The Daily Brief

You know, it amuses the bitter cynic within me, that of the critics, pundits and just plain bloviating a-holes of both the professional and ungifted amateur varieties who felt the urge to charge out there and start opining on the Tea Parties, and the people who participated in them – damn few of them appeared actually to have gone to a real Tea Party protest for longer than about twenty minutes. In the case of news professionals, those seem to have remained just long enough to shoot the footage and scoot back to the studio or newsroom. Few of the national mainstream media geniuses felt a need to talk in depth to anyone who participated in any of the planning for same, or read any of the various Tea Party websites and newsletters. Too much trouble to actually search out some genuine representative samples, apparently – easier just to talk to some self-identified expert already in the rolodex, and come up with a superficial judgment based on two or three minutes of TV news camera footage.

I do have to admit, while this has provided an irony-rich environment for me over the last eight months – it seems to have left the national main-stream media and those of the leftoid persuasion floundering in a sea of misconceptions: Those awful, horrible, rude Tea Party people! They-they’re dumb! They’re a put-up job by Faux News! They’re red-neck, bitter-clinging white men! They’re raaaacists! They’re potentially violent! They have no real program other than expressing their resentment of a Black Man being in the White House! They don’t think! They’re a bunch of religious nutters! They’re a front for the GOP/the health insurance industry! They’re a crop of Dick Army-corporate supported astroturf! Und so weider, und so weider, so on and so forth. Myself, I came away from the experience of reading what was said about the Tea Parties and what I knew from first-hand immersion with bad case of existential whip-lash.

Our events were jolly and laid-back, kind of like the largest neighborhood block party in the world. We very carefully picked up the trash, policed ourselves for threats of violence and intemperate talk about secession. Not a GOP party front, or a shill for any media network; most of us were angry at both organized political parties. Racial-hate element? Oh, please. For all that the CBC and elements of the frothing media keep insisting on it by comparing the Tea Parties to the KKK, actual, verifiable evidence for that is pretty thin on the ground. We were funded by small donations from individuals. There’s no national leadership calling the shots, no big corporate sugar-daddy, no paychecks for any of us. Frankly, there’s not enough money in any slush-fund, no matter how humongous to pay for what we did as volunteers, and go ahead: multiply that among Tea Parties in other towns and other states. It turns out also, according to a CBS/NY Times poll (which actually surveyed real Tea Partiers- whotta shocka!) that the average Tea Party activist tends to be a little better educated than the average American, and in another recent poll that a large proportion of the ground to mid-level organizers are women. I have tried to explain various elements of this, to people who fall somewhat along the leftish side of the spectrum, and seem to pride themselves very much on their intelligent toleration for everyone who agrees with them. Nope – no credence given for the evidence of my own lying eyes.

This kind of serial misunderstanding, dismissing the Tea Parties out of hand as just another unfocused temper tantrum, has come at something of a cost in credibility for the mainstream national media: is it a coincidence that MSNBC’s ratings are tanking, readership of the NY Times is down, and Newsweek is on the block? Granted, coincidence is not necessarily causality – but still . . . people who are Tea Partiers, and those who only sympathize with them have very little appetite for being continually denigrated, ridiculed and marginalized. And that portion of the public who still retains any faith and credence in mainstream media outlets may be in for an unpleasant surprise. We do more than just protests. There’s been an effort gathering steam over the last eight or nine months, as more and more people inside the Tea Party organizations sat down and thought about it, working at the local level to support candidates who support the small-government-strict-constitutionalist-free-market POV. Not a third-party; that way lies disaster, but to work at the local caucus level, to get the word out about viable candidates in ones’ own and other districts – candidates who perhaps might see a term or two in the House or Senate as a citizen’s temporary duty, rather than a thirty or forty-year long career. You don’t have to believe me, of course – free country, still – but don’t be surprised, come November. I will have told you so.

Not being one of those terribly imaginative people – except when it comes to my books, and then it’s katy-bar-the-door – I’ve managed over the years to avoid being caught up in many of those OMG-TEOTWAWKI panics. I know that people with books to sell, and local television news reporters, not to mention the talk shows love this kind of thing, but the truth is, I’ve just seen too many of them fizzle out. Future shock, global nuclear winter, satanic abuse in day-care, overpopulation, Y2K, and AWG . . . not any of those sent me into any kind of panic, although it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of various peers. Chalk it up to a skeptical gene, inherited from Dad the research biologist. Or maybe I just have a sort of mental time limit rule about this – if it’s still a concern after half a decade, then maybe I’ll dredge up some shreds of more than passing interest and concern.

That having been said, I wasn’t one of those entirely crushed by the election of our current President. You know, said I to myself cheerfully, ‘Self, although he is almost totally inexperienced, never been in the military, never managed a shop or met a payroll – he could develop into an effective administrator, since he doesn’t have a lot of pre-existing baggage to overcome. He’s supposed to be bright enough – everyone says so, and perhaps this time some of them could be right. He can adapt and learn – OJT! The United States is a big, strong, stable entity; this is just one president – how can just one kark up anything too badly in the space of one term? And since he is kinda-sort of black, or at least half of him is, maybe with him in office, people will get off our case about the inherent racism of the establishment, for once. What do you think about that, Self – room for optimism?’

And Self chuckled darkly, and answered, ‘Just have to wait and see about that, beeyoutch! And while you’re at it, pour me another glass of Chablis – the good stuff, not that gack-from-a-box.’

So – train-wreck. I hoped it wouldn’t be, but it’s been happening in slow-motion, all this year long. It’s not just a matter of ‘Will the administration kark up this?” but more a question of “How badly?” as the overall approval ratings for the One sink. Seriously, at this rate, by mid-summer, they’re going to have to batten down the hatches and do whatever it is with the ballast tanks that they do in old war movies to make the submarine ready for a deep dive as the alert horn goes ‘Ahhh-oooo-gah! Ahhh-oooo-gah!‘ This would all have considerable cynical amusement value for Self and me – save that a lot of other stuff will sink with the One – and no, this time I am getting worried with all the rest. Before, it had always seemed to me that the worry was more of a theoretical thing; all that was required seemed to be that you worry, too. Maybe sign a petition or two, post about it on your blog – even go to some long meetings and short protests, if you really, really felt strongly about the issue.

I keep sensing all kinds of oddball stuff, not precisely internet or news-media based, but in the no-kidding-real-world, or some mixture of the two – like a whiff of smoke in the air, or some straws blowing by, a casual comment here or there. Timmer remarking about how farmers are moving out of California, and setting up in his state. Friends of friends, moving up into the Hill Country, and having a well dug, buying a generator and plenty of emergency gasoline for it. My friend Alice’s internist grouching to her about how he is about to close up his medical practice, now that “Health Care Reform” has been voted through. Various firearm enthusiasts complaining to each other about how hard it is to buy ammunition now. And this last Sunday, when Blondie and I went out to a local nursery and specimen garden (a place of which I am terribly fond, since a lot of my money – when I had it to spend – wound up there). It was very, very crowded last weekend, more customers than I had ever seen unless there was a special event going on there. I asked one of the long-time managers of it was all right to take pictures, since I wanted to do a little feature about the beauties of spring flowers for one of my paying clients. This manager has known me casually for years, and asked after Blondie, and what she was studying in school. Blondie explained about her major – research biology, and the manger said cheerfully “Well, at least you can earn something of a living at that!” and went on, unbidden, to make mention of what Obama and his “Health Care Reform” were going to do to the medical professions – and then to tell me about how they had been selling flat after flat of vegetable starts this spring.
“Everyone’s starting a garden,” she said, “And it seems like everyone who started one already is expanding it.”
“Oh really,” I said, noncommittally.
“This is the best spring for vegetables that I’ve ever seen,” she said.
And now, I am really, really, wierded out.

So, even though the so-called Health Reform Act was pushed through Congress by an interesting mixture of threats, bribes and general arm-twisting, over the objections of well over half the American public, and Botox Nan got her chance to strut her stuff with a gavel the size of a fifty-pound sledge-hammer . . . the denigration of Tea Partiers continues apace. In fact, it has gotten even shriller . . . gosh, you’d think the Democrats and their tools in the media would be just thrilled to pieces that they won, but the mere existence of opposition appears to constitute an unbearable offense to our very own House of Lords.

Yeah, it must be a real bummer for Democratic legislators and the Obama Administration, having people all over the Capital lawns, screaming “Kill the Bill” so loudly. You could almost hear them muttering to themselves; “Honestly, who are these rubes, and what in the world gives them the idea that we work for them?” Must have been a real bummer, expecting to stroll into an auditorium of bored elders, political cranks and busybodies and administer a bit of emollient verbal pablum, field a couple questions, and stroll back to DC and get on with it. Instead, all those obstreperous Tea Partiers showed – not just at the town-hall meetings, but at the district offices, bringing letters and petitions, sending emails and faxes . . . geeze, do you have any idea how much toner costs these days? And nothing contented these people, day after day after day, with the insistent questions and demands for answers; how’s the House and Senate supposed to do business and parcel out the pork if all these voters get ideas above their pay grade!

So, ignoring them didn’t much work, and ridiculing them as teabagging, sister-humping minority-hating morons didn’t much work; neither did all sorts of heavy breathing about the Homeland Security watchlist as possible terrorists, or painting them as such in Law’n’Order episodes or Captain America comic books . . . (look, I refuse to call them graphic novels. Same with places where mobile homes are parked. I call those trailer parks, ‘kay? And you kids – get off my lawn!)

Anyway, I am viewing the current antics of our American House of Lords, and their water-carriers in the traditional media with a wary eye. Now, from being ignored and ridiculed – Tea Partiers are routinely accused of encouraging violence, or even outright accusations of it. Not much actual evidence is offered for such claims. Videos from last weekend’s protest rallies around the Capital showing members of the CBC being spit on, or called racial epithets are at best inconclusive. Obscene and threatening phone calls to Congressional offices and homes, and un-sourced vandalism present a more serious problem; as your mother would say, someone could get hurt.

And when and if someone does get hurt, that’s when the fur will really fly, and don’t tell me that the Obama Administration, the Democrat side of the House and Senate, and the mainstream media creatures who adore them aren’t just aquiver with happy anticipation at the thought, especially if responsibility for an act of violence can be pinned to a frustrated citizen with some kind of Tea Party connection – no matter how tenuous the actual connection. And insisting, as I have had, over and over and over again, that Tea Partiers are generally responsible, law-abiding citizens, who really don’t have much of a race problem – that will have no effect. We will all be smeared, with the greatest vigor – and in fact, the smearing has already begun. The battle space is being prepped; and it is entirely possible that the required incident may be manufactured to order, if it doesn’t present itself naturally. Thoughtful and sensible commentators like Wretchard, at the Belmont Club, and Neo-Neocon are drawing unsettling historical parallels.

Yes, it’s going to be a damned long eight months. When we get to the end of that period of time, are we going to see anything that we recognize as familiar?

And raises a lorgnette with trembling hands and wonders “Who are these people?” And then scurries back into the safety of his cubicle and tries to explain it all to his readers, who promptly break out in an epidemic of pearl-clutching in the resulting comments not seen since the days of Margo Dumont and the Marx brothers.

Of course, since this is David Brooks, the NY Times token “conservative” * whom I sort of visualize as being kept around the august premises of the NY Times as a live exhibit in an upper-crust menagerie – a sort of miniature, well-clipped, tamed and polished pet buffalo, neutered and well-housebroken, so that everyone else can look at him and coo “Oh, so that’s what one of them look like . . . really, they don’t appear all that dangerous, do they, Pinchy?”

Yeah, he’s a real expert on tea parties, and the people who run them, having noted magisterially from his high balcony that, well, yes – there are an awful lot of people down there, who appear to be a little upset, and oh- the horror – they are not being led by . . . well, anybody, let alone the best people . . . and well, what do they know? The poor dears, how can they really cope, without one of the well-educated, well-heeled, well-known and duly anointed to lead them? Oh, the horror – where is my fainting couch and my smelling salts! They actually have the nerve to think they can think for themselves!

And the comments get even more insulting, although I should be used to it now; the same old, same old – just a bunch of old white people, racist to the core, tools of the Republican Party, Beck & Limbaugh-worshipping, barely-literate, drooling, sister-humping, gun-loving morons, all they have is unfocused anger . . . oh, and a new twist: apparently the Tea Partiers are the new incarnation of Weimar-era Nazis – and we all know how all that worked out, don’t we?

Of course, this would have to be the same day that NPR posted an antimated cartoon which combined ignorance and insult to such a degree that the comment thread has now coalesced into a mass so dense that it threatens to sink into the earth’s core and emerge out the other side . . . of course, at a guess, a portion of the commenters are outraged Tea Party sympathizers who floated in on a link from Da Blogfaddah, and the rest are NPR regulars, a large portion of whom think that Garrison Keiller – evidence to the contrary – is razor-sharp cutting edge and still funny. Basically, another heaping helping of the above. SSDD**, as the saying goes. Or maybe just SS, different sclerotic old media dinosaur with delusions of detachment and adequacy.

If all you know is what you read in the NY Times, and hear on NPR, well then … you are a bit limited, I think.

All righty then – here’s the scoop, Brooksie. And Pinchy and Muffy and Buffy, and all of the rest of you wanna-be aristos with three last names and an Ivy degree. By all means go on believing all the tripe displayed in the comments on these two items. Go on believing all that balderdash about moronic, directionless, Nazi-like racists. Do, please – it’s what your chosen dispensers of news have fed to you, either explicitly or implicitly, through laziness or chosen ideology over the last year or longer. Pass over any evidence to the contrary. Ignore anyone who points out in a small, still voice that the Tea Party people are small-government, fiscally responsible constitutionalists, of all colors, and religious persuasions, and that many of them are doing a sudden crash course in political activism at the local, nuts’n’bolts level. And that yes, they are angry – but not ignorant, and not unfocused.

That flaccid little pink thing which they may very well be handing to you all after the next mid-term election? That will be your ass. Try not to look too surprised – the pleasure will have been all ours.

* Viciously skeptical quote marks
** SSDD – Same S**t, Different Day