Yes, today, April 15th, is not only Tax Day, it is Teabag Day. Dozens upon dozens of people who are mad as hell are gathering all over the country to...well, I'm not quite sure what they are doing. Whatever it is they are trying to say, they are saying it with tea.
A little history: The Boston Tea Party was an act of civil disobedience in 1773. Cue Schoolhouse Rock:
He taxed their property,
He didn't give them any choice,
And back in England,
He didn't give them any voice.
(That's called taxation without representation,
and it's not fair!)
But when the Colonies complained
The king said: "I don't care!"
He even has the nerve
To tax our cup of tea.
To put it kindly, King,
We really don't agree.
Gonna show you how we feel.
We're gonna dump this tea
And turn this harbor into
The biggest cup of tea in history!
OK, enough history. Today's protest is all about...well, again, I'm not sure. I do know that I first heard about a tea uprising in the aftermath of the economic stimulus bill that passed shortly after President Obama took office. A popular buzz was that one could spend one million dollars per day since the birth of Christ and still not have spent the $787 billion in that bill. Quick math: 2000 years, 365 days per, that's 730,000 days, and $730 billion. Clearly, Obama's spending is out of control, and he must be stopped. Why, if any American president attempted to spend that much money, there's be protests all over the place, right?
Wait a tic. Go back to the birth of Christ, and spend FOUR million dollars per day (go ahead, I'll wait, you deserve the Lamborghini). Done? Great. You still haven't spent the amount of money President Bush did on his two wars, his medicare prescription drug benefit package, and the TARP bailout of last fall.
So, teabaggers, you've done this before, right? There were"uprisings" aplenty when Bush was spending like, well King George, yes? No? Really? Must be something else.
Oh yes, how silly of me! Taxes! Taxes, taxes, taxes! Why, that scoundrel Obama has slammed the American people since he got into office with a tax break for ninety-five percent of us. Who the hell does he think he is?
And the rich are getting soaked, I tell you. Soaked like a baseball glove left out in the rain! Do you realize that the top five percent of wage earners in the country are paying ten percent less in taxes then they were under that bastion of tax relief, President Reagan? That's completely unacceptable!
In reality, the only taxes that have gone up under President Obama are those on tobacco. If the teabaggers are protesting taxes, they must be mighty confused. Obama is doing exactly what he said he would on the campaign trail, reduce taxes for a great majority of people, yet that is an alternate reality for those Lipton and Tetley screamers today.
An aside here: protesting against taxes is pretty much a libertarian passion, but you'll be shocked to know that this tea movement has been hijacked by the GOP, and promoted like hell on FOX, the fair and balanced network. HA! They have anchors hosting shows from protest locations today. Can you imagine the aneurysms they would be having if the folks at MSNBC we running ads for war protests and hosting from them back in 2004?
But here is what cracks me up the most about the Republicans: every time they think they are being "hip" (see "Steele, Michael"), they instead demonstrate that they are completely out of touch. I don't know how many times I have heard someone on TV saying that they were going "teabagging" today. Excuse me for releasing my inner thirteen year old, but do they have any idea what that means? How am I not supposed to have my lunch come through my nose when they interview Ethel from Oklahoma, who proudly proclaims that she has "never teabagged before" and is "looking forward to it"?
(OK, it occurs to me that there might be a person or two out there who has no idea what I am talking about, so in the interest of being informative, go here-but be warned that it's not rated PG-if you need to know why I cringe every time I hear Glenn Beck talk about going out to teabag.)
So where was I? We've determined so far that: if you protested today because of outrageous spending, and you didn't do it when George W. Bush was out of control, you're full of it. If you protested today because you're outraged over your skyrocketing taxes, you're full of it.
What else is left?
How about you're protesting because the candidate you voted for lost in November, and it drives you absolutely bonkers that Obama is president now. How about you're protesting because it drives you crazy that the Democrats are in control, and you will do anything to express the contempt that you have for them, even though that when your Republican president and Republican-controlled US Congress were doing worse, you sat on your ass and did nothing, because Armageddon under the GOP is better than anything under the Democrats, at least in your view.
Admit your partisanship, and I'll at least give you credit for being honest. Otherwise, where the fuck have you been for the last seven years?
I leave with this video. Watch the first two minutes, forty-one seconds (actually, just listen to it-that's the key). It's fookin' brilliant.
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1 comment:
Ding ding ding ding! I think you've got it. I wrote many of the same things today, but you did it much better than I did, and I honestly didn't read this until after I posted mine! As I was watching some of the teabagging coverage (snicker), I told Ken, "It's about nothing more than being mad that they lost...mad that it's President Obama rather than President McCain."
As for the teabagging thing, I think MSNBC is much more subversive than we give them credit for. They started their own teabagging campaign with tongue firmly in cheek (snicker) and sure enough, there were people who don't know what it really means, and have never heard of the Urban Dictionary, so now you've got your hypothetical Ethel from Oklahoma talking about teabagging. It's almost elegant in its evil, isn't it? :D
Beth
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