Before I get to the gist of my thoughts here, let me just say that this is my second diary. I know I'm not much of a prolific poster, to say the least, but I wanted to get that out there first and foremost. These are just some thoughts I had regarding the recent hilarity the right has created through their tea parties and the recent "Two Million for Marriage" campaign.
There's been a lot of fun poked about the tea parties the Repubs want to throw on April 15... Rachel Maddow's piece on it the other night was hilarious! Hearing all these right wingers going on about tea bagging with apparently no understanding of the double entendre behind the term is stuff you can't make up. And then the new story on the front page about the "Two Million for Marriage" campaign... aka 2M4M... I mean seriously, aren't these guys trying at all to avoid these types of embarassment?
And then I got to thinking... what if (and it's a major what if... this actually assumes intelligence on the part of the republican'ts) they're doing this stuff on purpose? Let's say, for example, you have someone out there that doesn't get the teabag reference... they think it's just connected to the whole tea party thing, etc... then they hear the "liberal media" making fun of the teabaggers for missing the reference. Or Faux News grabs ahold of the mocking and says, "oh look, the liberals are bringing discussions about sex and homosexuality into your living room, America". For that person who was aware of the teabag reference at first, could it be the "liberal media" that seems to be going the junior high route? Could the right be attempting to exploit us into making the teabag and 2M4M comparisons in an attempt to then later say, "look at those liberals... all they think about is sex and gays" and thus try to stoke the culture wars in a new way?
Now, I'm not saying that the comparisons should stop, mind you, because I think they're absolutely hilarious... I just wanted to open up the idea to debate and see what people thought. While the right is so very often wrong, they do have a way of being... insidiously nasty. And even here, I think that if they are purposefully trying to manipulate people, they've picked the wrong environment to do it in. The American people just don't seem to be in the mood for the shenanigans the right play... but what do people think? Could they be baiting us? (I'll leave this open for anyone that wants to make a joke out of Republican'ts being masters at that lol)
Thanks for reading!