This is why I like living in D.C.: I can just jump out of my bed and into proverbial bed with the Tea Bag Party down at Lincoln Memorial, no problems. Inaugurations, closed-to-the-public dinners at the Hilton, public executions down by the Potomac, all kinds of fun gatherings in your nation’s capital: This District is truly my oyster.
Like millions of normal, well-adjusted Americans in the sane (and/or para-sane) community, I’ve been mildly curious about the Tea Party movement. Their stuff is kooky. Like: Mormonism, LaRouche, and Scientology all mixed into one kind of kooky. They didn’t mind paying taxes under Mr. Bush, or I mean at least they weren’t acting like Mr. Bush invented taxes, but now they are going nuts about paying (the same rate 0f) taxes to a Black Man, acting like he invented them? Or desperately hoping he’s not a U.S. citizen so this nightmare (for them) would magically be over? And then… Paranoia is fun and all, I enjoy it myself, but really? You think Mr. Obama is a socialist/communist? Based on what? I just don’t Feel the Fear here. If anything, Obama is TOO normal, mainstream, pro-business, etc.
But I never argue. With crazy people or sane people. Believe what you want, I don’t care. I’m as apathetic it gets.
So, as I documented already in the august pages of The Huffington Post, I went down to the Mall (THE Mall) yesterday because I saw an easy chance to satisfy my curiosity about the ‘baggers. I took the bus, not Metro, because I knew (and was correct) that the teabaggers could figure out the subway but not buses. Buses are a too-advanced skill for tourists. I know this from when I take my cheap ass to other cities and try to avoid cabs this way.
This was my first glimpse of Tea. A polite stream of teabags trotting down 18th Street. A few minutes later I stopped at a coffee shop to get a snack. I had on running shoes, white shorts, and a navy t-shirt, but was conscious that my camera in a strap case over my shoulder made me look like a tourist or worse, a teabagging tourist. I wanted to blend in when I got to the Tea Party, but not before or after. I felt like whispering to the Af-Am gentleman who waited on me that I was one of him, not them.
Yes, I was alone. I figured it would be faster to get this done that way, and I was right. No one to hold hands with and “not lose” as we weaved through the bags of tea trying to get close to Cousin Sarah. (Also, I went alone because I basically have no friends that I can count on to do things with here in D.C. But that’s okay, we’ve all got our own things to do, I get it.)
Arriving at the Mall felt like arriving at the mall. See the professional greeters (“Marshals”)? Everything was very chill. They did not even close off Constitution Ave. for this thing. I had to wait at a stoplight to cross over to the reflecting pool area. Note also the sparseness up on Washington Monument Hill (or whatever it’s called). This was 15 minutes after the event had officially begun (so, 10:15 a.m.).
Walking up to the WWII Memorial, I saw a reporter for Bloomberg News. I saw another reporter for Bloomberg News later. Besides a small Italian TV network, that was the only media I saw in the 2 hours I was at “Restoring Honor.” I saw people with professional-looking video apparati, but no press credentials hanging around their necks. I think a lot of them were Citizen Journalists like your blogger (me).
You can tell these people want so badly to dip their feet into the WWII fountain, but they know it would be disrespectful. And this day was all about celebrating our veterans and current military. That’s what my cousin, Sarah Palin, talked about the whole time she was up there (over 20 minutes, I would guesstimate). How she was there NOT as a beautiful celebrity, but as the everyday mom of a combat veteran.
There’s my cousin from Alaska on the Jumbotron in the left side of the picture. With my piece-of-junk point-and-shoot camera (Nikon, thanks) dangling around my dainty wrist, I hunted for my prey: Crazy t-shirts. I was getting a lot of pictures of people’s backs, because we were all herding toward the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. You know that smell that fat people have? That’s what it smelled like everywhere. I mean, I smell like garbage all the time, too, so maybe it was my own stink I was smelling, but I don’t think so because as I moved around I kept getting blasts of one malodiferous odor or another. You know, like, specific to certain problem regions.
I mosied out to the field beside the allee where I took the above shot, and turned around and got this, which makes it look like an impressive crowd. And it was! It was between 50K and 100K, as we all know now. But the energy felt kind of low to me. Maybe owing to the kind of person a conservative usually is. You know: conservative! Shy. Countrified, a lot of the time. Speaking of country-fried, I should point out that the sun was hot, but not that hot, and humidity was low for D.C. standards. It was a gorgeous day, and I’m sure lots of people were thanking the Lord for that. Literally, saying prayers of thanks to the Lord out loud.
About race: It seemed like Beck was using the same loophole Karl Rove used several years ago, or that the Prop 8 supporters in Cali did: Let’s unite Black conservatives with White conservatives on religious grounds. For instance, I saw a young Af-Am woman with a t-shirt about “marriage” (you know, keep it straight). I’d say there were about 3% black people at the rally. And toward the end when Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece talked, and then was joined by a gospel choir, it was like the world’s largest enactment of “I speak jive!” All these white farm families in flag-colored overalls taking their cues from Beck and swaying to the gospel music, which they didn’t know what to call (“I guess it’s religious music?” One lady said with a shrug to her husband. They applauded extra loudly to try to show they were “down”.)
Everyone was very polite, owing to the fact that most of them are from the small towns across America where Nice People live. There were only a few moments when my agoraphobia (yes!) and claustrophobia at being trapped in a slow-moving phalanx of people (who hadn’t missed a meal in a while — and that is the only thing I’m going to say about their weight, because I don’t like it when people make fun of my weight! It’s not funny) seemed to take a dipsy-doodle into something even scarier. I panicked a couple of times that I would be “found out” as a spy, an interloper, an OUTSIDER among these, the true ULTIMATE DC OUTSIDERS. Keepittogethershrake, I thought to myself as a cold sweat filled my hands. You’re white. Clean cut. Now just act as straight as you can and you’re home free.
Look, there were a lot of people there that scared me just on their looks and attire. I could’ve just done a photo essay on morbid obesity in America. Or on people trying to outdo each other with flags and flag garments. That would’ve been easy.
View from the foot of the Washington Monument over the Ellipse toward the White House, 11:30 a.m. (still 1.5 hours left in rally).
It was actually a little bit hard to find very controversial t-shirts (beyond the standard Restore Honor and pro-military stuff, etc.), because, don’t forget, Beck told them to keep it in their pants on the politics front. I think at least half of the people there were… well-meaning but deluded. Just simple folk that are vulnerable to a cunning snake-oil salesman like Beck. But good people. A lot of them looked like my grandparents, you know? I’m not gonna hate on ‘em. They have a right to their beliefs and opinions, and everyone expressed themselves civilly and it was, in a weird way, very affirming. A good day for free speech.
I know some of you are saying, “Hey Shrake, if you love the teabaggers so much, why don’t you marry ‘em?” Well, brainiac, they must not have newspapers where you live because otherwise you’d know it is illegal to marry a teabagger in the District of Columbia, where I live.
People kept saying really aw-shucks corny stuff to each other. I heard someone say, totally free of irony, “This is so inspiring.” I heard many people on cellphones telling the folks back home, in awe-struck voices, “There are at least a million people here. Definitely.” (50K). It kind of tugged at my heartstrings.
Maybe it was fear or maybe it was my discipline and focus, but I didn’t talk to anyone beyond asking if I could take their picture. I stuck to my goal of hunting for crazy t-shirts.
Even though at its most extreme edges, this gathering had some ugliness in it, by and large I think these are just decent people whose main foible (and blind spot) is that they are threatened a lot by the world as it is. They want to go backwards, I suppose. I don’t want to go with them, but I respect their desire to go.
