Matt Taibbi Among the Tea Partiers Posted by pzmyers on @ 8:49 am Article printed from speakeasy: blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy URL to article: blogs.alternet.org/speake...i-among-the-tea-partiers/ This post first appeared on Pharyngula.
Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite political writers, and hes perfect for scrutinizing the Tea Party movement hes a gonzo swashbuckler who specializes in exposing the inanities of American culture, so plopping him down in the midst of the teabaggers is like opening the henhouse door for a wolf.
Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isnt a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression Governments not the solution! Governments the problem! the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
The scooters are because of Medicare, he whispers helpfully. They have these commercials down here: You wont even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay! Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I cant imagine it.
Read the whole thing. Who are the teabaggers? Cranky, ignorant old racist hypocrites who are all about me-me-me-me, deftly manipulated by the big business establishment.