Teabags under the Eyes of Texas

July 7, 4:58 PMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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Signs of the tea times at Southfork Ranch near Dallas, billed as
"America's Tea Party." (photo by Kara Griffis Photography)

If you were out of touch with the world for the Fourth of July and wanted to catch up on Tea Party events in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, or anywhere else in Texas for that matter, good luck.

Tea Parties, those grassroots rallies against profligate spending and collectivist political policies, took place from border to border and coast to coast to coast throughout the country on America's birthday.

Some 40 or so Independence Day demonstrations were scheduled in Texas alone.

But you'd barely be aware of it from the local media. Four days after the Fourth you can poke and prod Google into giving up the goods with keywords like "Tea Party" and "tax protest" and "Texas" only to come up short and stout on information.

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram offered three articles about the upcoming Tea Parties scheduled for the Metroplex but only two follow-up stories. One reported that the Arlington Tea Party won first place in the Novice Floats category in the July 4th parade. Yippee. The other was an AP report about the Austin Tea Party.

The Dallas Morning News had no choice but to report on the Southfork Ranch Tea Party since it had been ballyhooed as one of the biggest in the country. Unfortunately, the organizers misread the tealeaves when they predicted 50,000 attendees and only 25,000 showed up. That gave the News the opportunity for a negative headline: "Tea party protest at Southfork Ranch falls short of estimated 50,000 attendees."

(Perspicacious planners would have predicted 15,000, thereby forcing the phrase "exceeded all expectations" to appear somewhere in the article, if not the headline.)

The Southfork folks stressed that the Tea Parties are about tax protests and economic freedom, not about partisan politics.

"We have accepted no support from any party – Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, what have you," said Phillip Dennis of the Dallas Tea Party. In fact, anyone running for office was banned from the microphone."

(Could that be made permanent? Everywhere? Forever?)

The no mic rule didn't stop Texas Libertarians from brewing up an info booth at the gathering.

The biggest news about the Texas Tea Parties seems to have been the Booing of Republican Senator Cornyn at the capitol event. It was covered by media in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Corpus, and Amarillo, to name a few. But then, Cornyn did vote for TARP.

Many media outlets seemed to revel in the opportunity to serve some bitter tea by accentuating the negative. Besides the Dallas News headline, Daily Kos captioned a commentary "Tea Parties Kaput?" (Thereby converting wishful thinking into reality through the power of mere words?) while slyly implying they're all steeped in GOP sponsorship. (And some are, such as the Stephenville, Texas, event, according to Tea Party Patriots organizers themselves.)

Glenn Reynolds, from his perch on Instapundit, pointed toward a blogger who found a diversity of blends not necessarily his cup of tea at the Houston Tea Party, (Houston, Tea Has A Problem) such as "a reactionary challenging the separation of church and state," a John Birch Society banner, a Libertarian Party booth begging people to take their diamond-shaped survey, Constitution Party partisans "surreptitiously" passing out pamphlets, an Objectivist with his holy writ (a table full of Ayn Rand books), Boy Scouts (you know, that anti-gay group), anti-government signs, anti-immigrant haranguers holding Sheriff Arpaio signs, Guys in Guy Fawkes masks, a 9-11 Truther, "Ron Paul cultists," and many, many others.

It's actually a very amusing report, by David Ross, well worth the read.

The anti-Cornyn catcalls occurred in Austin.

The Capitol Tea Party, attended by "hundreds" according to the Daily Texan, was organized by the nonpartisan Americans for Prosperity and not engineered by the Republican Party as the Obama mass media machinery love to spin it.

An article on russiatoday.com was headlined "US Independence Day marred by Tea Party protests." Marred? How's that for impartial reporting from our newfound former Cold War friends? That's like reporting "May Day military parade in Red Square marred by freedom-lovers" or "Tiananmen Square tank procession and infantry advance marred by bloody bodies."

Wayne Allyn Root, center, played VP to Bob Barr's Libertarian
Party presidential candidacy in 2008. (AP photo)

But back to the Austin Tea Party. The festivities featured speechifying by a pair of Republican politicians and a libertarian. For once the libertarian even got a mention in the headline, from the Daily Texan, which was "Republican, Libertarian politicians show concern for high federal spending."

The Republicans, Texas Gov Rick Perry and especially US Senator John Cornyn, were booed by the crowd. The libertarian, 2008 Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root, set off "an uproar of applause" when he told the gathering that friends call him "war" (WAR being his initials) "because we have a war with people who want to raise your taxes to socialist levels.”

Razzing Republicans and lauding libertarians? This should once again help dispel the asinine notion that libertarians are just a different flavor of conservatism.

Republicans are razz-berry. Democrats, by the way, are govern-mint. Libertarians are peachy, the flavor of oolong long favored by connoisseurs.

And that's your news roundup of the tempest in a teacup.
 

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