I usually avoid just throwing red meat to the beasts who visit these pages, but sometimes it's just too hard to resist. One of my favorite journalists, Matt Taibbi's latest piece in Rolling Stone is a complete deconstruction of the Tea Party. I love Taibbi (who coined the term "Vampire Squid" to describe Goldman Sachs) because he speaks so plainly. Here's a quote from the article:"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."
Enjoy.
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16 comments:
Great writing. Must quote this, "My head is starting to hurt. Arguments with Tea Partiers always end up like football games in the year 1900 — everything on the ground, one yard at a time."
Taibbi is full of shit, with his painfully weak "journalistic" head-fakes.
To wit: "When you visit this impressively massive monument to fundamentalist Christian thought, you get a mind-blowing glimpse into the modern conservative worldview."
Fundamentalist Christian = conservative worldview?
So a visit to Auschwitz would afford one a glimpse of Polish world view?
Taibbi is Wenner's towel boi.
@ annon: I disagree. There is a ton of research that shows a very strong correlation between fundamentalist Christian beliefs and conservative political views. Is that the "head fake" you're talking about.
And FYI, the Poles didn't build Auschwitz, the Germans did and it may very well offer meaningful insight into the German character of the 1940's.
Is that all you got?
Spoken anonymously with all the certainty of a non-activist interpreter of the US Constitution.
When you get your take on the Tea Party published in a publication of record, and get paid for your effort, I am sure we would all like to read it too.
You have sympathetic ears on our broken government. We disagree on the details. Charles Blow in today's Times gives figures that back up Taibbi: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/opinion/20blow.html?_r=1&hp
@d'blank - thanks for making my point - again. As a Jew, I know where Auschwitz is, and who built it.
Taibbi's projecting conservative views through a Christian fundamentalist lens is every bit as misleading as claiming Auschwitz represents Polish politics.
Got it now, Sherlock?
As a current, prominent rabbi explained the opposition to leadership in his community, "you put a penny in an empty pail and shake it; it makes a lot of noise."
"Got it now, Sherlock?" And you wonder why there is anti-semitism.
No, I still don't get it, but I'm just a dumb-ass lapsed Methodist.
YIPES!! Conflict on the DB!
Let's face it everyone - Dems, GOP and even Tea Party members - are being snookered by these lying creeps.
It's just a ping pong game, and on 2012 the Dems will be back to add to the destruction that the GOP will cause these next two years.
The only thing you can do is make sure you make or have enough money to pay for this incoming s**t (taxes, fees, inflation/deflation, investment/property losses, etc.) or a really good place to hide.
@annon: Upon further reflection I think I know get your point, although I still think you are wrong. Taibbi is not suggesting that anyone look at conservatism through the lens of Christian fundamentalism, he is clearly using it only as a surrogate for the Tea Party -- a vastly different thing.
Reagan and Goldwater wouldn't pass muster with those folks, let along Edmund Burke.
And neither you nor will be welcomed into a fundamentalist/Tea Party heaven.
oh cmon. fundamentalist christians aren't all political conservatives. but there's a huge crossover. challenging that point is just stupid.
however i totally agree that invoking christian culture is a cheap shot that isn't necessary to talk about what makes the tea party legitimate or not.
why not just focus on the real issue. tea party's leaders and donors are overwhelmingly opposed to taxes because they are mostly very rich, and rich people hate taxes, oddly much more than middle class people, who ought to be more upset and giving up what little they can afford and be the ones waving Don't Tread on Me banners.
i would like to see less government and less spending and a balanced budget. but a bunch of rich f**ks just bitching about taxes and pretending that constitutes a political philosophy as opposed to old fashioned self interest offends me.
MikeyLikesIt, you wouldn't be alluding to the "I'm on board, pull the gangplank up" philosophy, would you?
The Tea Party is all about principles. The Founding Fathers, the band of brothers who all thought the same way and agreed on everything, thinking as one mind, leaving zero interpretation of the documents they drafted would have one of the current Supreme Court Justices living in the slave quarters. The rest, Papist (including the slave) and Jews, leaving them with their mouths agape. But I am sure they would have recognized assault rifles as flintlocks. Surely there would have been no confusion among themselves in how to apply what they drafted to our times. You know the Founding Fathers would never touch the people's Medicare.
I think that the arguement that Christian Fundamentalist = Conservative = Bullshit is the "head fake" here.
I printed out this 11 page article and and finally found the two sentences anonymous uses to dismiss the entire premise of Taibbi's arguement.
Taibbi's main observation seems to be that that these "Tea Partier" are mostly paranoid, aging white folks who wouldn't know intellectual honesty if it came up and slapped them in the face.
Their inability or unwillingness to engage with the modern world causes them to turn longingly towards a gauzy, rose-colored past that never existed in the first place and dismiss anyone who doesn't think that this was the Camelot of human civilization.
All the while hoodwinking the American taxpayer into footing the bill for their wheel-chair scooters which they've been told they've somehow "earned". What a bunch of hypocrites.
Well written article but I think he misses the point. The Tea Party is funded by rich conservatives but the movement is primarily made up of cranky old white folks, like me, who see their world changing, their bones aching, their wallets shrinking and the grim reaper traipsing slowly towards their door. Life is passing them by and it is the fault of the government.
They are hard pressed to articulate exactly what they want, less government but keep your hands off my Medicare is not a political philosophy ...reminded of Mr. Dylan's line, something is happening here but don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?
Birdman is wrong about one thing, they are looking back to a gauzy rose colored past but it did exist in one sense, they/we were young and life was full of promise...it still is but more for our kids but not so much for the boomers. Although 20 of my aging friends going through 28 bottles of wine and assorted other adult beverages on Saturday night in Charm City was an attempt to recapture that magic. I just don't know why they all look so old. They didn't look that way when we met in college in the 60's.
Going to hell in a hand basket, or more precisely motorized scooter. I overheard a group of tea baggers on election day at the Pleasantville Diner explaining why they were going to vote for "that other guy" (Carl Nutjob Palladino) and not "Cuomo's kid." "He's got such a mean face,"one of them said. "Yeah, I never liked the father either." These are verbatim comments from people who are actually from my neighboring town. I mean, Andrew Cuomo's face is meaner than Carl Paladino's mug? Carl is the guy who challenged a NY Post reporter to a fist fight. There were even people in New York State who voted for him.
Dumb, dumber, dumbest and just plain mind-boggingly, achingly stupid. Couldn't agree with Taibbi more.
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