Tea Partiers

The single defining characteristic of the tea partiers is stupidity. They paid $5oo for entree to a convention whose organizer paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to spout her usual blend of inane, shopworn conservative bromides. The men in the audience will probably crowd the bathrooms immediately after her speech hoping for a discreet opportunity to jack off. The tea partiers enthusiastically applauded former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo's blatantly racist bon mot that President Barack Obama was elected because, "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

These are stupid, ignorant, paranoid rubes born to be taken. The first couple of tea bagger events were spontaneous. These people are so unworldly that they didn't even realize the sexual meaning of tea bagging until commentators like Rachel Maddow ridiculed them. Then the professional astro turfing groups moved in to herd the rubes and use them to do the health care insurers' bidding by disrupting town hall meetings with legislators. Now the rubes are beeing fleeced for $500 a pop to hear demagogues like Tancredo and opportunists like Palin take advantage of their genuine frustration. But the tea partiers are so stupid that they direct their rage, not at the corporate plutocracy that rapes them, but imaginary threats of secret commie-pinko takeovers led by that furriner niggah Obama.

The tea baggers might unwittingly help a few faux populist Republicans get elected, but will have no real effect on anything. As soon as the media turn off the spotlight, the tea partiers will disperse and disappear, like most angry mobs bereft of cohesive ideas or leadership. Few, if any, will ever realize how they were taken advantage of or by whom.