Tea and Mad-foolery

With Tea-Day at minus two days and counting, the organizers are busily trying to establish their grass-roots creds today. They're trying to draw an analogy between Move-On's support for the anti-war protests and FreedomWatch's exploitation of the gullible GOP base to create a new wedge issue for purely partisan reasons. The obvious difference is that anti-war demonstrators were rallying around a clear cause and the tea parties have no defined purpose other than establishing a false narrative and harassing a Democratic President.

The anti-war movement didn't have a major television station and all its star anchors promoting the rallies for weeks on end, much less guest hosting them. Hell, the media wouldn't even cover them and to the extent they were forced to mention them, repeatedly minimized the number of attendees. Keith Olbermann didn't headline $500 a plate fundraisers for anti-war marches. Glen Beck is doing that and how many *regular folks* can afford to attend that kind of event?

These tea parties look to me like little more than a GOP fundraiser. Even FreedomWatch is cashing in on the tshirt concession. Always a sure-fire moneymaker. The base does love their tshirts. But beyond that, what's the end goal? The anti-war movement wanted to end a war. So what do the teabaggers want? Do they think they will scare the politicians into abolishing taxes altogether? Do they believe they going to destroy socialism, or Marxism, or whatever imaginary demon they're battling?

With all the hyping done by Fox, I expect attendance will be pretty good, so they won't feel so alone but when the party is over, these people will still be in the minority. A majority of Americans trust Obama to deal with the economy. It may make the discontents feel good to wear their snarky t-shirts and wave tea bags around to show that they're mad as hell, about something. But to most of the world, they're going to look -- just mad.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]