The Tea Party: Mislabel, Misunderstand, Misinform

Tax Day 2010 is upon us, and the Tea Party movement is in full swing. This particular aspect of American politics is something that I have loved studying over the last year. Watching the Tea Party and how it is portrayed in the media, I am reminded of a quote by Gandhi:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

You see, when the Tea Party movement began to spring up last year, they were largely ignored by the media. With the exception of Anderson Cooper cracking juvenile 'teabagging' jokes, and Keith Olbermann blithely condoning that the tea partiers were merely backwards redneck racists who could not deal with a black man in the White House, the media kept the Tea Party on the back burner, preferring to report on whatever celebrity TMZ had seen naked in Los Angeles.

Then, as it became apparent that the Tea Party was not going to go quietly into the night, the media began launching attacks en masse. Olbermann once again brought out the racist element. In fact, MSNBC is more to blame for the racist label being applied to the Tea Party than any other entity. Cooper cracked another teabagging joke, and Olbermann stated that the Tea Partiers were mostly illiterate rednecks who think that the Civil War is still going on.

These snide remarks continued all the way to April of this year, when the true Tax Day Tea Party rallies were entering full swing. Websites began popping up begging people to crash the Tea Parties with poorly spelled and often racist signs, and even scream racial slurs to make the Tea Parties look bad.

Think back to Gandhi's quote. The Tea Party movement has been ignored, ridiculed, and now openly resisted. The only logical step remaining is for the Tea Party to win. In fact, I can very seriously see a landslide of conservative voting that will make the Republican Revolution of 1994 look like a mild primary season.

The Tea Party, you see, is not a racist movement. They are angry, yes. Angry about the inane amount of taxes that we're all paying. Angry about out of control government spending. Angry about a near unilateral disarmament during what is still a dangerous time. Angry about our congress selling our children's future to China one dollar at a time.

They are not angry about the color of Barack Obama's skin. They don't care about his race, they car about his seemingly socialist political philosophy. They care about the fact that our President, the leader of the free world, is so busy bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing to European nations that he's neglected the common man.

They care about the fact that he's reneged on almost every campaign promise. That he went against the will of the populace to pass health care, and then brazenly challenged his political opponents to try and repeal it. That he's pushing to further decrease our nuclear armament; an armament that some say has protected the world for the last sixty years.

So I say, Go Tea Parties! The current administration is claiming that debating its policies is tantamount to racism. But to borrow a quote from Hillary Clinton, "We have a right to debate, with this, or any administration." We have a right, according to our own founding documents, to petition congress for a redress of grievances. I personally would like to see congress own up to the fallacies they've perpetrated on the American people.

Go Tea Parties!