It’s whiny-ass-titty-baby day, plus linkdump!
Today, all across our great nation thousands will gather for the Fox News/Freedom Works-sponsored Teabag Day, in which the multitudes will put each other’s testicles in their mouths protest taxation with representation, the brown menace, defend tax cuts for people who make much more money than they ever will, complain about the government investing in infrastructure, complain about the loss of civil liberties the fact that gays need to be treated like human beings and “religion’ does not get one off the hook for being an asshole, and have a collective memory loss about why they were silent the last eight years when we had a white, Christianist semi-retarded warmongerer in office who actually wasted a lot of money and actually threatened real civil liberties. I was going to try to go to the VT one today, wearing a big shit-filled diaper and a sign that said “Proud Conservative – Don’t Rich, White Christian Males deserve a fair shake, for once?”, but alas, I have to finish my final paper for school, as well as work on this weekend’s upcoming Grindhouse show.
Anyways, like Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber, I got a little bit of mileage out of this latest farce, which will soon be forgotten. But, knowing how the Masters of Manufactured and/or Misguided Outrage™ operate, I’m sure it won’t be long until some other highly mockworthy event pops up. In the meantime here’s some teabagtastic linkdumpery for you:
As many (probably most) of these people at these things are going to complain about “crippling” taxes, even though 95% of ‘em got a tax cut, there’s an interesting new poll out that shows, generally people think they’re paying the right amount of taxes. I personally don’t have a problem with the amount. I just wish it wasn’t going to subsidize huge corporations and wars. I’d rather see it help real, living working people.
Been a while since I linked to some Matt Taibbi. He’s got a good one about the peasant mindset of this conservative douchebaggery:
But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs.
The Rude Pundit sums this whole thing up better than I could:
Somewhere, Karl Marx is laughing his bearded ass off. Because what is this but classic exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie? It’s a bunch of rich fucks, beginning with that tool Rick Santelli on CNBC and ending with the slavering profitmongers at Fox “news,” making the poor idiots, who are desperate from fear of or actual job loss and heath insurance loss and home loss, do their bidding. Look at the people attending. Bedraggled Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin wannabes, clinging to the image of those who create the illusion of the working class without the work or the class. Ignorance is such bliss, man.
Big Evil Orange diarist bonddad asks the question no one’s answering: Where were the teabag protests 8 years ago? Yeah, where? he’s right.. They’re not protesting government spending. They’re protesting the very fact that the Democratic Party is in power now. Whatever they perceive as “wrong”, it’s okay when their people do it, even worse.
A bit more on the corporate grassroots, as exemplified in this movement, from Open Left. Warning: Dick Armey is involved.
Finally ThinkProgress has a glimpse into the intellectual powerhouses who are int the teaparty mindset. Great insights like this, a variation on the “let the free market take are of things” bullshit:
Well, it’s just like everything else. They’re trying to address a problem that really isn’t a problem. Just like when they gave us senior Medicare with the drug benefit — we didn’t need it. The drug companies were taking care of people who could not afford it.
Tomorrow, I’ll be posting a whole bunch on my upcoming grindhouse spectacular which is coming up this Saturday in Montpelier. Be there, or I will hunt you down with extreme prejudice.
