Little shop of horrors
Just for fun, I went wandering around the tubes to see how that teabagging thing is going, having found the last one so hilariously compelling. I didn’t bother to check if there was a local event here on the Fourth, because there apparently wasn’t one. Whew, that was close, because it turns out that the ‘baggers are not only fewer, but even more creepy than before. I’m sure I would have liked the experience even less than last time. They couldn’t draw much of a crowd most places, even with glittering celebrities like an ex-Monkee, but the one thing that is abundantly clear is that they’ve retreated so far into the bowels of wingnuttery that even a few dozen would make me nervous as a whore in church. They’ve officially slipped the surly bonds of reality into something even FOX is a bit embarrassed about. They booed John Cornyn, for Pete’s sake. Who, exactly, wouldn’t be too liberal for this crowd?
Aside from a few giggles like a teenager in Boston with a sign that said “I can stimulate myself” rather unnecessarily, and the usual misspellings, beneath the surface lurked something much more sinister. Through the daily waterings by every righty from Glenn Beck to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, the Republicans have grown themselves a plant that’s turned out a lot like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, and they don’t seem to know what to do with the damn thing. Thanks, guys.
We now are saddled with a substantial number of Americans for whom no theory is too bizarre, no rhetoric too hateful, and no reconciliation with American society as it actually is is possible. Taught to disbelieve everything they hear except from their favorite sources, they reject all dialogue with a lengthening list of “enemies,” the media, the Democrats, environmentalists, the public schools, the liberals, the blacks, ACORN, Obama, Mexicans, Muslims, Europe, Socialism, Communism, fascism (of that heretofore unheard-of liberal sort, natch)… I could type all day. I guess if you’re a teabagger, you really ought to get a dog for companionship between confabs.
But I worry more for the rest of us…. E pluribus unum is now as “quaint” as, say, the Geneva Conventions, and it’s quite difficult to have a functioning democracy when at least a quarter of its citizens have chosen not just to oppose the current administration, but to consider its governing majority illegitimate, and less than American. Joe the Plumber can propose bouncing 12 million “immigrants” out of the country, but the teabaggers won’t be sated with that. Their list of those who don’t belong extends much further, including a majority of Americans, not to mention those abroad that ought to be taken out, too, while we’re at it. Alrighty, then.
Stirring inchoate rage amongst the dumb and white is evidently a little too easy to do, and once it’s there rather difficult, not to mention commercially inconvenient, for its promoters to dial back. Audrey’s looking awfully hungry, and I wonder who her next meal will be.
I don’t think they are many in number, Hag; they’re just another freak show among a carnival of freak shows that the media like to broadcast, because our “entertainment” has evolved into a series of “Reality TV”. Once upon a time, a group like that would be ignored by anyone but the local paper (and that’s if someone in the group had some connection to the press). Now, any freak gets on TeeBee for waving a racist (misspelled) sign.
Not that they aren’t dangerous and misguided – that they are. But not terribly powerful. This evening I read that the cops in North Carolina shot and killed a suspected serial killer (who was on a short rampage, so I don’t know if he qualifies as a real serial killer, now), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be a wingnut, either. Maybe his quick “trial” and “sentencing” will give some of the other nutcases pause. We can hope.
Clearly they have no power due to their numbers, but the angry, doomsday rhetoric is a tad spooky.
Tim McVeigh arose from the same type of movement, back in the day.
I’m up late, too much ice tea today. I wanted you to know I really enjoy reading your blog and all the comments, and I only read a handful these days. Thanks for offering to link my blob – I have yours linked and I hope to send you some new readers. I just started a new blob last month, after closing down the main one I had from 2002-2008. My core of friends/readers/lickspittles/minions followed me, but I’m not sure too many of my lost readers from years gone by will find me anytime soon.
For several years, I blogged about murder trials (with some spoofs called “Spouse Murrrrder Theater), narcissists in the news, various rants on all politicians, and assorted silliness. I parlayed a book out of one of the crime stories I researched and wrote about in real-time, and now I have written a play that is being produced off-Broadway at the end of the month. So, it’s kind of an exciting and busy time, but I still need to write something new every few days. I am not as prolific as I used to be (or that you are now!), but I hope to get back up to speed and find a couple of new obsessions (besides torture) to write about.
Obsessions do make writing easier, I must admit. But it sounds like you’re getting your writing fix elsewhere, which turns blog writing into something that too closely resembles work. Since I’m a contractor, I often have all day to listen to KPOJ and come up with ideas and sometimes half the post will be written in my head when I get home. Other times I stare at the computer drawing a complete blank. I’ll post your link, and thanks.
A collection of characters worthy of Hieronymus Bosch, no doubt about it. The greater tragedy is that the real Republicans have all become Democrats, and Rahm Emanuel and the DCCC are doing everything within their power to get them all elected to Congress.
In my own district, CD 1 in Arizona, we had Rick Renzi, a crook, right-wing fanatic, and all around scumbag. Once he was indicted, the way looked clear to elect a Democrat. Who did our local smartfellas back? A woman who’d been a Republican until 9 years ago, when she figured that she could get elected to the state legislature from Flagstaff more easily as a Democrat. We fought her like hell in the primary, and I spent tons of money I didn’t have trying to get a guy nominated who’d been endorsed by Raul Grijalva, no less.
To make a long story short, two million bucks from the DCCC buried us. Now there are huge articles in local papers talking about how she’s voted against every piece of even mildly progressive legislation that’s come to the floor of the House, and how unhappy some of the smartfellas are about it. The DCCC is very happy, though, ’cause the Dems now hold the seat. (They kept lecturing us about viable candidates, that the the only way for us to in a conservative district was to nominate a Republican.) Okay. Whoopee! We won, etc., etc.
Won what?
Never mind the droolers and the black helicopter crowd, the halt, the lame and the just plain certifiable. The Democratic Party as presently constituted is the real enemy. (This isn’t exactly a revelation, I realize, but I’m mad as hell, and extremely tired of saying this at every Democratic Party meeting I attend.)
I know what you mean… No matter how much the Democrats behave like Republicans, the right still thinks they’re commies, so why bother? Clinton’s not-so-storied career is a prime example of this. Sadly, Obama’s going in the same direction; do you think they’ll impeach him, too?
Winston Churchill was famous for saying that he didn’t become Prime Minister to preside over the demise of the British Empire. Thanks to getting trounced in the postwar election, he managed to avoid that ignominious fate.
Obama won’t be so lucky. No, I don’t think his fate is impeachment, I think that it’s presiding over the failures set in motion by others — failures which he won’t renounce principally because he thinks that he’s smarter than the people who came before him. That he may well be, but it won’t help either him or us to avoid what’s coming.
Inchoate rage is easy to stimlate these days. As the saying goes: If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention. Doesn’t matter if you’re white and stupid, or something else, it’s just that smart people know there’s no point to waving signs and teabags. Wave away and your political “leaders” will ignore you anyway.
The teabag protests harkened to that other time in history when we had taxation without representation, but like most movements was quickly co-opted by the powers-that-be and turned into a freakshow. Every “movement” ends this way because COINTELPRO has the formula down pat. The only way to “fight the machine” is to abdicate, go undergroud and do an end run around the rigged casino of politics and finance. Basically take your marbles and go home. The world wll figure this out eventually, and then, watch out.
And a freak show from which its earlier mouthpieces have quickly scurried away. It seems that since that pesky “Vietnam Syndrome” was finally vanquished during Gulf War I, protests in the US don’t mean jack shit. I guess nobody told the teabaggers.
I just loved that Hag used the word “inchoate” in his column!
Interesting blog you have there, HP. I like it!
I got a million of ‘em. My mother was a teacher, and a dictionary and thesaurus are always close at hand.
“They couldn’t draw much of a crowd most places, even with glittering celebrities like an ex-Monkee ….”
Just a short comment, Hag, to say that when I first heard that I thought, “Oh, for Pete’s–and this is the strength of your movement?”
Also, I saw some footage of a reporter asking a tea-baggin’ woman about the purpose of the event. She gave the expected responses: “Obama is Hitler,” “Obama is a Socialist,” “Obama is a Communistic Bastard Like Stalin” and, “Obama Supports Abortion Like Adolph Stalin’s Little Brother, Josef Hitler”, then said something like, “that’s why we’re here, until you people betray us and start lying.”
Wingnuttery: Man, is that even strong enough? It’s really hard to keep up.
It’s a peculiar blend of scattershot anger, xenophobia, and extreme paranoia, heavily larded over with revisionist history. It reminds me of the disturbing scene in Cabaret, which I saw on Broadway right after Sept. 11, where all the good Germans sing, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”
I sure hope not.
Hey now…, we compassionate Nazis are looking quiet liberal and civilized in comparison to your tea bag swinging right wingers. Now, that tomorrow from back then is yesterday. Xenophobia can be overcome in two generations or less. I hope that god’s own country won’t need a catalytic event like world war II in order to wake up and smell the coffee…
Al Franken was sworn in at 12:15 ET today. I watched a short video clip on TPM if anyone is interested. Brought a little tear to my eye.
I bet you didn’t cry as hard as Bill O’Reilly….
He’s still got his loofah — and his blissful ignorance.
Oh, I bet he has a new loofah by now, WT…. and to me his ignorance seems the opposite of blissful. He is genuinely hateful toward those smarter, which includes practically everybody, and always seems to be in a bad mood about one thing or another. (especially lately, I add with some measure of delight…)
He does still have that big contract, though.
WT If I put this up at the top where you commented on Blue Dog Dems and congressional head count, you may find this interesting:
Cap And Trade Vote Shows Promise, Peril For Both Parties
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/07/cap_and_trade_vote_shows_promise_peril_for_both_parties_97316.html
Getting Democrats who come from Republican-leaning states and districts who tend to vote like Republicans to vote Dem on critical legislation is not easy and they probably demand a big quid pro quo to do it. Pretending you have a big Dem majority in the House is very misleading and the climate bill vote proved that.
First sentence should have read: WT If I put this up at the top where you commented on Blue Dog Dems and congressional head count, you probably wouldn’t have seen it. You may find this interesting:
You don’t mean to remind me, RMP; I hail from the same state as the flaccid and adenoidal Ron Wyden, he of the health care treachery. It seems that for too many Dems, Washington is like Animal Farm. Some are more equal than others, and all.
This is absolutely the heart of the matter. If we want to prove that the party should nominate progressives, we have to beat their candidates and their money in the primaries, and then we have to win general elections. To do that, we have to make our case to the people.
We can’t place the blame entirely on the gamesters in the DCCC, and the winning-is-the-only-thing mentality of hard-heads like Emanuel, not if we’re honest. Like it or not, the one thing that they say which is true is that a party which consistently loses elections eventually ceases to exist.
On the other hand, winning elections do no one any good if to do so, you have to abandon any pretense of principle. A party without character, without any positions on issues except those based on which way the wind is currently blowing, will find in due course that the wind is always blowing towards the other party. That’s the Democrats now. They absolutely will not run any risks whatever, even if it means that they’ll never have any real influence on events, or actually accomplish anything for the country.
Worthless time servers in fancy suits; if that’s the standard, literally anyone will do.
One of the worst elements of the whole Sarah Palin thing this weekend–besides having to hear about her 24/7 again–was how miraculously her whole legacy of ginning up racial, urban and sexuality-based hatred literally disapeared over night. Now, it was her who was treated unfairly by the media, not her disgusting rhetoric which gave voices to a million frightened, angry, bigoted nutjobs.
It’s funny you should bring that up, because at work today I was listening to Thom Hartmann, and he had that terrorist Obama was “palling around with” on his show, Bill Ayers, and he was the most reasonable, humane, and genuinely likable person you could hope to hear, and spoke of things of substance. And did he whine about being relentlessly attacked? Nope. Palin’s name never came up. It was like leaving the room in the middle of a kid’s tantrum to talk to the grownups.
The topic of the Ayers interview was the Ricci case and the inherent cultural biases of any written test. He used “New Yorker” cartoons as an example, which I thought was quite valid, and funny to boot. The “Album of Drawings” sat on our coffee table when I was growing up. One stuck in my mind from the 1930′s: Two old geezer plutocrats are chatting quietly in a baronial manse, and in the background is a glamorous hussy on a recamier. The caption: ” I didn’t tell her about the Depression. She would have worried.”
How many New Haven ghetto kids would have gotten that joke. Ayers was right on the, uh, money.
As you know, I live in a red county where a high school invited Ayers to speak at about two months ago. There was a big uproar about how much damage would be done if he were allowed to speak. Finally about five days before the event, the school caved and dropped the invitation. Then two weeks later another school in a neighboring county invited him and wouldn’t you know the school didn’t burn down and those who went learned a lot from Bill.
When I was working in Chicago as the director of youth development at a non-profit, I heard Bill Ayers speak at meetings about how to do a better job of educating inner-city youth. He always gave excellent advice backed up by sound research and logic.
To make him a political deamon to attack Obama was very disgusting to watch and so were the letters to the editor whining about Ayers and so full of nonsense and vitriol.
He struck me as an awfully smart and concerned guy; exactly the type the Palinists couldn’t argue with, so smearing was all that was left. Nice work if you can get it.
‘Hag, I just have to say that the style of your posts inspires the most interesting collection of comments… I was going to make a couple myself, but by the time I read to the end, I forgot what they were. Couldn’t have been very important…
Aw, shucks, K, you’re too kind… We’re all masters of distraction here at CHNN, but I never thought I could distract you, of all people.
No one said much about teabaggers except for you Hag. Here’s what KO thinks of them.
Olbermann: Jacksonville teabaggers worse than racists
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/07/olbermann-teabaggers-worse-than-racists/