Most news outlets are reporting that the Teabagger Clown Show in the DesertTM drew about 9,000 people. That’s pretty righteous, considering they were out in the middle of nowhere on a dusty, windblown plot of desert land and it was COLD! I’ll give the Teabaggers credit for their enthusiasm if nothing else.
There’s a great wrap-up with some terrific pictures at Steve Friess’ VegasHappensHere.com blog. Steve also has a nice piece over at AOL News. Good to see some decent first-hand reporting.
There definitely appeared to be a solid effort on the party of the Teabaggers to tamp down racist references and violent rhetoric and images. I think they are finally getting wise to the fact that the rest of the country, at least those who are rational and compassionate, don’t think racist slurs against the president of our country are okay or that inciting violence through words and pictures is okay. We don’t think it’s okay at all. And it doesn’t matter if you’re surrounded by a few hundred or a few thousand like-minded Neanderthals, it’s still not okay. It tells the world that you are small-minded, old-fashioned and, frankly, ignorant & stupid.
And, let’s face it, when you get someone like Andrew Breitbart decrying racism, you’re making progress. He actually had the testicular fortitude to claim it’s Democrats who are racist and that’s why he left the party in the 1990s. My wife came in after listening to him on the live feed from FOX just shaking her head over that one.
I do find it pretty comical that they called this event “Showdown in Searchlight”. Typically a showdown involves two groups on opposite sides, staring each other down, face-to-face. This is hardly the case here. The Teabaggers seemed to get as far from civilization as they could. As a veteran of a large number of protests, I can only say “UR doin’ it wrong”. Protests are most effective when you actually protest in a place where your opponents will see your message (chants, signs, etc.) Because they took this thing out into the middle of the desert, they relied on the media to get their message back to the teeming masses and you know what that means: only the most outrageous among you will get their pictures taken.
There was one quote from Sarah Palin that particularly drew a laugh from me. It was this:
The big government, big deficit Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending spree is over.
I don’t know what it is about these people but they seem to have completely forgotten that their side LOST the election. Seriously, people, there are more of us than there are of you! That’s just a fact. I don’t care if you are louder. I don’t care if your events are bigger. I don’t care if you get on tv or in the newspapers more. There’s a reason for that: you’re more outlandish. That doesn’t make you more right or in the majority.
You’re not.
And as far as “big government, big deficit spending sprees” go, you’re speaking from a position of experience, for sure. Your Republican party was so spendthrift that you could give lessons on how to waste money and bloat the government. How are you possibly going to keep this meme alive after April 15 when people realize that their personal taxes went down? I guess you keep banging the “big deficit” gong but the largest piece of social legislation in decades just became law and it lowers the deficit so we’ve got some ammo on our side, too.
I had a brief moment of feeling sorry for the people that ended up in that God-forsaken bit of desert dirt yesterday. They fought crowds and traffic jams to set up camp on a dirty, dusty bit of land away from all conveniences. Then, when they got there, it was COLD! Who ever heard of a desert being cold? Not them, I’ll wager. Then they sat there all day in the cold and the high winds for a three hour show of which their idol Sarah Palin was only a small part. Then Sarah and her entourage piled on to their comfy coach buses and roared away in a cloud of dust, leaving the Teabaggers to clean up their mess and either trundle along in their own cars or spend the night. And if you think it’s cold during the day, you should see how cold it gets at night. The whole thing strikes me as rather pathetic.
I, for one, am glad that this happened this week. It is arguable that the anti-violence and anti-racism messages that seemed to permeate the event, although probably more self-serving that heartfelt, at least promoted the meme that violence and racism aren’t okay. If we get that silver lining out of it, I’ll give it a big thumbs up.
And, well, they’re pretty goddam funny to watch, too.
I’m just sayin’…
