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Daily Kos: State of the Nation

Teabagging and Free Riders
by Dana Houle
Thu Apr 16, 2009 at 01:20:03 PM PDT

I used to work in the Michigan legislature. Every year on April 15th there would be a big rally outside the state capitol of anti-tax protesters, fulminating about how taxes are theft. It wasn't usually as big a rally as the yearly protest against the Michigan law that requires all riders on motorcycles to wear helmets; that one was huge. But the tax day event was generally one of the bigger protests every year.

If you've been near a state capitol or a major IRS facility on tax day, you've probably seen the same thing. I thought about that this morning as I read the Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up, in particular the blatherings of Official Republican Strategy Genius Karl Rove.

According to Turd Blossom, "the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill." He's right about shrill, and it appears that at the events not organized by the Ron Paul Shock Troops they were also amateurish. But they weren't "decentralized," as one could go to any number of websites and find out where a "tea party" was scheduled near you.

And they weren't spontaneous, because tax protests happen all over the country every year on April 15th. Fox and the teabaggers didn't come up with a new idea, or organize new events. They just mostly glommed on to events that would have happened anyway, with or without teabagging.

We see now that Fox has been touting the next round of Teabagging parties for July 4th. I can't wait for Karl Rove and Fox News to claim that all those people going to fireworks celebrations were a spontaneous eruption of populist anger against high taxes...and how it's good news for John McCain.

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IDES OF MARCH
The 15th of March, according to the Julian calendar; the Julian calendar amended the Roman calendar; the Julian calendar was born in 46 B.C.; two years after the creation of the Julian calendar, its founder was slaughtered; the Liberatores who assassinated Julius Caesar committed, in their words, “tyrannicide”; a couple years ago, I found myself in Washington D.C. during the Ides of March; my friend Pamela, who was working at the Smithsonian, told me about a secret collection of seized war art—owned by the U.S. military; she asked if I’d like to see the secret art collection; I said yes, of course; the collection was in the basement of an anonymous D.C. office building (standing between a hotel and a Starbucks); the collection was viewable by special appointment only; after checking in at a security desk and leaving our driver’s licenses, we were led to the basement by a talkative, middle-aged curator; we passed through a series of doors and finally arrived at a set of thick metal doors requiring a security code; our guide typed the code and we entered the storeroom; the sight was a mundane nightmare: hundreds of Nazi propaganda paintings seized at the end of World War II (featuring Adolph Hitler in various Norman Rockwell-esque portraits, standing in Bavarian town squares, surrounded by a crowd of children with ice cream cones and adorable puppies, to whom Herr Wolf was no doubt telling a rousing joke about strudel, or gypsies); in the corner was a massive steel bust of Hitler’s face, sitting on its side, with a yellow note card reading: “Hitler head, artist unknown”; there were also paintings of Saddam Hussein seized during the first and second Gulf Wars; the curator took joy in watching Pamela and I try to make sense of the startling collection; after 45 minutes, the curator quietly asked: “Want to see the prize of the collection?”; we silently nodded, and were led through another set of locked doors into a cramped room with a filing cabinet against the wall; the curator unlocked one of the drawers and slid it open, revealing six watercolors painted by a young art student named Adolph; the watercolors were all postcard-sized images of nature settings and town squares; these paintings were competent, realistic renderings, a bit stale, but not bad; I was reminded of the title of Hannah Arendt’s most famous work: “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”; I then ascended the steps and went to get a Venti Americano at Starbucks; I called my then-girlfriend to tell her about the breathtaking tour; she answered the phone from an airport in Houston, crying; I had no idea why she was in an airport; she said she was flying to San Francisco to see her cousins; she was distraught; “I need to be with people who love me,” she said; she then turned off her phone and flew to Atlanta; she spent the next five days with her ex-boyfriend; this was not a good time for me; it ended badly, and too late; St. Ides is a popular malt liquor marketed towards African-Americans and enjoyed across America by teenage suburban poseurs; about St. Ides, the Notorious B.I.G. rhymed: “I used to be a hustla/now I’m a 22 brew guzzla”; Ice Cube, in one of his numerous raps shilling St. Ides, spat the line: “Yes, it’s the S-T Crooked I-D-E-S”; Elliot Smith, who died too young (stabbed like a suicidal Samurai), sang: “When I walk around here drunk every night/with an open container from 7-11/In St. Ides Heaven/I’ve been out haunting the neighborhood/and everybody can see I’m no good”; my favorite line of dialogue from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is said to Cassius by Brutus in Act V, Scene I: “…this same day/Must end that work the Ides of March begun./And whether we shall meet again I know not./Therefore our everlasting farewell take:/ Forever and forever farewell, Cassius!/ If we do not meet again, why, we shall smile;/ If not, why, then this parting was well made.”


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