A “Uni-Tea,” Bi-Lateral, Tri-Sermon

1619 – First African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia. They look forward to becoming 3/5s of a real person.

1967 – Israel annexes East Jerusalem. Indigenous Palestinians look forward to becoming 3/5s of a real person.

COINCIDENCE? I think NOT!

“Make no mistake about it. These are not ‘kookie’ birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement.”
Dick the Armey

“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.”
Newt Gingrich

FROM THE CHURCH OF INEFFABLE STUPIDITY:

Methinks political hysterians and historians will look back to this point in time, here and now,  and declare the demise of Caribou Barbie’s Tea Baggers.

Yesterday, in what was billed as the largest gathering of gaggling geese, Tea Baggers combined farces with the likes of Matt Drudge’s personal rectal thermometer, Andrew Breitbart and held an immense, successful,  huge Uni Tea conference. According to two intrepid TPM reporters, the number of iced water bottles stacked up for conference attendees, greatly outnumbered the actual conference members. If 500 people showed up, the Tea Baggers should be proud.

What happened?

A couple of things. First, try organizing a disorganized set of people whose only similarities include an utter ignorance about government policies, history, grammar and spelling. Just like the roulette wheels in Vegas, if at first you do succeed, trying and trying again may not bring you the same result.

Next, provide secret seed money from some incredibly rich and unbelievably conservative GOP underwriters. (See generally, Koch Bros, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation,  Wyly Bros, Freedumb Works, Americans for Prosperity,  and more) Then, when you sufficiently scare people with ideas like Death Panels, or Black Muslims from  Kenya taking over America and forcing kids to attend mosques, gather them up with misdirection, lies, deceit, and by underwriting fleets of buses, bring them together. Next step? Declare victory, declare the creation of a new and powerful grass roots movement, and watch the MSM trip over its own feet, trying to get the story.

Those first meetings were something else, weren’t they? Lots of bodies, a sense of “being,” and a wonderment at how it all happened. A real grass roots movement? In the day of remote control HDTV? Amazing.

So far, so good. But then reality begins to set in. Despite the best washing of brains that a wayward, lazy MSM and an evil Koch Foundation can buy, having the likes of Newt the Gingrich, Dick the Armey, C. Boyton Gray, and other NeoCons, and ultraconservatives start talking about the People’s movement as though it was their own, can shock and awe people in unexpected ways.  Sarah Palin, the people’s refudiated twit on twitter, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul and Sharron Angle added fools to the fire, in their own special way.

Political genius P.T. Barnum had several observations about humanity, especially today’s GOP: “Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!” followed by the ever popular “There’s a sucker born every minute” and of course, “More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.” Even those who once had an affinity for Tea Bagging, began to see more clearly into the roots and sources of the Tea Bagger organization. Once that happened, even those with the most convictions began to sour on the whole Tea Bagger movement.

A couple of truths are now born out:

a) Tea Baggers are a dying breed.
The campaign leading up to yesterday’s conference began in November. They expected thousands, they bragged about hundreds of thousands, they gathered, at most, 500. Of those, no less than 75 were news media types looking for a story, then, in embarrassment, slinking away before the ugly spectacle of CNN interviewing ABC filming CBS, which was trying to gather a notable quote from FOX, which was earnestly searching for a way to attack MSNBC, which was preparing for a live report on PBS’s presence. .  .  .    you get the idea.

To be sure, there were many thousands who came to the first rally. It was new. It was entertaining. It was fun. And the hand made signs were fabullious. . . fibulous . . . fibrous . . . or something.

But as time went on, people were bound to learn a few things, like there are no Death Panels, Obama is not some Fascist Communist Nazi Kenyan Muslin bent on attacking the Murican Weigh of Life, and that neocon assholes are really and truly neocon assholes. The closer Dick’s Armey came to the Tea Baggers, and the more often Sarah and Michelle claimed TBers as their own spawn, the more likely people were willing to drop kick the party.

Sure, people are unhappy, people are scared, and people don’t trust government. But one thing that is emerging slowly, people trust the GOP and their trained Tea Bagger pets even less than they trust Obama.  Word to Rahm and other folks who keep the real Obama bubbled up. Tea Baggers are nowhere’sville.

b) Tea Baggers are racists.
Calling a farm implement a farm implement is one thing. But when tea baggers use the term “spade,” it is for an entirely different and less wholesome reason. The presence of Breitbart alone as a keynote speaker should be enough to tip off Americans that Tea Baggers consist of nothing but a doughy, overweight, pale-skinned, ardent watchers of Billo and Sean, whose average age is pretty close to their average IQ.

Change scares them. Old age scares them. Death Panels scare them. People of color scare them. Books contain too many words. Newspapers are too tough to understand. Educated folks intimidate and scare them. Big words confuse them.

New ideas terrify them more than the Soviet Missile gap (1957-1960)  (which they remember like it was yesterday). 9/11 reminded them of Pearl Harbor, an event which led to most of their births. Actually, these people are not to be scorned, but pitied. When they see a group of black males together, their first thought is Rape, their second is the NBA. When someone tells them  of a “public option,” they hear “death panels.” What scares them the most is that the feds may somehow get involved in Medicare, taking away one of their most greatly cherished private enterprises. Worst of all, Obama is a black man. Oh, the horror!

c) Sarah Palin is the kiss of death.
Tea Baggers still have one heroin (see generally,  Big H, brown sugar, dope, golden girl, H, horse, junk, poison, skag, smack, sweet dreams, tar), Sister Sarah, aka Bible Spice, Caribou Barbie, etc. Addictions involving this grizzled mama are worse than any street drug, and withdrawals are more painful than any identity theft your bank account ever experienced.

Even Tea Baggers realize that all that glitters is not gold. A common grifter, with a level of self importance and ego rarely seen, Sarah’s endorsement in favor of a candidate has two immediate impacts. 1) Money from various incredibly rich extremists pours in, and 2) Support for the candidate begins to wane.

Even now, fund raisers with Sarah are running on empty. Ticket sales for her appearances are down to nothing. Her Midas touch (as Fox called it some months ago) is all tarnish and no magic.  Frankly, it took longer than I expected, but even a refutiated twit’s fame has faded. The more that Newt and others call her presidential caliber, the more their guns will jam.

d) Michelle Bachmann is insane.
What can anyone add to that?

e) Newt Gingrich is a fat, corpulent, self-aggrandizing, immoral pig.
Actually, he and Sarah make quite the dynamic duo. Even we agnostics and atheists should hope and pray for one thing – that these two combine their sterling qualities and make a run for higher office. Of course, both of them will speak of the other in the most glowing terms, at least when they refrain from calling for invasions of North Korea and Iran. But rust and tarnish have a lot in common – they both consist of oxidized waste product.