Where Did David Brooks Get the Bizarre Idea That the Tea Party Crowd Resembles '60s Movements?

[babylonsister]

By Alexander Zaitchik

Where Did David Brooks Get the Bizarre Idea That the Tea Party Crowd Resembles '60s Movements?

The Tea Party that worships Sarah Palin and screams for Barack Obama's birth certificate doesn't merit comparison to positive social movements of the 1960s.
March 11, 2010


There is a fresh interpretive fad in the young field of Tea Party Studies: The New Right of 2010 as the New Left of the 1960s.

According to this nascent meme, today’s conservative grassroots holds strong echoes of earlier radicalism on the left. The Tea Party movement that worships Sarah Palin and screams for Barack Obama’s birth certificate is, in this view, more than just the latest herpetic outbreak of Richard Hofstadter’s paranoid “pseudo-conservatism.” It is a reincarnation of the New Left and 1960s counterculture. The Tea Partiers, it is becoming fashionable to argue, are the heirs not just of the John Birch Society and the young Barry Goldwater, but also of Students for a Democratic Society and the young Abbie Hoffman.

If this analogy smells suspect, it’s for good reason. Yet it appears to be gaining traction, especially among a certain breed of moderate with confused understandings of Tea Party conservatism, the New Left, and '60s counterculture. In late February, Michael Lind wrote a Salon piece in which he claimed, "The tea partiers are the hippies of our time…In Glenn Beck, the countercultural right has found its own Abbie Hoffman."

Although Hoffman was never a hippie (he called flower children "glassy eyed zombies" and passed through the civil rights and antiwar movements on his way to founding the Youth International Party in 1968), and Beck is neither exuberant nor radical (he is a sexually repressed Mormon businessman who exemplifies modern crackpot reaction), Lind’s strange comparison nonetheless found an admirer in David Brooks of the New York Times. Last Friday, March 4, Brooks expanded on Lind’s thesis in a column titled "The Wal-Mart Hippies." Echoing Lind, Brooks writes that, much like 1960s leftwing radicals, the Tea Partiers want "to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution." He called Lind's comparison of Beck to Hoffman “astute.”

"Obtuse" would be a better description, says Paul Krassner, a founding member of the Yippies and a friend of the late Abbie Hoffman. "Whereas the Yippies saw through the propaganda machine, the Teabaggers are soaked in it," explains Krassner. "We were active in a time of abundance, they are active in a time of economic catastrophe; so we fought villains and they fight scapegoats. Abbie Hoffman was a seeker of justice; Glenn Beck rationalizes injustice. Abbie was hysterically funny; he made people laugh and think simultaneously. Beck promulgates hysteria; he exploits the fear that he helps create. To link them as part of the same tradition is sixties bashing at worst and sloppy journalism at best.”

more...

http://www.alternet.org/news/145995/where_did_david_brooks_get_the_bizarre_idea_that_the_tea_party_crowd_resembles_%2760s_movements?page=entire

[rucky]

1. I'm pretty sure it's not because of the music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGfQk9XXm24

[bulloney]

2. Your 60's protesters were largely college-educated. Teabaggers are barely literate

judging from the crowds and their placards I've seen at their events.

[mwb970]

3. Not necessarily.

Meet The Tea Partiers: Male, Rich and College Educated by Evan McMorris-Santoro
(Talking Points Memo, February 17, 2010)

A new CNN poll sheds light on who makes up the Tea Party movement. According to the results, tea partiers are richer, more male and have more education than the general population.

Eleven percent of respondents to the poll said that they had in someway participated in the tea party movement, either by going to a rally, donating money, or "taking some other active step to support the movement." The demographics among that 11% are much different from the rest of the U.S. population.

"Of this core group of Tea Party activists, 6 of 10 are male and half live in rural areas," CNN reports. "Nearly three quarters of Tea Party activists attended college, compared to 54 percent of all Americans, and more than three in four call themselves conservatives."

[Fumesucker]

4. And yet they still want to keep government out of their medicare..

College educated morans..

Edited for speling.

[babylonsister]

5. That surprises me. Actually, I don't believe it. nt

[freeplessinseattle]

6. me either. I could just see some lying to improve their image

such a teabaggy thing to do. those self-report things often mean crap.

[AlinPA]

7. I don't believe that poll either. The huge number I see around me in PA are certainly not

very educated. Putting it another way, a lot of racist slobs.

[mwb970]

9. It does seem like an unexpected result, but...

Isn't "I don't believe the polls" something we usually hear from our right-wing friends? I assume you "believe" the polls whose conclusions you agree with.

:shrug:

[babylonsister]

10. I don't believe in Rasmussen polls, and I'm not r/w. I think cnn

polls could be suspect because they have an agenda. Finally, given what I know about teabaggers and the signs I've read, and the nonsense they spew, this is why I think this poll is suspect. Thinking, educated people don't demonstrate they're willfully ignorant as the teabaggers seem to do constantly.

[AlinPA]

19. I have seen two of their demonstrations and know a large number of the participants. I still don't

believe there are that many educated teabaggers.

[katsy]

13. attended.

Fast asleep.

Still stoopid.

Dropped out.

How can I say such things? As easily as they can say "I attended".

[Miss Authoritiva]

20. Here's the actual poll questions & answers

Here's the http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/17/rel4b.pdf">link to the actual survey, complete with questions and data. The "stunning" portrait of Tea Party supporters is based on only 124 interviews. These 124 people were chosen for additional questioning as Tea Party "activists" because they had answered "Yes, I have done so" to one or more of the following questions.

* Given money to groups or associations affiliated with the Tea Party
* Attended a rally or meeting sponsored by a group or association affiliated with the Tea Party
* Took any other steps, either in person or through email or on the internet

I'll leave it to those of you with a background in statistics to determine whether 124 people is an adequate sample size.

[D-Lee]

21. Heavily skewed sample selection, thanks for the info! nt

[BlueMTexpat]

23. Sheesh ... didn't see your answer before my post below!.

That means that 124 was 11% of a total response of less than 1,130.

Perhaps those 1,130 were the only ones among them who could read and write.

"Librul" media bias, my a**! It's no wonder the Tea Baggers think that momentum is "with" them when they get such favorable coverage. Anything to skew the stats in their favor.

:banghead:

[Miss Authoritiva]

24. But wait, there's more!

While the CNN/Opinion Research Poll cited lists a margin of error of +/- 3 percent, the section that specifically focuses on the Tea Party "demographics" has a margin of error of +/- 9 percent.

Again, I'll leave it to the statisticians to comment on the sampling size and the "adjustable" margins of error....

[BlueMTexpat]

22. OK, so they may have "attended college,"

but how many actually got degrees? And were those "colleges" accredited or not?
If they followed the Palin model, it would have taken them five different colleges to get one degree. It wouldn't be because they had to stop taking classes for economic reasons, but more because their GPAs were too low to allow them to continue. Just sayin', based on their demonstrated levels of spelling, rhetoric and logic.

Taking this poll would also mean that they would have to be able to read and understand the questions. That is already a stretch, IMO.

Also, the story, if I have understood it, is based on 11% of the respondents and refers to that 11% as a "core group" where demographics are much different than among the rest of the US population. It then takes its interpretation of how many are college-educated by citing the majority of respondents among the 11%. What about the respondents among the 89%? Or better yet, in the 100%?

I think that my brain just short-circuited. It certainly boggled.

:argh: :banghead:

[Gman2]

8. Because they are anti. Not coordinated by any head.

[Vinnie From Indy]

11. Brooks is a dumbass with an entire body of work as evidence

Seriously! My dog has better insight and commentary than Brooks. He might as well have written that the oompa loompas and Teabaggers had alot in common.

Also, there is not a teabagger on earth that could put forth a reality based, sane or informed description of the Teabagger movement which, by the way, is a purely MEDIA created phenomena.

[Myrina]

12. ... both groups wear t-shirts and smell funky?

:shrug:

[The_Commonist]

14. Brooks is a weenie!

I never get tired of saying that...

[bemildred]

15. A back door admission that the 60s still have street cred. nt

[Demeter]

16. To Forestall Comparisons to Brownshirts and Hilter's Youth

trying to confuse the pond of public opinion and feel better about being such ignorant, violent shits.

In addition to what Bemildred posted above this post.

[tom_paine]

18. Yes, Demeter, they rewrite history as readily and as successfully as 1930s Nazis

Bushies have successfully sold more out-and-out lies than the Nazis and Soviets combined.

Because the modern equivalent of the German Industrialists (the American Corporatists) are behind them, and all that entails.

"Can you outshout the White Clown, Montag?"
--Faber, "Fahrenheit 451"

[TexasObserver]

17. In the 60s, the Tea Baggers were the cops attacking black protestors.

It's the same damn people, only 40 years older. These 50-85 year old Tea baggers have been lifelong racists. They're not anything else. They hate black people. The last hurrah of this bunch was 1972, when they all got behind George Wallace.

[Judi Lynn]

25. So, so right. And they are also like the Little Rock school integration protesters of the '50's.

http://upload.wikimedia.org.nyud.net:8090/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Little_Rock_integration_protest.jpg/500px-Little_Rock_integration_protest.jpg

http://blogs.uptownlife.net.nyud.net:8090/sonyarose/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/school-integration1-281x300.jpg http://www.white-history.com.nyud.net:8090/hwr66_files/force.jpg

http://sherrychandler.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/littlerock0709.jpg http://americanhistory.si.edu.nyud.net:8090/Brown/history/6-legacy/images/picketers.jpg
They have NOTHING in common with the human beings who protested the filthy war on the people of Viet Nam.