The Tea Parties: So That Happened:
Yesterday, thousands of poor and middle-class people were manipulated into helping rich people keep more of their money. It's sort of like going to a Yankees game, but without the souvenirs.

The Rude Pundit thinks it's generally a good thing when large groups of people come together for a cause, and, agree or disagree with the cause, getting people in the habit of protesting is ultimately positive for the nation. It gives us a more European feel, where citizens tend to actually give a shit about what their government is doing. Would that many of the people holding up signs yesterday had respected our antiwar marches back in 2003 and 2004, but, hey, water under a bridge built of bones, you know.

What is stunning is that yesterday's Tea Party protests were based on a demonstrable, factual lie. It wasn't about interpreting something or opinions. No, what people were protesting was actually a falsehood. They were played for suckers while they thought they were saving democracy. It was a bait and switch, man, a con game that was more dishonest than sidewalk three-card monte.

The whole day was filled with Fox-fanned falsehoods, starting with the whole acronym the protests adopted after "teabag" became the subject of mucho deserved mocking. "Taxed Enough Already" presupposes that taxes will be raised. And it seems that the tea partyers simply think that Barack Obama is lying to them when he says that the taxes for the vast, vast majority of Americans are lower under his plan. (On his radio show, Alan Colmes was screaming at callers who kept insisting that Obama was raising taxes for everyone.) The protests were against some fantasy administration, a sandwich of fascism on a socialism bun covered in a secret sauce of tyranny. It's like prayer: you can't really prove that it matters, but, hey, someone told you it was a good idea to do it, so down on your knees you go.

But it's not just the concept of being "taxed enough" that was a chimera. The Fox "news" hosts built the day around a fantasy America, as if we were all in a 1950s elementary school history class being force-fed the long-disproved myths of the nation.

Take, for instance, this one that Taste of Texas restaurant owner Nina Hendee told Glenn "Twitchy" Beck while they were standing outside the Alamo in San Antonio: "The night before the Alamo fell, [Col. William B.] Travis gathered his men in this courtyard, took out his saber right there, and this is where the line in the sand came from. He drew -- history says -- he drew the line in the sand right here and said, 'If you'll will stand with me and fight with me, you may die with me, come and cross this line with me,' and they did." Beck returned to that "line in the sand" again and again in his broadcast yesterday, as when he yammered, "I have a feeling something big is starting with the tea parties and I think the line is being drawn in the sand once again."

Except, you know, Travis didn't draw a line in the sand at the Alamo. He was kind of a dick, too. And let's not even get into why the Alamo was there in the first place.

Later, on On the Record with Greta Van Susteren's Nose Job, Beck echoed himself: "Everybody's always heard, you know, draw a line in the sand. This is where it happened. They drew a line in the sand and said, Enough is enough." Which is a misreading based on a lie. Even if the line story was true, the soldiers knew they were gonna die.

Compound this with the near-constant, unrelenting gang rape of the Founders by Fox and the tea partyers. Sean Hannity had on the creepy fuckin' Thomas Paine actor and, really, they may as well skull-fucked the real Paine's bones, each taking a hole so Hannity and the old guy could rub their cocks against each other. Said faux Paine, "My name is Thomas Paine. In 1776, I wrote, 'The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.' Now, my fellow Americans, it's your moment to change the course of history. On this night in Atlanta, Georgia, citizen Sean Hannity and the rest of an aroused nation will hear from you as we the people once again declare our independence." Of course, Paine was advocating for war with Great Britain. Yeah, "Common Sense" even lays out the military strategy and the postwar economic situation. Oh, and he was also specifically advocating for the unity of the colonies, not really for any kind of states' rights. But, sure, yeah, he did write that thing about the sun.

How goddamned simple-minded this whole tea party thing was. How divorced from reality. What a waste of time, of energy, of paper and ink. All it succeeded in doing was propping up some egos, giving understandably frustrated people a place to misdirect their anger, and allowing there to be an hour of TV that featured Ted Nugent, Penn Jillette, and Janine Turner, like Hell's Tonight Show.

One last thing: Unless Joe the Plumber starts snakin' some fuckin' pipes, he has to drop the title.