I see your true colours shining through…

Looking at the Tea party movement in America (they actually tried to set up a branch over here but kind of fell apart. Partially because  a group named after the Boston Teaparty wasn’t exactly going to be popular among British conservatives, but mainly because if you organise a tea party in Britain then people expect a cuppa damn it! Holding a tea party without tea is definitely blasphemy and they were roundly tutted and ‘I sayed’ out of the country).

The teaparty movement is made up of lots of people with teabags who want to teabag politicians and teabag taxes and teaba- *snerk* damn it, Americans, couldn’t your extremists have picked a slightly LESS ridiculous name? It’s nearly impossible to take them seriously like this!

Anyway, the organisation appears to be against taxes (in general and total it seems… yeah, that’ll work), against healthcare (even when needing it themselves, ahhh ignorance), anti-communism (oh please, the red scare is SOOOO last century! Get with the new paranoid hatred already), pro guns (I wouldn‘t trust these guys with a letter opener, personally), pro Palin (and if nothing else was indicative of severe problems then this certainly is) and pro traditional values, whatever those mean.

Well they had a rally in DC where, among with several rather… reality disconnected statements, they called black politicians n*gger and gay politicians f*ggot and spit on a black politician.

Sing it with me: “I see your true colours, shining through…”

To say this is horrendous and disgustingly offensive is, of course, an understatement. It’s even kind of shocking – not that such sentiments are surprising but because they’re willing to voice such hatred in such a blatantly open fashion. If there were any sense of reality or equality then these people would be shunned, the parties would flinch away from being associated with them and only “teabaggers” that avidly repudiated such vileness would be given a shred of credibility by the media or political parties. This should be the death knell of the movement as a serious political force – at least insofar as respect from the legitimate people in power is concerned.

Because this shit is not ok. It’s not legitimate. It’s not reasonable. It’s not acceptable. And any media presenter or politician that treats it and them as any of these things is worrisome in the extreme – not just for themselves but as an indication as to the state of American politics.

(And don’t give me any bullshit freedom of speech argument. Freedom of speech means getting to say whatever the hell you want – not that political parties and media outlets need to treat your ravings as rational, sensible, relevant or even remotely acceptable).

Sadly, I don’t think this hatred will be treated with the contempt it deserves… I hope for it – but I don’t expect it. And that is worrying.