Teabagging, Alabama Style

Father Charles Coughlin was a radio personality from the 1930s. He was very popular (45 million-plus listeners by 1930) and known for his populism and racism which ultimately morphed into praise for Mussolini and Hitler.

Father Coughlin’s sermons laid the groundwork for all manner of American populists in subsequent decades, from George Wallace to the xenophobic anti-gay stuff you can hear on talk radio today.

There’s already been a lot written on the Internets about the Astroturf nature of these protests, even their wholesale engineering by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. There’s a good bit from MSNBC here and and an interesting look at the Fox News promotion of these “grassroots” events here. Of course, the Paultards claim to have invented the whole thing a dozen years ago or whatever.

What we encountered here in Montgomery was anything but standardized, though – the array of home-made signs was simply staggering, ranging from long lists of grievances in tiny print to simple graphics. Lots of folks raged against Socialism. Most shared a poignant frustration (“Stop Stealing From Me!” and the small child holding up the “Don’t Mortgage My Future” sign approximately as tall as he was).

Some were unintentionally hilarious, like the “freemom of speech” poster above, or the one that said “suceed or be subverted.” Is that supposed to say “secede?” “Succeed?” Either way, there is much hilarity to be had. And yes, there was more than one guy wearing one of those faded post-9/11 t-shirts with the eagle crying human tears in front of a flag.

There was a strong undercurrent of racism. First, there were basically no people of color in the audience of several thousand. There were a number of signs that bordered on the extremely racist, including this one.

There was also some serious rage. People (obviously) hate and distrust the “mainstream media,” but the speaker (some preacher) was actually talking about lynching government officials and how the days of tar and feathers may not yet be behind us.

Of course, much of this is simply empty red meat talk to whip up the flag-waving crowd of home schoolers and Jesus lovers, but it’d be a huge mistake to dismiss this as empty populist rage during an economic downturn. The sentiments of these people extends well beyond fringe talk radio and into the halls of the statehouse. Their tea party message was all the more inappropriate because of the fact that they already do, in fact, control many of the people in the statehouse in Montgomery. Gov. Bob Riley has attacked the federal stimulus money and is going to refuse $100 million in federal money intended to aid the recently unemployed simply because he doesn’t want to modernize Alabama’s unemployment laws. These people are not impotent rednecks wanting to bash the black president. They are the majority. They are organized. And they are perpetually angry, hopped up on fear and eternal resentment against a shifting, but familiar, landscape of enemies: immigrants, “elites,” the non-religious, etc.

These people make it extremely difficult to do the work that needs doing in Alabama. Our unfair tax system can only exist because of these hordes, most of whom are acting against their own interests. A person who had stepped into this crowd and let it be know that they worked for Alabama Arise or the ACLU would likely have been torn limb from limb and stuffed into some kind of barbeque sandwich.

While it is worth researching Father Coughlin to further understand these disgruntled folks, it is also worth a re-read of the fantastic Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here. Laugh at the teabag pictures, yes, because they are pretty damned funny. But also be afraid.

We are not making this up

The re-enactment crowd was there in full effect

Fresh out of the grade school Thanksgiving play

Some of the characters. Check out the sign that says Congress is hallucinating.

More B for Buffet than V for Vendetta

So Southern

Lots of work went into these

Bowl haircut + HUAC = charming

Classy – love the lips on Pelosi

Proud to be teabaggin’

Hard to say what this is about, exactly

Classic! Because women spend money, you see…

One of the more complicated signs

Another complicated sign

Quite a list she’s got there

In case you need to spot communism