{"id":1321,"date":"2009-07-03T12:13:45","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T19:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2009-07-03T12:13:45","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T19:13:45","slug":"the-tea-party-tea-baggers-really-have-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1321","title":{"rendered":"The Tea Party Tea Baggers Really Have Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last April’s Tax Day Tea Party was by all objective accounts a massive failure<\/a>. Estimates of national attendance hovered at something below 300,000. To put that in perspective, twice as many people went to see “The Hangover”<\/em> last Saturday.<\/p>\n

The dismal showing of Tea Baggers was achieved after having received millions of dollars worth of free publicity and promotion from Fox News. The network executed a wall-to-wall campaign promoting these events and their own participation in them. They shamelessly recruited viewers to take up the cause and sent their biggest stars out as enticements. And still they underperformed the expectations of their own organizers who predicted crowds in the millions.<\/p>\n

So capitalizing off of that disaster, the Tea Partiers are back with a new sense of excitement and hope. Unfortunately, other than the most rabid disciples, the excitement is shared by very few. Even Fox News is offering tepid support. They have made a few mentions, and hosted a few interviews, but it is nothing comparable to the far-flung campaign they orchestrated last spring. Without the support of Fox’s mass media megaphone, it is unlikely that this ersatz movement will make much of a splash.<\/p>\n

A story in the Washington Independent<\/a> provides some interesting (and hilarious) details about the July 4, version of the Tea Parties. Organizers seem to have accepted the reality that prospects for the revolution they dreamed of have receded. One of the national organizers for the Tea Party Patriots is expressing her joy that a followup to Atlanta’s Tea Party in April (which she said drew 20,000 people) brought out only 70 TPers. This way, she feverishly rationalized, she could talk to every participant. Perhaps all sponsors of public protests should implore people to stay away so that this benefit could be enjoyed more often.<\/p>\n

The organizer of the Dallas Tea Party is taking a different approach. He seems to want people to attend, even if that means he won’t be able to speak to all of them individually. To that end he is pulling out all the stops:<\/p>\n

“We’re using the fireworks and the Monkees and the rest of that to attract people who never though they’d be at a Tea Party.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, it is just one Monkee, Mickey Dolenz. That should guarantee at least the 70 people that the Atlanta Tea Party pulled in. More interesting is the admission that he intends to dupe potential attendees with fireworks and celebrities on the Fourth of July holiday to get them to show up for a Tea Party that they likely would not have otherwise attended. How much you wanna bet that Tea Party organizers across the country will try to take credit for every municipal fireworks display, every holiday concert, and even every tailgate party and backyard barbecue, in an attempt to validate their movement?<\/p>\n

The funniest part of all of this is the campaign by radio talker Phil Valentine to “Give the Senate Some Balls.”<\/em> Inspired by those who thought sending members of congress tea bags was a good idea, Valentine is encouraging his listeners to send balls to senators. No, I swear, he really is<\/a>. So after being mocked relentlessly for having chosen to engage in tea bagging, Valentine is compounding that unfortunate imagery with the vision of people sending their balls to the senate.<\/p>\n

I am now officially speechless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last April’s Tax Day Tea Party was by all objective accounts a massive failure. Estimates of national attendance hovered at something below 300,000. To put that in perspective, twice as many people went to see “The Hangover” last Saturday. The dismal showing of Tea Baggers was achieved after having received millions of dollars worth of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,593,534],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-fox-news","tag-phil-valentine","tag-tea-party"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-lj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1385,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1385","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":0},"title":"Fox News Is On Board The Tea Bagger Express – Again","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/31\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In a reprise of last April's Tea Party propaganda campaign, Fox News is once again heavily promoting the latest Astroturf movement by rightist opponents of the administration. This episode of tea baggery is focusing specifically on health care reform. Recall last April, when Fox News not only aired millions of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1528,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1528","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":1},"title":"Fox News Brews Black Tea Party Conservatives","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/19\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In its perpetual promotion of Tea Baggery, Fox News is now peering into a bowl of tea leaves and divining a thoroughly imaginary movement that can only be seen by faithful disciples of Wingnutism. The article on their web site (and linked from Fox Nation) utterly reeks of parody. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1522,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1522","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":2},"title":"Sarah Palin And The Birth Of The Tea Party Media","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/14\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's official. America's most ludicrous, harebrained, unbalanced, politically naive collection of cantankerous, hateful, rightist zealots (Tea Baggers), has spawned its own media association to bring to journalism the same type of biased, counter-factual, willfully ignorant, propaganda pioneered by the AstroTurf lobbyists, evangelists, and politicos who brewed up the Tea Parties\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1620,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1620","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":3},"title":"Say It Loud: They’re Tea Baggers And Now They’re Proud","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/15\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For several months now, Tea Partiers have been indignantly whining whenever anyone referred to them as Tea Baggers. Set aside the fact that they came up with the term themselves, when they discovered that it had another connotation, they insisted that they had nothing to do with it and accused\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1468,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1468","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":4},"title":"The Tea Party Nation Is Revolting","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/19\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This just in: The Tea Party Nation will be holding their first convention in Nashville, TN, this coming February. This AstroTurf gathering of Baggers should prove to be a lively affair with panels on how to disrupt town hall meetings, forums on the similarities between President Obama and Hitler, workshops\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1498,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1498","url_meta":{"origin":1321,"position":5},"title":"The Tea Party Delusion","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/19\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Much has been made this past week about a poll (pdf) by NBC and the Wall Street Journal. It seems that virtually every newsroom in America saw fit to report the astonishing results that showed that the Tea Party movement was viewed more favorably than either the Democrats or Republicans.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}