Tea Party rhetoric is full of "normal" people and "ordinary" citizens. At the bottom of a Tea Party website, www.teapartypatriots.org, is a link to "Regular Folks United: The Bully Pulpit for Regular Folks". Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, is championed as a 'sort of everywoman'-- an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that according to her supporters, her ordinariness is part of her appeal (http://www.ajc.com/). Another Tea Party site, www.teaparty.org, lists as one of their 'non-negotiable core beliefs' that "Political Offices [be] Available to Average Citizens". That same website also proclaims that "the Tea Party is the voice of the true owners of the United States, WE THE PEOPLE."
And who are the People, exactly?
Well, if the People are the Tea Party, then according to the CBS-NYT survey data, the People are predominantly white, Protestant or Catholic, at least 45 years old, and earning a total family income of at least $60,000 per year. If you compare the Tea Party respondents' numbers with the data from the Census Bureau (from 2009, just one year later than the CBS-NYT data), you will find that although most Americans do identify as white (65.1%) and are relatively wealthy (median family income of $52,029), there are still significant social groups not included in the Tea Party movement. Nationally, 12.9% of people identify as black (as compared with 3% of Tea Party respondents), 15.8% identify as Hispanic or Latino (as compared with 1%), and 4.6% identify as Asian (as compared with 1%). In addition, in 2008 13.2% of the American people were living below the poverty level, which was $14,000 for a family of two. Only 5% of polled Tea Party supporters reported a total family income below $15,000.
The persistent belief of Tea Party supporters that they represent 'The American People' illustrates the potency of the American imperialist narrative, and the blindness of many white Americans to their own privilege (and their blindness to the existence and needs of other races). "Teabaggers" in general seem unaware of how much their ideals contradict each other. Teaparty.org's "About" page claims that the "Tea Party dream includes all who possess a strong belief in the foundational Judaic/Christian values embedded in our great founding documents....[T]he responsibility of our beloved nation is entrenched within the hearts of true American Patriots from all walks of life, every race, religion and national origin". Obviously, not every religion operates according to "Judaic/Christian values". The Tea Party rhetoric wants to be 'accurately' American (following all popular American myths, such as the American melting pot), but doesn't bother to critically engage with -- or even acknowledge -- the diverse interests and histories which have formed those narratives. Tea Party supporters (as far as I can tell) blindly and enthusiastically regurgitate all of the American myths fed to them through high school textbooks and Time Magazine, and because they take those myths to be good, equate them with their own interests (which naturally must be good).
Zernike's charming young revolutionaries, actually seemingly well-read, are irrelevant if the policies engendered by the Tea Party movement are based on Glenn Beck's "logic" and leftover anti-Communist paranoia from the baby boomers. The Howard Beale comparison is almost too obvious -- these people are mad, and they want to scream about it. The only difference is that they don't even need a leader; their leader is "American" rhetoric.
All of the YouTube videos I watched of the Tea Party demonstrators showed, overwhelmingly, people who were angry because they had been fed a few lines by Fox News and Sarah Palin. They were riled up over "Obamacare" and didn't even know the details of the plan. They marched with signs raging against "czars" and didn't even know what function czars performed in government. Teaparty.org's founder Dale Robertson writes that he "knew the Tea Party concept was far superior, because it removed all the obstacles of party lines, without the baggage of confused issues and only focused on a few talking points." Indeed. Is this the revolutionary politics of the proudly mediocre Americans? -- ignore those confusing issues, and take the talking points to heart?
I really loved the way that you deconstructed the demographic of the Tea Party in order to counter the claim that they represent "the people." It is unfortunate that people in the United States today are taught not only to be color-blind but also blind to social class and one's positionality within frameworks of race, class, gender and sexuality. This makes it hard or impossible for people to realize or deconstruct their own privilege. On the other hand, few people want to acknowledge their privilege because this serves to denaturalize it.
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