Oct 26 2010
At the Tea Party: The Wing Nuts, Whack Jobs and Whitey-Whiteness of the New Republican Right… And Why We Should Take It Seriously
With the mid-term election just days away, much is being made of the influence of the Tea Party movement and the inevitability of a Republican sweep of Congress, especially of the House. However, a report in Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post suggests the numbers of Tea Partiers may be inflated. The Post’s Amy Gardner writes that the Tea Party is “not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the political process.” The paper attempted to verify the existence of more than 2,300 Tea Party groups identified by the Tea Party Patriots’ website, and found only 647 of them were reachable and verifiable. Yet, this loose network of ultra-conservatives have managed to alter the political landscape in a very short time, likely affecting the outcome of next week’s election. A new book published by OR Books, and edited by journalist and writer Laura Flanders focuses on the Tea Party, its politics, and progressive responses to it. The book’s title summarizes it well: “At the Tea Party: The Wing Nuts, Whack Jobs and Whitey-Whiteness of the New Republican Right… And Why We Should Take It Seriously.” At the Tea Party has essays by Max Blumenthal, Alexander Cockburn, Lisa Duggan, Bill Fletcher, Glenn Greenwald, Arun Gupta, Chris Hedges, Katha Pollitt, Sarah Posner, Tim Wise, Alexander Zaitchik and many others.
GUEST: Laura Flanders is the host and founder of GRITtv with Laura Flanders, author of the New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species, and Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians. Se also writes for The Nation and The Huffington Post and is a regular contributor to MSNBC
Purchase the book online at www.ORBooks.com. Find out more about Laura Flanders and her show Grit TV at www.grittv.org.
4 Responses to “At the Tea Party: The Wing Nuts, Whack Jobs and Whitey-Whiteness of the New Republican Right… And Why We Should Take It Seriously”
Actually, Tea Party demographics almost exactly mirror the demographics of the adult population of the United States — 18 years old and up. The Tea party is no more white than is the US itself.
gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspx#1
Just heard Laura Flanders on Democracy Now. Nice insulting title for the book and a good way to alienate thousands of working middle class people with very legitimate concerns. The racial element is nice too. I’m sure that you’d be OK with a book containing the phrase “Blacky-Blackness” in the title as well.
Oh well, keep fomenting hatred and divisiveness in the U.S. population. Good tactic for bringing about progress
Fred andMiltonc41,
What about the money, her documentation that the Tea Party is hugely funded by big Republican corporate money, not small grassroots donations? On race, what about the antiimmigration sentiment and Islamophobia? We illegally destroyed Mexican corn farming with Republican farm policy & free trade(exporting at a loss). That’s 1.4million jobs. We armed Saddam even after he gassed the Kurds and trained and mobilized the Afghan terrorists. WTO governance overtakes our Sovereignty. You support that?
Your article really helped me thank you i wait for the next