The Tempest in a Teapot at a Tea Party

On April 15th, there were several hundred "tea parties" held to protest the tax and spend policies of the federal government and the huge spending bills passed in the past 4 months under the Obama administration and the democratically controlled congress.


I first heard about the tea parties listening to the Glenn Beck show on the radio a few months ago. (I do listen to Glenn Beck occasionally and find him to be over dramatic, pessimistic and at the same time "spot on" on some issues.) I have checked out the discussions on the Glenn Beck related 9-12 site and made a few comments but I can not say that I found the dialogue on the site to be very engaging or informative.

How to perceive and report upon the TEA protests appears to be a huge point of contention.

Crowd estimates vary depending upon which source you cite. Although scientists can measure the size and density of a cloud on the planet Jupiter, we seem to have lost the ability to measure the size of a crowd ever since the organizers of the Million Man March did not want to admit their failure to deliver anywhere near a million men in public. It seems about 250,000 people participated in about 350 individual protests. While there is significance to a quarter million people expressing their dissatisfaction with government policy, I can not tell you whether that number in and of itself is a measure of success or failure.

As with all protests of dissent, the protesters themselves were an amalgam of groups and individuals with different points of view. I am not naive to the fact that many of the conservative talk radio hosts and the Fox News network talked up the protests but there appears to be no evidence that they paid nor organized the local events. You ended up with a mix of fiscal conservatives who opposed government spending by both Bush & Obama, together with conservatives and republicans and anti-Obama folks from across the spectrum including a few racist groups. All in all, anti-Iraq war protests during the Bush administration included amalgams that ranged from pacifists to democrats to anarchists. Opposition to the person and party in charge always brings out the disenfranchised of every stripe.

The long-term impact of the TEA party protesters and their movement can only be guessed at this early on. Remember that in spite of everything thrown at him, Bush was reelected to a second term.

One thing that is clear is that many supporters of Obama come off as sore winners. The worst I have heard is actress Janeane Garofalo, who said the following on MSNBC during Keith Olbermann's show last week, "Let's be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don't know their history at all. It's about hating a black man in the White House." She continued, "This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that."

Her statement shows arrogance, denigration and playing of the "race card" by an angry white women. She was outraged when anti Iraq War protests were dismissed in such a fashion and now she has quickly behaved in the exact same way.

The name calling and lack of civility actually bother me more than criticizing any points the TEA protesters were trying to make.