Notes From the Fringe

Madness at the Mall. The armed insurrectionist militias or as Fox would call them, 2nd Amendment “enthusiasts” among the Teabaggers (most of them), rallied at the Washington D.C. Mall to demand their “freedoms” and “gun rights” on the 15th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Which tells me these people have little sense of decorum, history, much less irony, and taste . . . that goes without saying (to quote a Confederate secessionist governor). Here they are, in bizarro pictures, with captions!

The Company You Keep. In his ironically titled Hardball commentary, “Let Me Finish,” Chris Matthews said, “Some of the Tea Party people support loosening up on gun controls, but two-thirds have no problem with store owners telling people they can‘t walk into their stores openly carrying a gun. No, they‘re not crazy.”

Um, Chris. Let me put it this way: Let’s say you belong to a social club that purports to be against high taxation (a LIE, but let it be), in which fully one-third are “crazies,” 2nd Amendment nuts who hold the views of unbridled gun use you’ve described, carry crazy signs, and scream nasty, crazy, racist things. At this point your two-thirds have two options:

(1) PURGE the crazies from your club whose beliefs are anathema to your club’s charter; or

(2) Silently ACCEPT the crazies, or at most give them the option to moderate their expressions –- pretty, pretty pleeease? (See wringing hands!) If you accept such views in your club through intimidation, or perhaps because you don’t find them so objectionable after all, you will become INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE CRAZIES.

This reminds me of an exchange from “Judgment at Nuremberg” (for the movie buff, Chris):

Enrst Janning (Burt Lancaster): “I… Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, you must believe it!”

Judge Haywood (Spencer Tracy): “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to die you knew to be innocent.”

Comrade Teabaggers. Ah, this is SO rich! If this were a Hollywood script it wouldn’t pass muster -- too unbelievable! The Teabaggers’ chief financial backers, secretive billionaires Charles and David Koch, inherited a Koch family fortune made working for Stalin’s Bolsheviks in the 20s and 30s. No wonder Teabaggers in their rallies are high on bad Trotsky (rhymes with Alinsky), but hardly carry any signage of the biggest Soviet Communist monster of all, genocidal murderer of millions, Joseph Stalin. What gives? I know, I know, I’m giving these idiots who don’t know their own history, let alone 20th century world history, too much credit. But it’s not inconceivable that word trickled down from the Koch family that Stalin signs are strictly VERBOTEN! Hitler Sí, Stalin No!

Teabagger Family Values. Not only are the Tebaggers dumb, their choice of candidates for November is not so discriminating. Just fill out a form saying Obama’s a socialist from Kenya who’ll take your guns away and you’re in the money with the Tebagger endorsement. Racism (manageable), but porn and bestiality? Teabaggers, you have a problem. One of many.