At every Tea Party event I’ve gone to, the scene always devolves in one of two directions: either everybody trades stories about the corruption of Charlie Rangel or ACORN or Jeremiah Wright or some other notable nonwhite villain, or else a group therapy session breaks out in which everybody shares their harrowing experiences of being unjustly accused of racism. Once they reach one of those two destinations, they camp out there, conversationally, not just for minutes but hours.
I remember being in Nevada with one group of Tea Party folks: I had one guy in my ear for a full half an hour about how “the mainstream media” had reported that a white man with a gun attended an Obama speech, and how in the end it wasn’t a white guy at all but a black guy… or something along those lines. The guy was staring at me like he had just told me the greatest and most interesting story since the Gospel and expected that when he was done, I would get the whole world on the phone so that it could apologize to him personally for how that initial misreport had made him feel.
Your average person doesn’t spend hours a day pondering his racial victimhood like this – not unless he enjoys it, and if he enjoys it, he’s an asshole! (Especially if he’s white. If he’s white, the scale of his assholedom is almost incalculable).
- Topic: News & Comment
