Party On! The Revolt Of The Old
LOS ANGELES — My favorite Tea Party guy is Merle Firestone from Rainbow, Miss., who left home at 4 a.m. last Saturday morning to drive to Nashville. He left a note on the coffeepot for his wife saying he wanted to hear Sarah Palin at the "National Convention" of the "Tea Party." He could not afford a $300 ticket to get into the auditorium at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, but he thought he might get a glimpse of the former Alaska governor.
He didn't see her, but he did get to hang around the hotel and met a lot of other interesting folk, including a Los Angeles Times reporter, Kathleen Hennessy, who asked him what he liked about Palin. He said he was a bow-hunter, and he particularly liked her support for the sport. Well, that touched me because my father was a bow-hunter, too, though I don't remember it affecting his politics. I don't know how many there are now, but more power to them.
Firestone fit the profile: 72 years old, white, a Southerner and a retired small-business man worried about the damned recession.
Palin, it seems, was worth her fee, $100,000 or whatever it was. Bit of a secret there. But Tea Partyers are not against a girl making an honest dollar, particularly when she's willing to die for them. She put it this way:
"I am happy, honored, proud to take any speaking fee and turn it right back around for the cause. It is about the people. I will live, I will die for the people of America."
Now there's a real American thought. Palin is fun — a regular Aimee Semple McPherson, if anyone remembers the sexy evangelist from California at its most unhinged.
Or to update things a bit, Palin is a regular Ross Perot — a rich guy who in his own garbled way voiced the frustrations of vanishing Americans. And the Tea Party looks like that kind of populism, a happy haven for angry vanishing Americans. It provides a place and voice for bow-hunters and such, who see their lives and their way of life threatened by all these new things, these new people.
Although the partyers' obvious target is President Obama, and they are doing him real damage, the whole thing strikes me as more demographic than political. Republican politicians will try to take advantage of the energy of the movement because they share the anti-Obama agenda, but they had better be careful because true partyers are against everyone in power, including Republicans too comfortable or too understanding of the new things and the new America.
The Tea Party's real strength is that people are living longer and no one is sure what to do about that. There are simply more old people. To put it bluntly: They want their kind of health care, with government money but without government regulation, and they don't much care anymore about paying local taxes for the education of other people's children, particularly if those other people are darker or speak with accents.
It is convenient that the fears and frustrations of the fading white majority happen to coincide with the difficult tenure of the first black president. (The same could be said of the visibilty of the new scut workers from Latin America and Asia.) Racism you will always have with you, but that is not the fundamental cause, or even a fundamental cause, for their obvious hatred of that man in the White House. The state of the economy is more important right now than the race of the president giving the State of the Union address. The same demographic forces would be there if the president were white or a woman or both.
There is no role now in the society for many of these people. Their work is not needed, so they are turning to the power of their numbers and of their citizenship. Tea Partyers wave copies of the Constitution around as if (or because) they believe it was written for them. They don't believe it is for or even can be understood by these new others.
But no matter how well we understand the Constitution, it is obviously still a living document which gives the fading and the fearful the space to shout out their anger in the open.
Column Archive
Edmund Burke And Obama 2.0
LOS ANGELES — First the news: Barack Obama is a hell of a speaker. His first State of the Union message will not change history, but it was a skillful balancing act between the winds of change he wants to ride and the sour and contradictory winds of discontent blowing across the United States.
Who Is That Masked Man?
WASHINGTON — When Barack Obama of Illinois first walked into the Capitol of the United States as a senator-elect in 2004, he was greeted with the usual bowing and scraping that senators take for granted in those hallowed halls. His wife was stunned, saying, as I recall: "What will they do if you actually achieve something?"
Why We Are In Haiti -- Because We're Americans
PHILADELPHIA — In February of 1961, President Kennedy asked this question of Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India: "What do you think of the idea of our Peace Corps?"
Why You're Your Own Doctor
DENVER — All of your adult life it seems you are told that you are your own doctor. You don't believe that, or perhaps, just don't think about it, until there inevitably comes a time when you have to spend a good deal of time with physicians.
Harry Reid: The Dealer From Nevada
WASHINGTON — Harry Reid, you may have noticed, is not a very colorful fellow. Among the interesting things you can say about him is that he is the first Capitol police officer to become a senator working in that same building.
Is Obama A B-plus President?
LOS ANGELES — It's the time of year when college instructors grade papers. Having done this for more than 10 years at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism here at the University of Southern California, I would offer this general rule: Students usually think they deserve a half-grade better than what they get. Give them a B, they think they should have gotten a B-plus.
We, The People, Are Not At War
WASHINGTON — So, our extraordinarily rational and articulate president went to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and identified himself as a wartime commander-in-chief. True, but he neglected to mention that his nation is not at war.
Lost In Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama says a lot of smart things. During his campaign last year, in his second debate with Sen. John McCain, in Nashville, he closed by saying:
The Late, Great State Of California
LOS ANGELES — California, contrary to popular opinion, is not broke. It's only crazy, mean and at war with itself.
The United States — Decline And Fall?
LOS ANGELES — It has become fashionable on both the left and the right to compare the United States to ancient Rome. Decline and fall: We are a militaristic power trying to make everyone else in the known world submit to our way, or we are an irreligious, hedonistic bunch going the way of all flesh. Or maybe both.
An Audience Of One
LOS ANGELES — Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.
Conservatives Poised To Repeat History
LOS ANGELES — Was George Santayana right when he said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it?
Why Canadians Are Laughing At Us
AUSTIN, Texas — A guy walks up to you in a bar here and asks, "Are you a Republican, conservative or independent?" You can't tell if he's kidding. After all, this is the most liberal place in the state. It's also where I first heard about Shona Holmes, the Canadian lady.
When History Calls
LOS ANGELES — Sen. Olympia Snowe said last week that in the end, which is near, she may or may not vote for health care reform. But she will, judging by her last comment as the Senate Finance Committee voted out a bill: "When history calls, history calls."
Better Jaw-jaw Than War-war
LOS ANGELES — Obviously, the world, or at least a heck of a lot of foreigners, love Barack Obama. The Nobel Peace Prize is an impressive, if surprising, symbol of that.
Trust Your Instincts, Mr. President
LOS ANGELES — We do not pay the president by the hour and, I understand, he has some pretty good telecommuting equipment. So if he wants to take a 20-hour trip to Copenhagen, even in a lost cause, the Republic will survive.
