policies.
Going further, swastikas, as well as pictures of Obama’s face next to Adolf Hitler’s, have appeared on signs at dozens of rallies blasting the president and the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Other Tea Party members continue to question the president’s citizenship — a sign reading “Show Us Your Birth Certificate” popped up at a recent rally in Traverse City, Mich.
“What’s more disturbing is that he’s not answering them,” Tea Party member and conservative blogger Andrea Shay King said of the questions over Obama’s birthplace.
[...]
Questionable characterizations of the massive health care legislation have also resurfaced at Tea Party gatherings.
Ron Moore of Petoskey, Mich., said he stood firm in his belief that the Democrats’ goal was to implement “death panels” to decide who receives medical care and who does not.
“They’ve already started,” he said.
But Tea Party organizers — both nationally and locally — say the misinformed beliefs of some do not represent the views of all.
“Any movement is going to have fringe elements,” said Joan Fabiano, an organizer with Grassroots in Michigan, a Tea Party group based in Lansing, Mich.
Well yeah, those are just fringey-type people who are in no way representative of the Tea Party leaders who are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathe— huh, what? Oh:
An online news outlet in New York state has obtained dozens of emails, many of them racist and sexually graphic, which it reports were sent by Carl Paladino, the Tea-Party-backed Republican candidate for governor of New York, to a long list of political and business associates. One email shows a video of an African tribal dance, entitled “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal,” while another depicts hardcore bestiality.
Okay. One bad apple… one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whol– Sorry? Now what? Oh, Jesus Christ:
Racist comments, including a slur about Hispanics, posted on the Twitter page of the Springboro Tea Party were particularly hurtful to Alana Turner.
“Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?” said the March 21 posting on the site managed by the group’s founder, Sonny Thomas.
Turner said the comments upset her because she and Thomas have a 6-year-old son who is part Hispanic.
“Basically, it’s like he’s saying he hates his son,” Turner said.
The Twitter posting triggered cancellations by several local and statewide candidates and elected officials scheduled to speak at a Springboro Tea Party rally scheduled for Saturday, April 17, at North Park. However, some officials say this doesn’t tarnish the Tea Party movement as a whole.
Ready for the punchline? Here goes:
“I don’t think it says anything about the movement per se,” state Sen. Shannon Jones, R-Clearcreek Twp., said on the same day Tea Party officials from around the country formed a federation to counteract perceptions that the groups are racist, unsophisticated and disorganized.
Yes. A federation.
This will definitely work.
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the Democrats’ goal was to implement “death panels”
Yes, that’s like when my 98-year-old grandfather, who was in the hospital for a broken hip, demanded to extend the stay to fulfill his life-long dream of having sex-reassignment surgery (and living as a transgendered-woman those last few precious weeks – well, hours actually). Well, it costs only $300,000 or so with complications, but I knew Ron Moore would support his decision.
After all, Ron and teabaggers like him would never, ever, ever “decide who receives medical care and who does not.”
~ Harry R. Sohl
More. Popcorn. In addition to forming a Federation, they’re also trying to clean up their act, sending out a list of “do’s and don’ts” to the movement faithful. No drugs. No racial slurs. Shit, only thing missing is “no guns” and the whole damn show will be over. What’s with a “freedom” movement that starts to issue edicts about proper behavior — what kind of stalinist behavior is that?!?
Oh, but they’re also encouraging protesters to bring canned goods for homeless shelters — that’s a change, I thought all the Teabagger’s wanted to give the less fortunate was a swift kick in the butt with a steel tipped army boot. They’re going soft; next it’ll be health care for the sick and welfare for the needy.
If Obama had just answered our questions all this could have been avoided. I emailed him 6 months ago asking him to release his baby pictures, and so far he hasn’t responded. I can only conclude that he’s withholding them because his baby pictures would all show lions, giraffes, and wildebeests in the background.
These salt of the earth folks look more like dog shit on the country’s front lawn.
I get a kick that all of these people randomly interviewed are explained away as only the ‘fringe’ of the Tea Parties. I’ve yet to see a calm, intelligent, and thoughtful Teaperson talk about his/her opposition to Obama and/or his policies in anything that approaches a coherent manner. Not one. Nada. Rational discourse is not the Tea party strongsuit.
Obviously, the Tea Party needs to have a full-time PR firm that will manage this problem. I figure they’ll need to have 1 minder per teapartier.
And, best of all, the Republican Party desperately need these people to make them relevant (them, and all racists, end-timers, homophobes, bigots, and numerous other maladjusted anti-_______ists) as a national Party.
You think herding cats are hard, can you imagine building a political party on the backs of anti-socialists?
One on one? I’m quick but I wouldn’t want to have to take sole responsibility for having to mind one of them. You’ve got to have one to help them cross the street, one to wipe the drool, and at least 2 with hat pins and/or ball gags standing by whenever there’s the potential for speech.
YOWZA! It’s an employment bonanza!
Let’s not get started on the Republican celebration of Confederacy.
At least the Teabaggers can point to Scott Brown (?-MA) as one of their success stor- oh, come on. No way!
Obviously, Scott Brown knows he has to appeal to a few sane people in Massachusetts to keep the job he was elected by teabaggers to do: namely, block the legislation that the people who oppose him support.
I live in one weird
statecommonwealth.Splitters!
Yeah, Brownie’s going to get the full Romney in 2012. If he wants to be re-elected, he’s going to have to *represent the interests of the voters of Massachusetts*. While that may reduce his negatives for the GE, the teapartiers will be busy trying to get him primaried. They’ll find someone who is nutty enough to run against Brown. And Brown will have to tack Right for the nomination. Which will only serve to motivate the Democrats to take back Teddy’s seat.
Brown’s toast.
And yes, I checked; it is spelled “wildebeest”.
Or should I say wildebeest?
It wouldn’t surprise me if they were planning to surround the shelters and bombard them with said canned goods as a way to discourage homelessness. You know, like Jesus would.
Maybe if the teapartiers weren’t a pack of change-averse, racist, dead-enders then they wouldn’t have to spend so much time explaining they aren’t a pack of change-averse, racist…
On the other hand, Mittens the Mormon beat Ron Paul by one vote in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference’s recent 2012 straw poll. Our Sarah finished third.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Or, more likely, it was an opportunity to get rid of their canned goods whose shelf life expired last year
Oh now you’re just being cynical, InnocentBystander.
A Confederacy of Dunces, starring Haley Barbour as the Grand Kleagle:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2003/10/15/113011/09
Thanks, TBogg, for writing this in a way only you can do without going kahooyey. I can understand why you and your wife rely upon your dogs to keep you sane. Same here. I am especially affected by the word spic because where I grew up in southeastern Mass. it was used a lot to describe my friends, the Andrews family, who were from Puerto Rico, and were in Boy Scouts with me. Even after it was “deemed” inappropriate to say nigger in front of informal company, it was still okay to off-load a spic bomb or two when playing cribbage or asking for a Schlitz Light. As a young kid this really pissed me off because I knew what it meant, and I knew it was the adults little joke about making fun of my friend Tony Andrews and his father and mother because they were from Puerto Rico. And they thought I didn’t get it, or I thought it was funny. They guessed wrong. So Spic has a particularly deep place in my psyche.
Thanks again for writing this.
Look what I found on Twatter.
http://twitter.com/kshaidle
She’s got a pic up, too. With red lipstick. My, how she’s come up in the world.
Still the same old bitch though.
Seems like the tamping down of the inherent crazy fringe nature of the baggers is coming mostly from the astroturfy side, since their future consulting paychecks depend on mainlining the crazy train before it implodes.
Seems a likely scenario on the grassrootsy side is for them to continue yelling at clouds until the Ron Paul campaign gears up in 2011 (after a less than fully cathartic Nov’10), wherein they will find their fever dreams can take root.
These guys look like fun:
http://www.crashtheteaparty.org/
$100 says that was put up by the tea partiers themselves.
Got that right, cleek. Link to the facebook site for crash the tea party:
http://www.facebook.com/crashtheteaparty
No, whose shelf life expired in 2000 as the y2k scare died off and the world did not come to a standstill on 1.1.2000.
I am willing to bet that the intersection of the Y2k apocalyptos and the tea party party faithful is NOT a null set.
These people need something to fear. Anything will do.
Perhaps not coincidentally, NPR did a story this morning on the kinder, gentler militia–I am not shitting you here–who are careful to distinguish between themselves and those whackjobs in the Hutaree posse. (To their credit, NPR did illustrate the article with a picture of your stereotypical militia peckerwood with his assault rifle.) Their version of the canned-goods drive is helping to look for missing persons in the woods, as opposed to just going out in the woods armed to the teeth.
OT, but I’m sure you’re on it. Star Parker is running for Congress!
Tea Party officials from around the country formed a federation to counteract perceptions that the groups are racist, unsophisticated and disorganized.
A federation?
Will there be a place for Spock with a goatee?
The Gorn?
Or, most importantly, a gay Sulu?
These surely are important questions for the newly formed Sadistic Confederation Responsible for Oversight of Teabagging Uppity Mudpeople(SCROTUM).
a conservative federation… hmm.
is that anything like a con-federation ?
I saw my first tea party bumper sticker yesterday (Taxed Enough Already), on a brand new Lexus SUV in front of the local Whole Foods store. Funny; they’ll spend big bucks on a car and at a semi-organic but totally pretentious store owned by a Libertarian, but taxes? Hell No!!!! I guess they can offord the car and store, but they just can’t afford those ebil taxes.
Wankers.
That does it. I’m getting on the rightwing gravy train. I could make a mint as a reformed Democrat. I’m an Asian bi female with tats and tits. Yes! I could make mad money off these people for five years and then turn around and give it to ACORN, the Peace Corps, and Amnesty International. Oh, and the Socialist Party. They really are just that fucking stupid, aren’t they?
It’s ALL fringe, the way when you’re standing on the North Pole, anywhere you go is “south.”
It’s not that the inmates have taken over the asylum. The asylum was FOUNDED by them. They sit on the board of directors. And when they drag you inside for a guided tour, they point to someone screaming about lizards and say, “don’t mind him. He’s crazy.” Then they walk you into a big office, where a man dressed like Benjamin Franklin murmurs, “Obama’s a communist, you know. Just like Hitler.” And he is introduced as “our director.”