Tea Party Going International: First British Tea Party Set for Saturday

Seems a bit odd that the Brits would have a tea party -- the big one was something of a blow to the empire -- but...

Last night Allah linked one of the most obnoxiously condescending stories on the tea party (American division) I've ever had the misfortune to read.

The LA Times commissions a deeply snide and insulting sociological look at the Tea Partiers, reducing them, as is their wont, to little but crude and callow impulses. And who did they seek for this "analysis"? Democratic Party consultants, of course!

Note that the leftist media never bothers to wonder about what psychological inadequacies might drive all those smelly hippies and black-masked trust-fund anarchists they unfailingly refer to as "veterans, shopowners, mothers, and grandmothers, just plain folks expressing their discontent with war/capitalism/America."

Neither "average Americans," as they like to portray themselves, nor trailer-park "Deliverance" throwbacks, as their lefty detractors would have us believe, tea partyers are more highly educated and wealthier than the rest of America. Nearly 75% are college educated, and two-thirds earn more than $50,000.

More likely to be white and male than the general population, tea partyers also skew toward middle age or older. That's the tell. Most came of age in the 1960s, an era distinguished by widespread disrespect for government. In their wonder years, they learned that politics was about protesting the Establishment and shouting down the Man. No wonder they're doing that now.

Look closely at the tea partyer and what you see is a famil- iar American genus: a solidly middle-class, college-educated boomer, endowed by his creator with possessions, opinions and certain inalienable rights, the most important of which is the right to make sure you hear what he has to say.

The tea party is a harbinger of midlife crisis, not political crisis. For men of a certain age, it offers a counterculture experience familiar from adolescence -- underground radio, esoteric tracts, consciousness-raising teach-ins and rallies replete with extroverted behavior to shock the squares -- all paid for with ample cash.

The partyers are essentially replaying the '60s protest paradigm. (We're aging boomers ourselves, so we know it when we see it.) They fancy themselves the vanguard of a revolution, when in fact they are typical self-absorbed, privileged children used to having their way -- now -- and uninhibited about complaining loudly when they don't. It's the same demographic Spiro Agnew called "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."

...

The tea partyers' pictures and sound bites are so good, no one cares that their math doesn't add up: Cut taxes and the deficit but keep your hands off my Medicare; do something about jobs but don't increase spending. Everyone understands it's about something deeper.

Ah, tea partyer, we know ye well. One of your signs says "Listen to ME!" That's all that's ever really mattered -- the original "me generation" grabbing the spotlight and the world's attention by whatever means necessary. The rest, whether beads, bell bottoms or birther slogans, is just a means to the same end.

Again, we never saw this sort of crude disparagement of motive directed by the media at Obama's Zombies or any of the leftwing protests.

posted by Ace at 02:10 PM

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