Saturday, January 09, 2010

Pity the Poor Widdle Teabaggers...

Seems a few teabaggers are all bent out of shape because some cartoonist made fun of them. Mark Fiore does Flash-based animated cartoons from a liberal perspective, and last November he published the cartoon below, poking fun at teabaggers as dummies who are unwilling, or unable, to deal with complex policy debates.



Not exactly subtle, but it's clever and contains more than a grain of truth. Classic Fiore.

All was well until Bill O'Reilly noticed Fiore's cartoon. Then the wailing began. The left is trying to "...marginaliz[e] opposing views by any means necessary." Tea party members actually want polite and intelligent policy discussions, but those big bad leftist bullies, knowing they can't win a rational debate, actually sink to the level of ...political humor!

It might be easier to take the complaints from teabaggers seriously if O'Reilly's minions of hate weren't flooding Fiore with death threats, and if there weren't quite so many signs containing words like nazi, communist, socialist, and anti-Christ, at tea party events. It is rather difficult to contemplate having a thoughtful policy discussion with the guy in the picture below, who I met at the Madison tea party this past spring. Teabaggers may not like the scorn Fiore has heaped on them, but they've certainly worked extremely hard to earn it.


Don't want to be treated like an idiot? Try not acting like one.

See more pictures of considerate well-informed teabaggers at my post on the '09 Madison, Wisconsin tax-day tea party.