Thursday, March 4, 2010

Tea Partiers and the Angry Left

By Bob Tyrrell

"Whatever happened to the mainstream media's high regard for "anger" in politics? From roughly the midterm elections of 2006 through the presidential election of 2008, the "Angry Left" seemed to grow in stature with the media. Liberal pundits spoke of it with a hush of awe. By the election of the Prophet Obama, the Angry Left had acquired a hallowed public status similar to that of the "muckraker" or the "consumerist," though no consumerist whom I ever have known has been agreeable company. Would you want to sit down to tea with, say, Ralph Nader? Certainly Ralph never has been known for his hearty laugh or elegant manners.


Yes, I said "tea." The word has become something of a red flag among the bien-pensants . Tea brings to mind Tea Parties, which for the bien-pensants means angry political activists, not angry political activists of the noble variety but angry political activists of the alarming variety. That is to say, activists variously inveighed against as members of the "extreme right," the "far right," the Reagan administration. The Tea Partiers supposedly are crazed and provincial — or, as a recent chronicler of the Tea Party movement, John Avlon, puts it, "wingnuts.""

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