My Day at the Tea Parties

As promised (but possibly not wanted in any way), here is my little report about the three "Tea Parties" I attended yesterday, in Glendale, Burbank and Van Nuys, Ca.

Above are photos from Van Nuys, Glendale and Burbank, respectively.

First, Glendale Home to Rev. Carl McIntyre, and formerly one of the nation's centers of American Nazi Party operatives, Glendale has traditionally had one of the largest extreme right wing populations in the country. About 400 (in my estimate- I have been going to demonstrations for 40 years, and generally can estimate them pretty well) people showed up here. As you can see from the photo, the attendees were almost entirely white, and skewed far older than the general population. There were a couple of unenthusiastic, boilerplate speeches, and the whole crowd seemed rather listless to me. Even the signs didn't display a lot of the rage we are used to seeing online. I really think these people know they have been beaten, and don't have the energy to put up much of a show.

The Burbank Tea Party was an interesting phenomenon. My picture of it, taken before it started, is a little unfair, but still, only about 100 people showed up. The whole thing, as far as I could tell (I got bored and left before it was over) involved two local pseudo-populist talk show hosts, John and Ken, from KFI, the station that carries Rush. These guys mad a name for themselves primarily by attacking immigration, and have carried on from there in a sort of deliberately dumb attack on government. They drove up in an SUV with a couple of assistants and broadcast their show for an hour from the location. The whole event was nothing but a stunt for their benefit.

The Van Nuys tea party was, at 500 attendees or so, the largest of the ones I attended, and also the most enthusiastic, with some crowd cheering and chanting of "no new taxes" etc, but even so fell far short of the energy that I remember from left wing protests of the past. Even so, the speeches were embarassingly unenspiring (in my opinion), and the very generic level of signs and comments I heard in the crowd didn't suggest to me that this is going anywhere. Like the others, the crowd was massively white and old.

What did I take away from this? Let me state the obvious- none of these people was out in the street when Bush and Cheney were robbing them blind. I didn't feel this way two days ago, but I now believe that this movement is about one thing- a bunch of white people who feel that THE OTHER is taking over their country, and who have been prodded into action because one of THE OTHERS now resides in the White House. That's why, the better he does, the more afraid they are. I'm not given to seeing race behind every tree, but that's what I found yeaterday. The pallid nature of the antitax rhetoric and signs shows that this isn't what they are really worried about.

Well, Tea Baggers, I've got news for you. You're right. There's less of you every year. If you tried inviting these people to really participate in what this country is supposed to be about, they and their children would end up being pretty much ordinary Americans. As long as you keep trying to beat them down, they will notice that and act accordingly.