Just today, before I sat down to write this, I saw Anderson Cooper on CNN and Bill O'Reilly on Fox trying to figure it out … and missing the point entirely. Anderson, a very smart man, was asking Ron Paul why "the tea party hasn't endorsed your son, running for Congress?" I didn't wait to hear Paul's answer, but I was laughing at Cooper's lack of understanding of the "tea party" itself. It's not an organization, a political "party"; there are no paid flacks laying out strategies in a back room, painting signs for out-of-work folks to parade in public places, hardly knowing what the slogans are about. It's not a long planned, well laid out agenda aimed at toppling some party or promoting another – or even creating a new one.
Mind you, this came on the heels of Boone practically whining about how no one noticed that *he* was the first person to call for a New Boston Tea Party:
On March 7, a year ago, in this space I called for "A New Boston Tea Party." Though I hadn't heard anybody else proposing it, I soon learned that others were spontaneously and independently calling for the same thing.
OK, so let's get back to the topic I was going to write about. Remember, Boone said this was not an organization.
Yet, the very next line after making that point, we find this....Have you seen our Tea Party Store? Everything you need to express your outrage with the Obama Socialist Express
Once more:
What liberals and party bosses and jaded people in the media can't seem to comprehend is that nobody started this, nobody organized this, no secret big money funded it, and nobody is orchestrating it now!
And:
Or:
Sarah did a pretty good job of explaining there is no governing authority, nobody presuming to tell the huge, disparate, diverse horde of citizens what they have to say or not say.
And:
Did you get that? Now get this:
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps in aggregate several millions of Iranians have taken to the streets, the parks, the plazas, also chanting and yelling and waving placards, also demanding that their governing authorities listen to them and do their bidding.
That's right! He equates the Teabaggers, a small group of disgruntled sheeplejerks whining about the ultrarich paying a few dollars more in taxes with people trying to get free of a repressive religiocratic regime!
I wonder if the Iranians can buy T-shirts?