"Tea and Crackers" - Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi On Tea Party Voters - "They Are Full Of S&*t"

[TomCADem]

I am sure some DUers will condemn Matt Taibi for lecturing or scolding members of the Tea Party, and everyone for that matter, but here he is giving corporate funded mad-as-hell at Wall Street and the government Tea Partiers hell.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

* * *

So how does a group of billionaire businessmen and corporations get a bunch of broke Middle American white people to lobby for lower taxes for the rich and deregulation of Wall Street? That turns out to be easy. Beneath the surface, the Tea Party is little more than a weird and disorderly mob, a federation of distinct and often competing strains of conservatism that have been unable to coalesce around a leader of their own choosing. Its rallies include not only hardcore libertarians left over from the original Ron Paul "Tea Parties," but gun-rights advocates, fundamentalist Christians, pseudomilitia types like the Oath Keepers (a group of law- enforcement and military professionals who have vowed to disobey "unconstitutional" orders) and mainstream Republicans who have simply lost faith in their party. It's a mistake to cast the Tea Party as anything like a unified, cohesive movement — which makes them easy prey for the very people they should be aiming their pitchforks at. A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.

* * *
It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

[ThomasQED]

1. Rand Paul has a chance of winning?

I've purposely neglected finding out just in case, but that is scary news. But then I guess his invention of a medical board fits in with his fans' penchant for creating alternate realities.

And I LOVE Matt Taibbi! Thanks.

[Codeine]

3. He'll almost certainly win, sadly. nt

[TexasObserver]

2. recommend

[Historic NY]

4. K&R

[voteearlyvoteoften]

5. Taibbi !

Right on.....the mark.

[Raven]

6. I see it all the time...teabagger builders who hate government and

government stimulis spending until they bid on a job, lose because they are not the low bidder and get pissed off that the government awarded the contract to the low bidder. No talking to these people, they are out for themselves and wouldn't recognize the notion of "community" if it bit them in the ass.

[Mopar151]

7. No wonder there is such a tizzy about "FEMA Camps"

Apparently, some folks are in desaperate need of "re-education"

[phasma ex machina]

8. Allow me to point out the irony of Tabbi bitching about corporate funding while receiving

corporate funding from Wenner Media LLC, one of the powers-that-be.

I'm not arguing with Tabbi's points, just pointing out the irony.

[phasma ex machina]

11. Pithy passages

The original Tea Party was launched by a real opponent of the political establishment — Rand Paul's father, Ron, whose grass-roots rallies for his 2008 presidential run were called by that name. The elder Paul will object to this characterization, but what he represents is something of a sacred role in American culture: the principled crackpot. He's a libertarian, but he means it. ...

Paul had a surprisingly good showing as a fringe candidate in 2008, and he may run again, but he'll never get any further than the million primary votes he got last time for one simple reason, which happens to be the same reason many campaign-trail reporters like me liked him: He's honest. An anti- war, pro-legalization Republican won't ever play in Peoria, which is why in 2008 Paul's supporters were literally outside the tent at most GOP events, their candidate pissed on by a party hierarchy that preferred Wall Street-friendly phonies like Mitt Romney and John McCain.

[TomCADem]

12. The Original Tea Party Was Actually Anti-Corporate - Against The East India Company

The arrival of tax-exempt Company tea, undercutting the local merchants, triggered the Boston Tea Party in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, one of the major events leading up to the American Revolution.

[phasma ex machina]

13. While today America sports virtually tax-exempt big corporations.

More importantly, the thread lives! Yay!

I've enjoyed reading Tabbi ever since his scathing criticism of "The World Is Flat."

Allow me a few parting remarks.

This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change.

Amen!

Like dogs, they listen to tone of voice and emotional attitude.

My inner cat smirks.

"nobody (except the powers-that-be) likes the idea of having to get the government to tell restaurant owners how to act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the tool Americans were forced to use (by the powers-that-be)"

Needs the editing enclosed in parentheses.

The bad news is that the Tea Party's political outrage is being appropriated, with thanks, by the Goldmans and the BPs of the world. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that those interests mostly have us by the balls anyway, no matter who wins on Election Day. That's the reality; the rest of this is just noise. It's just that it's a lot of noise, and there's no telling when it's ever going to end.

Gee Matt, maybe the noise will start ending after you stop adding to it.

:rofl:

[Binka]

14. Full Of Yourself?

Trite. Boring. Narcissistic. Crap. See ya mister.

[Jade Fox]

9. This is a must read .....

Here's another paragraph from the article worth posting:

"The individuals in the Tea Party may come from very different walks of life, but most of them have a few things in common. After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview. One: Every single one of them was that exceptional Republican who did protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who only took to the streets when a black Democratic president launched an emergency stimulus program. ("Not me — I was protesting!" is a common exclamation.) Two: Each and every one of them is the only person in America who has ever read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock. (Here they have guidance from Armey, who explains that the problem with "people who do not cherish America the way we do" is that "they did not read the Federalist Papers.") Three: They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill "cracker babies," support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama's birth certificate. Four: In fact, some of their best friends are black! (Reporters in Kentucky invented a game called "White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo," checking off a box every time a Tea Partier mentions a black friend.) And five: Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hate America."

[TomCADem]

18. Sadly MSM will ignore the left accept when the left attacks Dems

Nm

[XOKCowboy]

21. That was the most illuminating part of the article for me also...

All four points are what all of my RW friends back in Oklahoma will tell you. In fact they were blaming Clinton for all of Bush's failures the past 8 yrs, none of them have read the Constitution since high school civics class and in private they're seething that a n_____ got elected as President. (Just using the word that they use)

[kentuck]

10. Tea Party Full of Shit

That surmises it quite succinctly, doesn't it? :-)

[highplainsdem]

15. K&R

[Iggo]

16. Good article. Recommended.

[TomCADem]

22. This Is Taibbi At His Best. Solid Journalism With Actual Interviews ...

...rather than pawning off opinions as news as Fox News often does. Matt does not sugar coat it. He challegers the Tea Partiers, and it turns out that they often have no depth beyond their Fox approved talking points.

[Enthusiast]

17. That explanation is near perfection.

"The vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations."

[Cosmocat]

20. Oh, yeah ...

hit them with it, and you get number one on his list ...

OH, NO, I was VERY much against the Bush spending!

I have a tea party type who says that, and I can tell you this, when I talked to him at the gym the last 8 years, it was every friggen stink bomb the Rs threw out - hating america and lovin terrorist, gay marriage ... All of the at the time ...

Bumped into him last week - "I as a social liberal and fiscal conservative."

I said, "all this years, and who would have thunk you were a progressive ..."

Didn't much appreciate that, but ...

[Strelnikov_]

19. ..

. . at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in . . .

The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit.