Less guitar, more banjo.
16/4/10 23:33![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
readherring.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsI went down to the demonstration to get my fair share of abuse…
Some people make ‘em out to be crazy racists, others make ‘em out to be activist patriots. Everyone’s got their spin on the Tea Party Movement, making it almost impossible to see what they’re really like. So I went down to DC yesterday to try to take the most neutral, non-biased look I could at them. Of course, I failed miserably at neutrality, as all of the people who are about to comment will tell you. Anticipating that there is no way to be completely neutral or analytical, I also took a buttload of pictures. It is my hope that through a buttload of shots, you’ll be able to see a less filtered view of the Tea Party Protest.
One of the first things I noticed about the TP-Protest was that it looked a lot like the antiwar protests I’ve attended. People bring their homemade signs and mill about. There’s generally some light conversation between strangers. The overall vibe was about the same as any other Washington Mall protest.
The issues were different, of course. There were more references to God. The crowd was a bit older. The TP-protesters were mostly white, but then, most protest rallies I’ve been to have been predominantly white. (By the way – my apologies for the poorly framed pictures. The sun was beating down on my camera’s view screen, making every shot an educated guess)
Some of the slogans were even the same from the anti-Bush ones:
(shirt reads: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention)
Some differences between this and other protests:
Less guitar. More banjo.
And flags. Lots more flags.
There were flags everywhere. Even more striking – there were flag sellers everywhere.
That was very notable. There were more flag, button and sticker salespeople there than I had ever seen at a protest rally. Only the DNC rivaled the amount of vendors that I saw at this event.
I didn’t see any of the grammatical nightmare signs that are featured all over the internet. This guy had the only misspelling that I noticed:
Oh, and this guy should have done a fact check:
Other than that, signs were about on par with other genres of protests.
(Bonus points for the Ayn Rand reference. Why do conservatives obsess over her so?)
(I’m fairly certain that I saw this Franklin quote at an Anti-Bush rally as well)
…and this guy wins the internet.
As a mad leftie, I feel that I should point out some of the more ridiculous central themes. Obama isn’t teaming up with Pelosi and Reed to be a dictator. The working model of a dictatorship is one guy in charge, with a bunch of underlings. Congress has been enough of a pain for Obama to dispel the claims of fascism. The claims of rampant socialism and taxation are gross exaggerations as well. But if the liberals had a true Fox News equivalent during the Bush days, there probably would have been a handful of ‘em out on the mall making equally wacky claims.
I didn’t see anything racist, and I’m not surprised. Lefty that I am, I’m at least able to distinguish a political movement from a racist one. A few people made it a point of announcing it isn’t about race:
I believe that liberals who call the TP movement racist are blinded by their hate for the group, and they project the most distasteful label they can give to it. It is exactly like how I was called anti-American when I took part in peace protests. There probably were a few people at those protests that had genuinely anti-American sentiments, and there are probably YouTube clips of them circulating somewhere. The pictures and the stories get circulated and turned into folklore. Just like the stories protesters who spat on the veterans returning from Viet Nam. It turns out that this probably never happened – or if it did, it was an isolated incident.
Similarly, there were probably some folks in the crowd that were racists. But if a racist plays football, that doesn’t make it a racist football game. Similarly, if there are some racists in an anti-tax movement, that doesn’t make the movement racist.
It’s easy to get the wrong impression at a protest, though. Because there are always crazy nutters who show up to protests.
Oh, and speaking of nutters, I didn’t see any of those incognito liberals that the internet has been so worried about. There were a few counter protesters, though.
…and here’s your liberal nutter. Sporting a “One Lord” hat and a Bob Marley T-Shirt, this guy decided to vent at the Tea Partiers and tell them what is wrong with their movement. And yes, he accused them of being afraid of a black president. A few Tea Partiers got in his face for a nice loud argument, which was undoubtedly the photo-op the swarming crowd of media was looking for. Especially when one of the TP’ers got into the fray while his eight year old son sat on his shoulders. But I’ll give the Tea Partiers credit for what happened next. Some cooler heads in the crowd realized that there was nothing good that could come from fighting with a crazy person, so they started chanting “walk away”. The crowd dispersed without further incident.
…much to the disappointment of NBC.
Most (if not all) of the other liberals there were more well behaved. They paraded around the vent with giant signs reminding that Obama really isn’t the Tax Miser that he was being made out to be. These signs didn’t have much of an effect on the protesters – you’d have better luck preaching abstinence at a go-go bar than you would have converting people to liking Obama at a Tea Party Rally – but they probably made for an nice photo-op for all the non-Fox networks.
Oh, and speaking of non-Fox networks, I spent some time following CNN’s John King while he was interviewing Dick Armey, trying to get a shot of both of them with an anti-CNN sign in the background. But the sun glare on my camera and Dick’s hat foiled that plan. The “CNN” was covered by the brim:
The silliest thing about the interview was when one of the Tea Partiers mistook John King for Anderson Cooper, and heckled him loudly. I wish I had a camcorder for that part. After the interview, Armey took on another reporter that obviously thought he could advance his journalistic career by dressing like Jimmy Olsen:
The protest turnout was decent. Fox will probably make it look like a mob scene, and other networks may take shots that diminish the crowd. Here’s about as accurate a picture as I could take at 5:30 as the rally officially started:
One last thing before I end this long, overly-pictured post. I had mentioned that the right wing labeled liberals as anti-American when they bitched and moaned about their government, what their government was doing, and things that they didn’t like in general. As I was walking through the crowds North of the Washington Monument, it struck me that here was a group of right wingers that were bitching about their government, what their government was doing, and things that they didn’t like in general. Yet the central themes of their movement – the colonial dress, the flags, even their movement’s name – are all screaming at the top of their lungs what great patriots they are. This dichotomy may just be what annoys me most about the Tea Party Patriots.
Some people make ‘em out to be crazy racists, others make ‘em out to be activist patriots. Everyone’s got their spin on the Tea Party Movement, making it almost impossible to see what they’re really like. So I went down to DC yesterday to try to take the most neutral, non-biased look I could at them. Of course, I failed miserably at neutrality, as all of the people who are about to comment will tell you. Anticipating that there is no way to be completely neutral or analytical, I also took a buttload of pictures. It is my hope that through a buttload of shots, you’ll be able to see a less filtered view of the Tea Party Protest.
One of the first things I noticed about the TP-Protest was that it looked a lot like the antiwar protests I’ve attended. People bring their homemade signs and mill about. There’s generally some light conversation between strangers. The overall vibe was about the same as any other Washington Mall protest.
The issues were different, of course. There were more references to God. The crowd was a bit older. The TP-protesters were mostly white, but then, most protest rallies I’ve been to have been predominantly white. (By the way – my apologies for the poorly framed pictures. The sun was beating down on my camera’s view screen, making every shot an educated guess)
Some of the slogans were even the same from the anti-Bush ones:
(shirt reads: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention)
Some differences between this and other protests:
Less guitar. More banjo.
And flags. Lots more flags.
There were flags everywhere. Even more striking – there were flag sellers everywhere.
That was very notable. There were more flag, button and sticker salespeople there than I had ever seen at a protest rally. Only the DNC rivaled the amount of vendors that I saw at this event.
I didn’t see any of the grammatical nightmare signs that are featured all over the internet. This guy had the only misspelling that I noticed:
Oh, and this guy should have done a fact check:
Other than that, signs were about on par with other genres of protests.
(Bonus points for the Ayn Rand reference. Why do conservatives obsess over her so?)
(I’m fairly certain that I saw this Franklin quote at an Anti-Bush rally as well)
…and this guy wins the internet.
As a mad leftie, I feel that I should point out some of the more ridiculous central themes. Obama isn’t teaming up with Pelosi and Reed to be a dictator. The working model of a dictatorship is one guy in charge, with a bunch of underlings. Congress has been enough of a pain for Obama to dispel the claims of fascism. The claims of rampant socialism and taxation are gross exaggerations as well. But if the liberals had a true Fox News equivalent during the Bush days, there probably would have been a handful of ‘em out on the mall making equally wacky claims.
I didn’t see anything racist, and I’m not surprised. Lefty that I am, I’m at least able to distinguish a political movement from a racist one. A few people made it a point of announcing it isn’t about race:
I believe that liberals who call the TP movement racist are blinded by their hate for the group, and they project the most distasteful label they can give to it. It is exactly like how I was called anti-American when I took part in peace protests. There probably were a few people at those protests that had genuinely anti-American sentiments, and there are probably YouTube clips of them circulating somewhere. The pictures and the stories get circulated and turned into folklore. Just like the stories protesters who spat on the veterans returning from Viet Nam. It turns out that this probably never happened – or if it did, it was an isolated incident.
Similarly, there were probably some folks in the crowd that were racists. But if a racist plays football, that doesn’t make it a racist football game. Similarly, if there are some racists in an anti-tax movement, that doesn’t make the movement racist.
It’s easy to get the wrong impression at a protest, though. Because there are always crazy nutters who show up to protests.
Oh, and speaking of nutters, I didn’t see any of those incognito liberals that the internet has been so worried about. There were a few counter protesters, though.
…and here’s your liberal nutter. Sporting a “One Lord” hat and a Bob Marley T-Shirt, this guy decided to vent at the Tea Partiers and tell them what is wrong with their movement. And yes, he accused them of being afraid of a black president. A few Tea Partiers got in his face for a nice loud argument, which was undoubtedly the photo-op the swarming crowd of media was looking for. Especially when one of the TP’ers got into the fray while his eight year old son sat on his shoulders. But I’ll give the Tea Partiers credit for what happened next. Some cooler heads in the crowd realized that there was nothing good that could come from fighting with a crazy person, so they started chanting “walk away”. The crowd dispersed without further incident.
…much to the disappointment of NBC.
Most (if not all) of the other liberals there were more well behaved. They paraded around the vent with giant signs reminding that Obama really isn’t the Tax Miser that he was being made out to be. These signs didn’t have much of an effect on the protesters – you’d have better luck preaching abstinence at a go-go bar than you would have converting people to liking Obama at a Tea Party Rally – but they probably made for an nice photo-op for all the non-Fox networks.
Oh, and speaking of non-Fox networks, I spent some time following CNN’s John King while he was interviewing Dick Armey, trying to get a shot of both of them with an anti-CNN sign in the background. But the sun glare on my camera and Dick’s hat foiled that plan. The “CNN” was covered by the brim:
The silliest thing about the interview was when one of the Tea Partiers mistook John King for Anderson Cooper, and heckled him loudly. I wish I had a camcorder for that part. After the interview, Armey took on another reporter that obviously thought he could advance his journalistic career by dressing like Jimmy Olsen:
The protest turnout was decent. Fox will probably make it look like a mob scene, and other networks may take shots that diminish the crowd. Here’s about as accurate a picture as I could take at 5:30 as the rally officially started:
One last thing before I end this long, overly-pictured post. I had mentioned that the right wing labeled liberals as anti-American when they bitched and moaned about their government, what their government was doing, and things that they didn’t like in general. As I was walking through the crowds North of the Washington Monument, it struck me that here was a group of right wingers that were bitching about their government, what their government was doing, and things that they didn’t like in general. Yet the central themes of their movement – the colonial dress, the flags, even their movement’s name – are all screaming at the top of their lungs what great patriots they are. This dichotomy may just be what annoys me most about the Tea Party Patriots.
(no subject)
Date: 17/4/10 14:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/4/10 18:57 (UTC)You've hit on an important point - most Tea Partiers probably don't consider themselves to be racits. That's why I believe calling them such is a horrible thing. Many of them are governed by fallacious notions, and are in desperate need of another source of information. If you call them racists, and they know that they are not, they won't believe anything else that you say.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 00:10 (UTC)By attacking them you only make the real "Wing Nuts" seem more reasonable.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 03:13 (UTC)Just because they don't THINK they are racist, and don't believe it when people tell them they are doesn't make their delusions true.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 03:49 (UTC)It seems that we've gotten away from actually demonstrating through action, deed and word the accusation of racism, and redherring's post and self-described experiences seem at least to indicate an impression that generally speaking, paints a much more moderated and less inflammatory picture.
I mean, if in a large crowd, some 2 or 3 percent hold signs which are clearly racist, do their actions indicate that the person ten people away holding the sign demonstrating against current fiscal policy also a racist? Is the latter person even necessarily aware of the former?
If we fail to link an individual to personal actions, words, and deeds which are racist, then saying "Just because they don't think they're racist doesn't mean they aren't" comes tantalizingly close to accusing a person with a negative argument (like trying to answer the question: "Have you stopped beating your spouse yet?"). It presumes guilt without demonstrating it, and just like that question, there is no way to defend ones self against it. But the weakness originates in these circumstances, from the person making the accusation.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 03:57 (UTC)I do, however, believe there to be a racist undercurrent in some of their viewpoints. A person has to ask themselves why the teabaggers assume Obama, the black man, is not American yet didn't ask the same of McCain, the white man, who actually wasn't born in a US state.
Many of the signs that are carried, and the attitudes espoused by individuals are racist whether they realize it or not.
Opposition to welfare is largely based on the idea that the minority Welfare Queen is sponging the system. Opposition to immigration is based in fear of minorities.
But, you are right, I shouldn't characterize every individual in that movement as racist unless they prove it.
I just oppose not calling out a racist sign or a person or a thought or a viewpoint as racist if it clearly is.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 04:18 (UTC)As someone who has been involved with the tea parties to some extent, not just by showing up to a couple of rallies (the small, local one was actually much better than the larger one held at the state capitol - I guess being as small a town as we are doesn't have as much appeal to the crazies, but if you're out to get attention for yourself, then small ain't where its at) but also having gone to some organizing meetings I can say while there was upset, the presentation given was more like an economics class in terms of slides shown and the like, and it was also brought up how much we can't let the conversation get shifted to birthers, or crazies.
I also wouldn't characterize opposition to welfare as necessarily being one of race either. I mean, the derogatory term "white trash" kinda overlaps with "welfare queen' in several areas.
By all means, point out the racists, but also point out just how representative or not they are in proportion to the whole. Hell, I and others who have been involved know how much media scrutiny we're under and how much we've got to keep our noses clean by distancing ourselves from that element. The most dispiriting part is seeing that element circled, highlighted and underscored by the media - without much of an effort to talk to many of the sane people who are there.
(no subject)
Date: 18/4/10 21:25 (UTC)