Tea Party -- the Cash Cow
By this time, hopefully, the Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn has wound up, and the partiers have started wending their weary ways back to whence they came, and the media, as always, will turn to other gruesome events as sources of "news," while the Harridan from Alaska, S. Palin, gleefully counts her take. This BBC article says that the Tea Partiers paid her a cool $300,000 to come and spout off to the conventioneers exactly what they wanted to hear, mostly one shot after another at B. Obama and his administration.
In any reference to the Tea Party movement, you always hear the word "grassroots," and we are told that it rose a year or two ago out of dismay at all the money that was being spent by the Democrats and even by the Republicans before them. But paying somebody 300 K to speak, when you would've thought she would have been glad to perform for free just to get the attention doesn't sound at all grassroots or frugal to me. Nor does the $550 that the attendees paid to get in the door, and some people in the movement are critical of the event because of Palin's fee. But then, new though it is, the Tea Party seems to have a built-in and permanent structure of division, as those Partygoers with a purer sense of the idea of what "grassroots" means struggle with those who would use the movement as an easy way to milk a cow that with just a few tugs at the malevolent nipples readily produces copious cash.
Coming from the culture that produced me, this event interested me mainly from the point of view of its ethnic make-up, because the way I've seen things, it has always been obvious that the great majority of the country's problems stem from a cold and deceptive reluctance to let go of various supposed ethn ic superiorities that has been part and parcel of its makeup from long before even the nation's founding, despite the large numbers of decent people that also reside here. Thus the Tea Party movement is easily what the people who so widely supported the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's would be doing if they were around now, and with the same targets in mind, so that it is no accident that they are particularly so down on the current President, given his origins. The BBC article glided over this aspect, by merely saying the attendance was overwhelmingly "white." But surely there was a sprinkling of Rainbow Judas Goats present and accounted for. There are always are a few of those on the scene, opportunists eager to get their tugs on the lugs, which they are so happily permitted by the majority Nasties.
This ethnic factor is cunningly being concealed by the U.S. media, and you have to go to sources like the Orcinus website to get an idea of the direction the Tea Partiers are really trying to take, provided that they can manage to do it under cover, like the hooded night riders of old. That weblog keeps a close and steady eye on racial misdoings in America when they aren't talking about the giant creatures that cavort in the seas, and it is showing a video and many quotes from one of the initial speakers at the convention, Tom Tancredo, a certified Nasty and a former Congressman from Colorado. He wowed the Tea crowd by suggesting that people be given literacy tests on their knowledge of civics before being allowed to vote, saying that it was this lack of being so informed that got B. Obama into office. Thus Tancredo went straight back to one of the principal practices that were so widely used all through the South during the Jim Crow days to keep Rainbows from exercising the power of the ballot.
But the descendants of the slaves are not the only ultimate but slyly unspoken-of targets of the Tea Partiers -- so far. Orcinus also says that believers like Tancredo would like nothing better than to bring anti-immigation to the forefront as well, and even making it the prime focus of the movement.
I am sure Tancredo is far from alone in wishing for this, but I would think that the Tea people would have to get ahold of some extra-special smoke and mirrors to do that, because wouldn't that automatically draw the considerable enmity of the Latinos, now the largest minority in the U.S. and steadily growing in numbers?
In any reference to the Tea Party movement, you always hear the word "grassroots," and we are told that it rose a year or two ago out of dismay at all the money that was being spent by the Democrats and even by the Republicans before them. But paying somebody 300 K to speak, when you would've thought she would have been glad to perform for free just to get the attention doesn't sound at all grassroots or frugal to me. Nor does the $550 that the attendees paid to get in the door, and some people in the movement are critical of the event because of Palin's fee. But then, new though it is, the Tea Party seems to have a built-in and permanent structure of division, as those Partygoers with a purer sense of the idea of what "grassroots" means struggle with those who would use the movement as an easy way to milk a cow that with just a few tugs at the malevolent nipples readily produces copious cash.
Coming from the culture that produced me, this event interested me mainly from the point of view of its ethnic make-up, because the way I've seen things, it has always been obvious that the great majority of the country's problems stem from a cold and deceptive reluctance to let go of various supposed ethn ic superiorities that has been part and parcel of its makeup from long before even the nation's founding, despite the large numbers of decent people that also reside here. Thus the Tea Party movement is easily what the people who so widely supported the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's would be doing if they were around now, and with the same targets in mind, so that it is no accident that they are particularly so down on the current President, given his origins. The BBC article glided over this aspect, by merely saying the attendance was overwhelmingly "white." But surely there was a sprinkling of Rainbow Judas Goats present and accounted for. There are always are a few of those on the scene, opportunists eager to get their tugs on the lugs, which they are so happily permitted by the majority Nasties.
This ethnic factor is cunningly being concealed by the U.S. media, and you have to go to sources like the Orcinus website to get an idea of the direction the Tea Partiers are really trying to take, provided that they can manage to do it under cover, like the hooded night riders of old. That weblog keeps a close and steady eye on racial misdoings in America when they aren't talking about the giant creatures that cavort in the seas, and it is showing a video and many quotes from one of the initial speakers at the convention, Tom Tancredo, a certified Nasty and a former Congressman from Colorado. He wowed the Tea crowd by suggesting that people be given literacy tests on their knowledge of civics before being allowed to vote, saying that it was this lack of being so informed that got B. Obama into office. Thus Tancredo went straight back to one of the principal practices that were so widely used all through the South during the Jim Crow days to keep Rainbows from exercising the power of the ballot.
But the descendants of the slaves are not the only ultimate but slyly unspoken-of targets of the Tea Partiers -- so far. Orcinus also says that believers like Tancredo would like nothing better than to bring anti-immigation to the forefront as well, and even making it the prime focus of the movement.
I am sure Tancredo is far from alone in wishing for this, but I would think that the Tea people would have to get ahold of some extra-special smoke and mirrors to do that, because wouldn't that automatically draw the considerable enmity of the Latinos, now the largest minority in the U.S. and steadily growing in numbers?
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:07 AM
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