Last Tuesday night, I attended the 'Taking Back America' event sponsored by the Salem Radio affiliate in Atlanta. It was a fascinating (though frightening) night inside the Tea Party mind, topped off with one of the most hysterical personal conversations I have ever had--a conversation that began with the statement in the title, and ended with a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Salem Radio, for those of you who aren't as strangely obsessed with right-wing radio as I am, is a network that syndicates a raft of second-tier talking heads: Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett, and Mike Gallagher. It's the same outfit that owns and operates Townhall.com.
They are currently on a tour of the U.S., with a rotating panel of their radio hosts, in an effort to rally the 'baggers for the election (although their real objective is, of course, to publicize their own radio shows and foster dedication within their fan base).
I went because a local host was annoying me two weeks ago, and I called him up to politely point out that he was a moron. We talked for quite a while, and at the end he offered me tickets to the event. I accepted them because, even though these programs drive me up a wall, I do listen to them all the time and was very curious to see what it was like to listen to them in person. I also thought it would make for some nice scary pre-Halloween people-watching.
The crowd was an interesting mix of very well-to-do folks (the event was held at the Atlanta History Center in the heart of Buckhead, Atlanta's uber-wealthy enclave), the elderly, and many t-shirt clad folks who had obviously driven in from the far outside-the-perimeter hinterlands. There has been talk of how important top-and-bottom coalitions can be to winning candidates, and it was that kind of crowd I was witnessing.
There isn't much of note to say about the speakers; that evening including Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and some extra guy, an anti-Islam activist named Steven Emerson. Emerson was not as offensive as I expected from the blurb about him, although he did strike me as a little insane. Medved and Hewitt pretty much just repeated the tropes that any regular listener would be very familiar with. One thing I found particular interesting was a long discussion on how important it was for them to not be racist and to shun the racists and crazies they find in their midst. Maybe it was only in my mind, but I swear there were some birthers shifting uncomfortably during this part.
But the central part of their message seemed clear. All liberals are either idiotic or sinister, and this next election is the last chance to save America from a dire fate.
Then there was a question and answer time. At least half of those who came up to speak seemed to embarrass the panelists, with either foolishness, anti-Islam bigotry, or over-the-top religious rhetoric that seemed to make them (especially Medved, who is actually very moderate as radio hosts go) uncomfortable.
And I lined up to say something at the mike, because I wanted to inject a little bit of reality in the room. I stated that I was, in fact, a liberal, and an unapologetic supporter of Barack Obama. I then stated that I was a regular listener of both Medved and Hewitt, because I found it stimulating to listen to opinions different than my own.
I then stated one of my life's guiding principles: That intelligent people of good will can come to different conclusions. And I asked them, what is their end game? If the temperature has been turned up so much with the rhetoric, if they have convinced their listeners that all the people on the other side of the aisle are enemies of the state, how can we ever have a country that's governable?
There was some mild booing and grumbling, but nothing disconcerting. The panelists were civil; Hewitt said that he had good friends that were liberal and that he didn't think they were all evil, and then went on to say that the civility problem was really all on the left, because Sean Hannity is nicer than Ed Schultz (unfortunately, I didn't really get a chance to answer this point, which is of course ridiculous). Michael Medved took it up then, and said that he agreed with 80% of what I said. He then tried to put me on the spot and ask me some gotcha questions to try to undermine my liberalism--asking whether or not I thought it would be a better country if we had fewer government workers, or if I thought it would be a better country if we had a lower deficit.
Fortunately, these questions DIDN'T surprise me, because I listen to Medved and have heard him ask these questions before. I replied that the questions were unaswerable. All things being equal, it would be better to have a lower deficit. However, all other things are never equal, and we can't evaluate an America with a lower deficit unless we know what cuts were done to get there.
(Thus following one of my rules of arguing: never try to answer a question with an invalid premise)
The conversation
After the event, I was trying to move as quickly as possible--I am a small woman and was by myself, and was a little nervous about getting into a shouting match with some of the people there--a few who seemed very stirred up by the event and a little angry.
I was approached straight away by a relatively aggressive woman who had been up on the mic herself, speaking like an old campaign pro on behalf of the laughably corrupt Georgia gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal. She jogged up a bit on her tall heels so she could catch me.
She was in her late late fifties, and looked as if she was accustomed to spending a lot of time in front of a mirror. Her hair was pulled back in a neat, tight pony-tail, and she was heavily made-up. I don't quite have the vocabulary to explain the way the woman was dressed. It was some kind of tailored leather top, with puffy shoulders and a fringe sticking out around the waist, with large metal geegaws on the front. It looked very expensive, and dreadful.
"So," she asked, "Why did you come tonight?"
Her tone was one that I am very used to as a Southerner. Thick, sugary, and lined with a bit of malice.
"I was given tickets," I said. "And I am a fan. I like listening to things I disagree with."
"And you are a liberal," she said. "So....you don't work?"
"Yes, I work," I said. "Very hard, in fact."
"But how can anyone who gets a paycheck be a liberal?" she said. "You must work for the government?"
"No." I replied. "I work for the small business that my father started. We just celebrated our 15 year anniversary."
"Oh!" She said, a smile breaking over her face. "Your father gave you a job to make you more conservative." She was nodding, and chuckling to herself.
It was hard for me not to laugh a bit myself--my father is somewhere between Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
"No, not actually," I said. "I actually get most of my values from my father. He taught me well, and if anything, he's a bigger lib than me."
The smile was gone, and her brow was knitted again. "But it doesn't make any sense! Do you mind if I ask what you do?"
"Engineering consulting," I said.
"Ah-ha!" she said, happy again. "Engineers mainly do big infrastructure work for the government. So, all engineers basically work for the government. It makes sense now."
"Well...." I said, now thoroughly amused. "We consult on complicated environmental problems, we don't build any infrastructure, and we hardly ever work for the government. We work with a lot of big litigation, and we're more often than not opposing the government."
"Litigation!" she said, grabbing onto another straw. "So you're like lawyers! Now I see why you are a lib."
I tried to respond again, but she did not want to be shot down again...she had reached the last of the boxes that she had to fit me in, and didn't want to hear anymore. Because of course, someone CAN'T just have different values than her or think differently--they can only be a liberal if they belong to a set of pre-defined categories.
Since she was done finding out about me, she decided to tell me about herself--to witness to me, I guess, about the glories of conservatives.
"Well," she said, sweeping her arm to her chest dramatically and bowing her head in faux humility, "I am a millionaire."
She didn't look up to see if I was impressed. I think she just assumed I would be looking at her in awe. I wasn't.
"My father was a millionaire, but he didn't leave me anything because he thought I was just to go marry some man," she continued. "But I made it on my own, the old-fashioned way, as did my husband. As more people would, if the government weren't just going around giving them handouts," she said giving me a stern look. "Now my husband is dead and I have three sons that are all teenagers or in college."
She then looked at me again. "You'll be conservative when you have kids," she said, with a condescending smile.
"I have two," I answered.
She was flustered, and we were now at the parking garage. "You'll join us in a few years!" she said in a sing-songy voice, as she walked away.
"No I won't!" I said, just as sing-songily, and got into my fortunately un-vandalized, Obama-stickered car and got the hell out of there.