When Does Tea Time End?

The Tea Party motif is being stretched a bit too much. A revolt against monarchy has now come to symbolize a blind rage against the changes in government that a majority of Americans voted for.

Check out what happened recently on Anderson Cooper's 360.

As reported by Huffington Post's Nicholas Graham:

"Tea Party" leader Mark Williams appeared on a CNN panel on "Anderson Cooper 360" last night and promptly set to work discrediting himself and his movement. Williams denounced those carrying blatantly racist signs against President Obama during the tea parties as "no more part of the mainstream of America than the hippies who wear nipple clips and feather boas in San Francisco streets during so-called peace demonstrations."

Cooper had done his homework, however, and caught Williams blatantly misrepresenting himself: "What you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you say but then I read on your blog, you say, you call the President an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief."

Williams shrugs and responds, "Yeah, that's the way he's behaving." An incredulous Cooper asks Williams if he really believes Obama is an Indonesian Muslim and a welfare thug. The tea party leader digs the hole a little deeper: "He's certainly acting like it. Until he embraces the whole country what else can I conclude."

The animosity of fear that his man and his organizations express really is frightening... unfortunately, it's also so unbelievable that "educated" Americans would think and act like this.

I am reminded of the ugly McCain/Palin campaign rallies that marred the end of what have been an otherwise decent and fair Republican presidential campain effort. Remember those "he's a Muslim" cries from people who had no idea about how to discern fiction from fact?

It also reminds me of my father whose rage was also -reaching. Anyone who came into his sphere of focus was similarly treated; he disdained anyone who might pose even the slightest of the threats. As a child I would shudder at the accusations he made about others because he was somehow afraid that their presence would diminish his.

Is that what's happening here with the Tea Party klatch?

I hope the media keeps on reporting. We need to be reminded that people like Williams and those who blindly follow and do his bidding really do exist. Maybe bringing them into the light of news attention will help dispel the darkness they spread.