Anti Tax Tea Baggers Nonetheless Tax Our Patience

The Tea Bagger Memorial in the catacombs of East Wingnuttia.

The audio is working in fits and starts. I just heard "...ill, baby, dri.." before it crapped out again. Even at half volume, Palin's voice is like fingernails across the chalkboard of my soul. - William Rivers Pitt

Apparently, there was more than one Tea Party rally in Massachusetts yesterday. But by far, the larger turnout was in Boston Common about a mile from where the original Tea Party was held in 1773. But far from evoking atavistic memories of the Boston Tea Party, from a PR standpoint it was more reminiscent of the Boston Massacre.

First of all, only 3000 showed up, less than a third of the expected 10K. Secondly, one of the reality-based community's embedded reporters, William Rivers Pitt of Truthout infamy, was there to catch snatches of bewildered conversations, read the inevitable misspelled signs and to report on something you'll never hear on Fox: the iconic and wholly-apt image of Sarah Palin lip-synching into a dead microphone.

Pitt live-blogged the event but there were gaps in his account that lasted for an hour and 15 minutes. After all, he was there to hear the gal of the hour, ya betcha, someone who was more interested in raiding Oscars gifting suites and the pockets of an idiotic publisher for a book she didn't even write than in running a state in which she wasn't even born.

Meanwhile, during the sound dump, people were overheard asking eachother, "Why you here?" "Why you here?" then looking up at Sarah Palin mouthing into a dead mic, "Where braaaiiiins?"

We've been slandering and libeling Fox for giving these clueless idiots their relevance and, to a degree, they are responsible for advocating demonstrations against the government by posting Tea Bag tour dates and URLs. But they have hardly been the only ones in the MSM to give these organ donors a leg up and never once do you hear anyone in the MSM call them on their racism (Tea Party head Mark Williams said on television, "If anyone uses the word "nigger" on the Common, that person is not a Tea Partier," meaning they think they can cherry pick what's legitimate Tea Baggery from what's not.) or cognitive retardation.

For instance, in this attempt to transform these intellectual undead into a legitimate populist movement, you'll never hear Wolf Blitzer, Rick Sanchez and especially Sean Hannity say, "Has it ever occurred to these idiots that their movement was founded by Rick Santelli, a product of the Chicago Stock Exchange, and that they're screaming to protect the rights of poor, downtrodden HMO's and Wall Street banks that have been fleecing them for decades?"

Indeed, has it occurred to anyone outside the reality-based community how they can reconcile going to bat for HMO's and Wall Street banks while simultaneously screaming bloody murder about bailouts?

A telling little anecdote was when Pitt saw someone carrying a sign that referenced Jesus' quote in the synoptic gospels, "Render Unto Caesar" as if that was a call to not pay your taxes. When Pitt reminded his misguided friend that that was Jesus' call to pay your taxes, not to resist paying them, his friend turned beet red and disappeared into the mist from which he and his ilk have emerged.

Yes, maybe we're giving these poor useful idiots too much press and notoriety by writing about them and ridiculing them. But they make such fat, tempting targets and to those of us who feel it their moral imperative to lampoon and expose the cruel and stupid, we have to use the whaler's defense: "They were right there in front of me, the harpoon was loaded... how could I resist?"

The more I see the Tea Baggers in action, the more I think about this joke that has already made the rounds:

A man walks into a whorehouse with a reputation for the esoteric. He asks the madam what she has.

"For $100, you can get a blowjob from a chicken."

It sounded ridiculous but he plunked down a C note and was led into an empty room with a chicken. For the next hour, the naked guy chased the chicken around trying to stick his dick in its beak without any success. Finally, discouraged, he got dressed and left.

Back home he thought about the encounter and thought it was pretty fun, after all. So the next day he went back to the strange whorehouse and asked the madam what else she had.

"Give me $100 bucks and follow me." So he did.

She led him into a dark room filled with other men who were looking into a one-way mirror. On the other side of the glass was a guy trying to mount a sheep without success.

After a few minutes, the man said to another, "Say, this is funny! Worth every penny!" The other man said,

"You think this is funny? You should've been here yesterday to see the guy and the chicken!"

Basically, we're seeing the same thing here. These people think they're the whole show, that they can make merry on their own terms without realizing that they're being scrutinized by others who are also paying for the spectacle of seeing these people get victimized by Wall Street and a GOP that's co-opted its name and mission for purely financial gain.