Chris Hitchens on the Tea Party/Glen Beck

[RobinFinderson]

Chris Hitchens, writing in Vanity Fair, shares thoughts on the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Cleon Skousen, the racist tenor of Tea Party rallies, and idiocy of the Republicans who encourage this sort of thing without any thought about what kind of hydra they may have just unleashed.

My own thoughts about tea baggers is not nearly as harsh as Hitchens'. I try to look on the bright side, and see many of these folks as being genuinely principled, and hopefully incorruptible. Having an injection of that kind of character can't make our politics worse. But I also find Hitchens fairly persuasive when he talks about the gross hysteria in which Beck and many tea-baggers trade (I like the comparison to Clinton, where with all of the legitimate criticisms that could be made about the president, his most insane critics chose to focus on Vince Foster's suicide as the cornerstone of their hatred).

Oh, and Cleon Skousen was a close personal friend of my grandfather. They were the same age and grew up in the same small Alberta farm town. My parents own signed copies of all of his books.

[UtahDan]

Just posted this on facebook. Yes, I'm trolling my own facebook wall.

[BigFatMeanie]

Chris Hitchens, writing in Vanity Fair, shares thoughts on the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Cleon Skousen, the racist tenor of Tea Party rallies, and idiocy of the Republicans who encourage this sort of thing without any thought about what kind of hydra they may have just unleashed.

My own thoughts about tea baggers is not nearly as harsh as Hitchens'. I try to look on the bright side, and see many of these folks as being genuinely principled, and hopefully incorruptible. Having an injection of that kind of character can't make our politics worse. But I also find Hitchens fairly persuasive when he talks about the gross hysteria in which Beck and many tea-baggers trade (I like the comparison to Clinton, where with all of the legitimate criticisms that could be made about the president, his most insane critics chose to focus on Vince Foster's suicide as the cornerstone of their hatred).

Oh, and Cleon Skousen was a close personal friend of my grandfather. They were the same age and grew up in the same small Alberta farm town. My parents own signed copies of all of his books.

Your use of an unsavory epithet to label Tea Party participants doesn't lead me to believe you can discuss the issue in an evenhanded fashion.

[RobinFinderson]

Your use of an unsavory epithet to label Tea Party participants doesn't lead me to believe you can discuss the issue in an evenhanded fashion.

You must have missed the conversation, but a few months ago I joined the Tea Party. Now, contrary to what you may have seen on Fox news, there is actually some debate within our movement about what we should be called. Most of us were completely oblivious to the sexual connotation of "tea bagger" when people first starting to refer to us this way, but many of us actually liked the sound of being called a 'tea bagger.' When we later learned about the gay concourse the term could also describe, we were really crestfallen.

So we began to debate over the best possible adjective. People were pretty evenly split between 'tea-partier' and 'tea party member,' with the biggest question being 'which sounds less gay' (no offense to gay people! We have a few gay people in our party and they are welcome to voice their opinion as much as they like, but just from looking at our numbers, we are slightly less gay than the population at large, so avoiding the appearance of gayness is mostly just about representing the numbers).

The 'tea partier' supporters argued that any descriptive phrase that ends with the word 'member' will probably have some perverse sexual connotation, mostly likely a gay one (inferred from the fact that no one in the party could figure out what the explicit meaning might be.)

The 'tea party member' supporters in turn pointed out that 'tea partier' sounds a bit too frolicky to be a reference to the original Boston Tea Party, and could thus only refer to one of those parties most often hosted by young girls and homosexuals.

The debate was quite fierce with both sides winning a few converts from the other side. Back and forth the debaters debated, and then something happened -- people started to think, 'If we're going to sound gay no matter what name we choose, lets go with "tea baggers," because that kind of had a nice ring to it.'

And that is the truth my friend. I am part of this group of activists who boldly identifies myself and all others in my group as TEA BAGGERS, TRUE AND FREE!

I can understand, BFM, that you might not be up on this bit of Tea Party insider baseball, so I'll forgive the rude implication of your previous post.

[creekster]

You must have missed the conversation, but a few months ago I joined the Tea Party. Now, contrary to what you may have seen on Fox news, there is actually some debate within our movement about what we should be called. Most of us were completely oblivious to the sexual connotation of "tea bagger" when people first starting to refer to us this way, but many of us actually liked the sound of being called a 'tea bagger.' When we later learned about the gay concourse the term could also describe, we were really crestfallen.

So we began to debate over the best possible adjective. People were pretty evenly split between 'tea-partier' and 'tea party member,' with the biggest question being 'which sounds less gay' (no offense to gay people! We have a few gay people in our party and they are welcome to voice their opinion as much as they like, but just from looking at our numbers, we are slightly less gay than the population at large, so avoiding the appearance of gayness is mostly just about representing the numbers). The 'tea partier' supporters argued that any descriptive phrase that ends with the word 'member' will probably have some perverse sexual connotation, mostly likely a gay one, because no one in the party could figure out what the explicit meaning might be. The 'tea party member' supporters in turn pointed out that 'tea partier' sounds a bit too frolicky to be a reference to the original Boston Tea Party, and could thus only refer to one of those parties most often hosted by young girls and homosexuals. The debate was quite fierce with both sides winning a few converts from the other side. Back and forth the debaters debated, and then something happened -- people started to think, 'If we're going to sound gay no matter what name we choose, lets go with "tea baggers," because that kind of had a nice ring to it.'

And that is the truth my friend. I am part of this group of activists who boldly identifies myself and all others in my group, TEA BAGGERS, TRUE AND FREE!

I can understand, BFM, that you might not be up on this bit of Tea Party insider bickering, so I'll forgive the implication of your previous post.

The good thing about this sort of post is it reminds me I need to use more paragrph breaks when I type a long one.

[RobinFinderson]

The good thing about this sort of post is it reminds me I need to use more paragrph breaks when I type a long one.

William Faulkner and Robin Finderson, baby, two peas in a pod.

I just went through and parsed it a bit.

[wuapinmon]

Your use of an unsavory epithet to label Tea Party participants doesn't lead me to believe you can discuss the issue in an evenhanded fashion.

Unsavory?

When we later learned about the gay concourse the term could also describe, we were really crestfallen.

You view tea bagging as gay?

[RobinFinderson]

This is a good read. Though I'm surprised that Hitch errs in his understanding of GM (which, in fact, was allow to go bankrupt, though via the pre-packaged variety)

Thank you. I too find the Tea-Baggers-for-calling-Tea-Baggers-Tea-Baggers movement of the Tea Party movement to be very interesting. You should also read the Hitchens piece, if you haven't gotten around to that.

You view tea bagging as gay?

When the tea-baggers-for-calling-tea-baggers-tea-baggers movement first started, we weren't sure if it was gay, straight, bi, or just curious. Our gay members confirmed that they were indeed tea-bagging-tea-baggers, but they weren't able to speak for the hets. None of the straight men in our movement had experienced this, so we asked our women if they thought it was gay or straight, and 100% of our women were 100% sure that it was 100% a gay thing.

[BigFatMeanie]

You must have missed the conversation, but a few months ago I joined the Tea Party. Now, contrary to what you may have seen on Fox news, there is actually some debate within our movement about what we should be called. Most of us were completely oblivious to the sexual connotation of "tea bagger" when people first starting to refer to us this way, but many of us actually liked the sound of being called a 'tea bagger.' When we later learned about the gay concourse the term could also describe, we were really crestfallen.

So we began to debate over the best possible adjective. People were pretty evenly split between 'tea-partier' and 'tea party member,' with the biggest question being 'which sounds less gay' (no offense to gay people! We have a few gay people in our party and they are welcome to voice their opinion as much as they like, but just from looking at our numbers, we are slightly less gay than the population at large, so avoiding the appearance of gayness is mostly just about representing the numbers).

The 'tea partier' supporters argued that any descriptive phrase that ends with the word 'member' will probably have some perverse sexual connotation, mostly likely a gay one (inferred from the fact that no one in the party could figure out what the explicit meaning might be.)

The 'tea party member' supporters in turn pointed out that 'tea partier' sounds a bit too frolicky to be a reference to the original Boston Tea Party, and could thus only refer to one of those parties most often hosted by young girls and homosexuals.

The debate was quite fierce with both sides winning a few converts from the other side. Back and forth the debaters debated, and then something happened -- people started to think, 'If we're going to sound gay no matter what name we choose, lets go with "tea baggers," because that kind of had a nice ring to it.'

And that is the truth my friend. I am part of this group of activists who boldly identifies myself and all others in my group as TEA BAGGERS, TRUE AND FREE!

I can understand, BFM, that you might not be up on this bit of Tea Party insider baseball, so I'll forgive the rude implication of your previous post.

QED

[RobinFinderson]

QED

You are like the white person who tells the black person that he is racist for using the n-word.