The Tea Party doesn't exist

Needless to say, I've gotten in a few fights for saying the above.  Which is fair.  It's hard to say a thing that you see on TV isn't real.  And, in truth, it's not EXACTLY true.  But it's true in a lot of ways.

For example, this way.  That's an article from a blog that makes a very good point that Tea Party rallies, or Tea Party-related rallies, or...let's just call them Ballsinthemouth rallies, these Ballsinthemouth rallies are only big when a major network like Fox reports on them.

And that's not all.  This article (whose title I'm apparently stealing) gives several more examples of the Tea Party failing to galvanize anything that would constitute a movement.  Their rally in Las Vegas was cancelled. Their 2010 9/12 rally was a disaster.  Meanwhile, the article explains, a "study done by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting...the February 2010 Nashville Tea Party Convention received far more attention than the U.S. Social Forum, (a convention leftist and socialist activists) which drew 15,000 to 20,000 attendees (compared to the 600 at the Tea Party convention), but received just 1.5 percent of the coverage of the Tea Party convention in a sample of ten national news outlets."

The truth of the matter is, the Tea Party is largely a fabrication.  The people who make up the "movement" are a small cadre of racists, sexists and idiots who, for the most part, subsist on the very welfare they protest.  The rest are the Fox news followers who should never be counted on for their understanding of the issues.  Not at all because they're stupid people, but because the network they trust has been peddling nonsense since 1996.

Fox News operates as the media wing of the Republican Party.  And, with the party in decline, the Republicans needed a group that not only attracted the public eye, but kept the crazies in their camp.  And it worked.  The Tea Party's loud voices and unclear motives make it sexy.  Even to the point that it attracts the attention of leftist groups.

But the fact is, it's a distraction.  It's another sleight of hand like the Swift Boat Veterans and the Willie Horton ad from the party that long ago realized that dirtying the political process was a lot easier than having an actual agenda.  The Tea Party gets the attention while all the groups proposing actual alternatives are pushed aside.  And at the same time, those groups assert they have to fight the tea and lose track of the real issues.

I know this is a weird thing to put at the end of a post talking about the Tea Party, but the best thing to do with these people is ignore them.  Don't give them the time of day.  Let the media spend its time on their every word, but let us progress beyond that. 

So, in that spirit, I hereby resolve I will never mention the Tea Party again.  Probably.

PS: Interesting poll about the ballsinthemouth party.