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http://gawker.com/5469740/the-worlds-worst-opinion-section-explains-the-teabaggersThe World's Worst Opinion Section Explains the Teabaggers
.... Perhaps you've already read David Broder's amazing column on how authentic and popular Sarah Palin is, that ran the same day his own newspaper reported that her favorable numbers have dipped to an all-time low and a majority of self-identified Republicans don't think she's qualified to be president. (The column was dumb enough on its own before the poll numbers, of course. You have to be incredibly cynical about the idiocy of the electorate to think petty, nasty Palin appeals to anyone but a subsection of an enraged political minority. Like, even more cynical about the idiocy of the electorate than we are.) "Take Sarah Palin seriously," the Dean of the Washington Press Corps told his colleagues, who always have taken her far more seriously than she deserves to be taken and who show no signs of stopping now.
But that was just one column! The whole section had Tea Party Fever today, despite the fact that these grizzled old pseudo-moderates have no fucking clue what this "tea party" thing is.
The reliably inoffensive E.J. Dionne devotes his column to explaining the Tea Party thing to fellow old people in Washington. See, it is just Anti-Federalism, pretty much. The column also patiently explains to Those Dumb Liberals that the Tea Parties are Not About Race. Sure, they're exclusively white. Sure, their conference featured Joseph Farrah ranting about Obama's birth certificate. Sure, Dionne writes this passage before explaining that the movement is not about race: ....
"But," Dionne writes after writing of tea partiers literally cheering the return of Jim Crow, "it would be a mistake to see the hostility toward Obama only in terms of race." ....
David Ignatius, the other David, also has some thoughts about the Tea Party. Here is his headline: "Europe could use its own Tea Party."
Yeah, they might be a little nervous about a nativist right-wing populist movement, out in Europe. ....
Send an email to Alex Pareene, the author of this post, at alexp@gawker.com.
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