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Wednesday, April 15. 2009
Teabag Anyone?
Who hasn’t heard about the Republican-Conservative-Fox News event to Teabag America today? The Republican Party — the gift that keeps on giving! Makes me wonder: will anyone toss a salad once they get done tea bagging? If you’re going to teabag, you might as well toss salad too.I have FoxNews on (Tuesday) just to catch any reference they make to tea bagging day, which, not so coincidentally, is the deadline for filing your 2008 income tax forms. Fox calls them “Tea Parties,” after the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773. But that’s where any similarity ends actually.
The original Boston Tea Party was the result of the colonies being taxed for tea without any representation in British Parliament. The Bostonians refused to unload the tea from the ships in Boston Harbor and the governor of the Massachusetts Colony would not let the ships leave with the tea, so Bostonians dressed as Indians climbed on to the ships and dumped the tea into the harbor.
Today, the tax system being protested is the system put in place by the Bush tax cuts of 2002 and the people definitely had (and have) representation. Of course, this “Anti-Tax Tea Party,” as it is being billed by FoxNews, is aimed at President Obama and the Democrats. You gotta love the irony.
For most of the people the Republicans are trying to energize with this stunt, their income tax rates will actually go down with the Obama tax plan. Fox, and the other promoters of this faux grass roots event, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, a group founded and led by former Speaker of the House Dick Armey and a new group called Don’tGO, would like us to believe that they had no hand in getting this protest started.
All three organizations — and Fox — claim this is a grass roots movement, that they are just providing resources to people asking for help, or, in the case of Fox, just “covering” the news, but someone has to be organizing it to have such coordination between all the cities, now claimed to be 500, that will have events. This is even funnier: even though Americans for Prosperity claims it isn’t an organizer of the event, they also claim on their web site they are organizing 24 of these tea parties. I guess they hope no one will notice.
For its part, FoxNews has a big ad on the right side of their website promoting the event with listings of which events each host will be attending. Neil Cavuto will be in Sacramento, Glenn Beck in San Antonio, Sean Hannity in Atlanta and Greta van Susteren in Washington, D.C. Just click on it to find out how you can participate in their production!
What these organizations want us to believe is that a majority of Americans are angry about the Obama economic policies — despite the poll numbers that show Obama and his policies to have solid approval ratings of 60% or higher. This gets funnier still. Neil Cavuto of FoxNews, defended his networks active promotion of the event by claiming they are just “covering” it as a news item, much like Fox covered the Million Man March in 1995. Problem is, FoxNews didn’t exist until a year after the Million Man March. Jeez, if you’re gonna bullshit, you ought to get the verifiable information straight.
So, this is how the thing goes: people will bring tea bags to the sites and dump them in buckets and then the organizers, who aren’t really organizers, will deliver 1,000,000 tea bags to the steps of Congress; the organizers’ definition of tea bagging — they plan to tea bag Congress.
For me, I can’t think of any Senators or Congresswomen I’d like to tea bag, it’s unlikely any of them would enjoy the experience as much as I would plus, they’re almost certainly married and probably wouldn’t engage in an affair with a cardiac cripple, despite my dashing good looks. Some of the Fox newsies, now that’s a different story!
Who would you like to tea bag at FoxNews? Martha MacCallum, Lauren Sanchez, Gretchen Carlson, Juliana Johnson, although she’s not a Fox employee, she’s one of the tea bagging organizers.
This just might get me to start watching Fox exclusively, they seem so much more hip than CNN and MSNBC. Just don’t expect me to deliver an Angry Pirate. There are some things even I won’t engage in … well, maybe not the kicking part anyway.
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