The Tea Party: on the road with America's right-wing radicals | feature | World news | The Observer. I t's 2am on a balmy August morning in Lexington, Kentucky, and the hotel car park is a flurry of activity as people arrive in cars and scurry on board two hired coaches, which rev up their engines in expectation of a long drive through the night. There is excitement in the air but also some apprehension: these are ordinary folk from the American heartland on a mission that will take them into the heart of enemy territory – Washington DC. America's Tea Party is on the move. Soon we're gliding in the dark through bluegrass country.
On the coach, the talk is of retaking the country from those who currently run it, taking an axe to big government and returning to constitutional basics, when federal government was limited and power resided largely with the states. It's all said with an evangelical fervour. "America needs a spiritual renewal," says a genial man everybody calls Mario because of his spectacular handlebar moustache.
"This is America," exclaimed Santelli. When Right-Wing Extremism Moves Mainstream. White America Has Lost Its Mind. About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel. It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed.
White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House). But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip. Todd Harrison (iStockphoto) Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck Tom DeLay Laura Schlessinger Related Stories More About. Mitchell Bard: Why Sarah Palin's North Korea Flub Matters. Sarah Palin provided prime material for news outlets and comedy programs when she said on Glenn Beck's radio show Wednesday: "But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies.
" If she hasn't already, I'm sure Palin will say that the "elitist," "lamestream" media is doing her wrong, and that she is once again a victim of "gotcha journalism. " And Palin's small but passionate group of supporters will undoubtedly argue that Palin made an honest slip of the tongue, something that could happen to any of us. Her supporters are right. Saying "North" instead of "South" is something that any of us could easily do. But here's the thing: Any of us did not stand up two years ago and claim we were qualified to fill a job that is a heartbeat away from the American presidency.
In short, more should be expected of Sarah Palin than any of us, based on how she has portrayed herself, and how she is treated by the media. The real story, though, isn't that Palin said "North" instead of "South. "
What If the Tea Party Were Black? April 25, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. So let’s begin. Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.”
Anderson Cooper humiliates a willfully ignorant Texas birther.