#1203 A Yip of Tea

Yap yap yap. It’s all I hear when I turn on the TV. One commentator or another interviewing one or another tea partier, and all they do is yap yap yap.
Everyone is a total expert on what they don’t want, and no one has a solution. Less taxes, they say, but don’t cut my district’s services.
I read an interesting article the other day, in which the author advanced the theory that Tea Partiers are ex-hippies. Well not hippies, so much as Yippies. A recent poll indicated that the vast majority of people in the various Tea Party outbursts were white, middle-aged males.
That’s not a big surprise. Unemployment is highest among males and downsizing companies are often letting the oldsters go first. It’s also the group who lost the most from the 401k meltdown.
But the writer took the notion one step further. He pointed out how the Tea Party political tactics were very similar to the tactics used by the Yippies in the sixties—street theatre, shouting opponents down, creating media circi wherever they go.
Today’s group of disaffected anti-government males taking to the tea parties comes straight from the group of disaffected anti-government males that once took to the streets. The sixties’ activists who developed techniques to get noticed. Holding signs, being confrontational and, as I said before, making sure the media turned on their every little colorful gathering.
They wore the American flag as parts of their clothing back then too. But as I recall, they used a different kind of tea then when they had one of those there tea parties.
A tea with far more stems and seeds.
Amazing. Except this time, by the time we got to Woodstock, we were cranky. Too bad that recent tea party convention didn’t get quite as big as Woodstock. Then again, who wants to protest health care in the mud.
Anti-Vietnam war is one thing, but anti-universal health care is a little tougher sell.
But that still doesn’t stop them from doing what they do best— yapping.
From Yippies, to Yuppies, to Yappies.
America, ya gotta love it.