Tea Party- please explain

[Anonymous]

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/18/free-speech-vs-hate-speech/

More discussion of lunacy on BOTH SIDES. But feel free to paint one little Tea Party with your brush and keep your blinders on to the rest .

[Anonymous]

Let the tea partiers speak for themselves. I think the photo in the above picture says it all.

I love how they obviously crammed the second "o" onto the word "too".

[Anonymous]

You seem pretty intent to engage in strawman arguments and refuse to actually engage the points I bring up. It's pretty useless to continue this dialogue. Enjoy your echo chamber.

[Anonymous]

Enjoy your one-sided unreality and your 'strawman' 'race card' arguments. I've addressed all your points. Ciao!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let the tea partiers speak for themselves. I think the photo in the above picture says it all.

I love how they obviously crammed the second "o" onto the word "too".

The funny thing is -- if you look at the other link, you will see anti-war protesters depicting Bush as a Nazi/fascist with his arm up. I guess the world is short on ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Enjoy your one-sided unreality and your 'strawman' 'race card' arguments. I've addressed all your points. Ciao!

I'm not even sure you know what any of those words mean. BS rhetoric =/= logical argument. Fuck off.

[Anonymous]

Aren't you charming? You'd fit in right at the edge of a Tea Party rally!

[Anonymous]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjkUZCLvC3Q

Need I say more? There is an article in the Examiner, but the site is down for maintenance, but you might want to google that as well once it's back up.

[Anonymous]

It appears to be facetious. Chill out.

[Anonymous]

A shirt saying, "Yup, I'm a racist" with one of the rationales being, "I support the tea party" is a pretty big stretch to consider facetious. I understand roughly the point they are trying to make, but they don't actually address the legitimate claims of racism made about some of the ideologies espoused on the back. It seems more like a tactic to simply disarm the criticism rather than engage it head on, which doesn't really do much for that side of the argument. It would also imply that everyone buying the shirt understands the sophisticated level of irony being utilized in the shirt, which I'd say is a stretch (not because they are tea partiers specifically, just in general). Watch the documentary done by Pelosi's daughter about the 2008 campaign. While the tea party wasn't formed yet, a lot of the same ideas were floating around then. People openly embraced their racism AND the arguments that would later turn into the Tea Party. I doubt those folks would buy that shirt facetiously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:... People openly embraced their racism AND the arguments that would later turn into the Tea Party. I doubt those folks would buy that shirt facetiously.

It's a tee shirt, not an editorial. It makes its point ironically, that there is nothing intrinsically racist about most of the tea party ideas. Of course, it does not address the problem that many of us complain about, which is that tea parties are also a magnet for racists, even though many of the adherents are not racist.

Both sides should avoid over-simplification.

[Anonymous]

Just to clarify-the tea party doesn't believe you shouldn't pay taxes..please stop spreading this stupid myth. They believe that taxes should be kept at a minimum and certainly not for "social justice" programs as well as the burden of taxes should not be falling on one group of people i.e. punishing success. I marvel at how many people say "tax the rich" just not my taxes because they aren't rich--well how are you going to get there if everytime you move up you have a tax structure in place to punish you..makes no sense but there are a lot of people who have no motivation so are happy to see the financially productive get penalized. I see the the taxation with no representation because there are a group of mostly democrats who feel my hard work should be there gain.

[Anonymous]

What myth did I spread that the tea party believes in no taxation? I never said that.

And if you REALLY want to get into the politics of the progressive tax system, I'm all for it. Perhaps a separate thread because it would be a tangent on a tangent at this point. But your oversimplified analysis simply falls far short of capturing what it is REALLY about, warts and all.

[Anonymous]

As for the t-shirt, you can make excuses all you want, but it is what it is. There are definitely ways they can make their point. But a shirt that says, "Yup, I'm a racist" on the front doesn't really do that, especially considering one would need a close up view of the back to understand the attempted point at irony. No where does it specifically lay out that it is intended to be ironic and demonstrate that the party platform is absent racism.

Again, engaging in hyperbolic speech (like the t-shirt) invites reactions. You can't claim, "We don't REALLY mean it," when your shirt LITERALLY screams it out.

[Anonymous]

It's a co-opting T-shirt. It's like saying 'I'm here, I'm queer!" --using the language of your critics. Except in their case they're using that language, taking the mindless charge of their critics "YER ALL RACISTS", to make the opposite point: describing their actual, non-racist platform. They're having fun/making fun and it's getting your goat. Hilarious.