We Party, You Party, Tea Party
This past year also saw the emergence of the Tea Party (or Tea Bagger) phenomenon. Started as an unofficial “people’s party” during the 2008 Presidential campaign, the Tea Partyers, urged on by their unofficial den mother, half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and her sidekick, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, purported to represent the so-called “average American:” those concerned citizens who are fed up with so-called “Big Government,” with high taxes and with having a “Kenyan-born socialist” in the White House. The Tea Partyers distinguished themselves through their polarizing anti-immigrant quasi-white power rhetoric about wanting to “take America back,” and held rallies where those in the crowd felt free to wear visible weapons as part of their ensemble while holding up signs depicting President Obama as the Joker, with a Hitler mustache, and so on. Liberals reacted with a mix of horror and amusement— horror at the incendiary rhetoric the Tea Partyers espoused but also amusement at the inside joke hidden within the Tea Baggers’ name, which we still can’t believe they haven’t changed yet.
