Following up on my post from this morning, Perlstein wrote in to tell me about this video in which Cenk Uygar repeatedly asks why the tea parties aren't protesting on Wall Street. The libertarian teabagger he's interviewing doesn't have an answer.
Cenk keeps on asking and after the bagger executes a series of rhetorical dance moves that would put Michael Jackson to shame, Cenk finally says:
"You're not answering the question. Why are the only tea party protests in favor of corporate America and not against corporate America which is buying those politicians you claim you are so upset about?"
The Liberteabagger responds:
"The only thing I can say to you in response to that is that I'm a guy who believes in the private sector and private industry and I don't feel any great need to protest Goldman Sachs. I feel a much stronger need to protest public employee unions who are ripping off people in far greater numbers."
He goes on to defend Goldman Sachs' right to be held innocent until proven guilty. Seriously.
Watch the whole thing. This person happens to have been the Libertarian Party's Vice Presidential candidate, Wayne Alan Root, who has opportunistically joined the tea party movement and is probably making a lot of money selling this nonsense to his faithful. He knows he's supposed to be against Wall Street and insists he even wrote something about it four or five months ago that you can find on his blog somewhere. But he's very confused by all this and doesn't quite know how to make the argument in a way that preserves his fanboy worship of John Galt and belief in the satanic nature of government which is needed to rein them in. It's a real problem for him.
This tea party movement is one part Dick Armey and company fake astroturf protest, one part angry McCain and Palin soreloserman, one part abortion clinic protester, one part white nationalist militia movement/gun rights nuts, one part ClusterFox/Glenn Beck brain dead watcher, one part anti-immigration Lou Dobbs/Tom Tancredo fan, one part southern racist that isn't done fighting the Civil War yet and one part Ron Paul/Libertarian. What could ever go wrong with that special blend of tea?
I think they all mix together into a particularly nasty cup of poison that the country needs to be warned about. It's a potent brew that has a smell to it far too many people find comforting and familiar.