Researchers embedded themselves in the Greater Boston Tea Party...

[pampango]

http://blogs.reuters.com/chrystia-freeland/2011/07/11/scenes-from-the-tea-party/

Like their fellow Tea Partiers across the United States, those in Massachusetts are older, white, and predominately male. 97 percent are white; 57 percent are males; and 83 percent are over forty-six years old (with more than half are older than age fifty-six). In addition, Bay State Tea Party activists envelop themselves with the same conservative news sources used by other Tea Party participants. When we asked Massachusetts Tea Party activists an open-ended question about their preferred news sources, 51 out of 69 respondents reported being Fox News watchers. ... Only 11 of 69 respondents claim to read the Boston Globe, and only seven Massachusetts Tea Party activists report getting their news from ABC, NBC or CBS News.

...After Fox News, conservative radio programs (such as Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham), and conservative websites (such as The Drudge Report and Red State) topped the list of Tea Party news sources. Several Boston-area Tea Party participants said that it was through watching Glenn Beck’s show that they found out about the Tea Party in the first place.

As Chrystia wrote, Tea Partiers divide the U.S. population into two groups: those who work and are worthy beneficiaries of government programs, and those who don’t who they believe should get nothing. ... Government programs are not intrinsically objectionable in the minds of Tea Party activists, and certainly not when they go to help them. Rather, government spending is seen as corrupted by creating benefits for people who do not contribute, who take handouts at the expense of hard-working Americans.

There were two categories of people, though, that were unquestionably included in the nonworking group: young people and unauthorized immigrants. ... Moreover, discussions of immigration seemed to provoke an especially emotional response. One Boston member spoke of wanting to “stand on the border with a gun,” while another complained about the “free-for-all south of the border.”

[muntrv]

1. Repeat after me teabaggers: WHAAAAT PAAAAAR!