by Ben McGrath, New Yorker, Feb. 1, 2010

My first immersion in the social movement that helped take Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat away from the Democrats, and may have derailed the President’s chief domestic initiative, occurred last fall, in Burlington, Kentucky, at a Take Back America rally. My escort was an exceptionally genial sixty-seven-year-old man named Don Seely, an electrical engineer who said that he was between jobs and using the unwanted free time to volunteer his services to the Northern Kentucky Tea Party, the rally’s host organization, as a Webmaster. “I’ve never been a Webmaster, but I’ve known Webmasters,” he explained, with a chuckle, as he walked around a muddy field, near a horse-jumping ring, and introduced me to some of his colleagues, one of whom was a fireman. “And he’s also our finance guy.” Being the finance guy, from what I could gather, entailed volunteering a personal credit card to be used for the group’s PayPal account. The amateur nature of the operation was a matter of pride to all those who were taking an active interest, in many cases for the first time in their lives, in the cause of governance. Several of the volunteers had met at Bulldog’s Roadhouse, in a nearby town named Independence, where they assembled on weekdays for what you might call happy hour, were it not for the fact that Bulldog’s is a Fox News joint and five o’clock is when Glenn Beck comes on, warning from a studio that he likes to call the “doom room” about the return of a Marxist fifth column.

Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/01/100201fa_fact_mcgrath

Long, and a little condescending, with a view from New York.

Related posts:

1. Democratic Party chair calls TEA party attendees “extremist elements” “Thousands rally at Milwaukee tea party” Event stirs up anti-spending...
2. CBO report: Debt will rise to 90% of GDP By David M. Dickson, The Washington Times, Friday, March 26,...
3. Army Preps for Tea Party ‘Terrorists’ By Mark Alexander, patriotpost.us, Thursday, April 29, 2010 (Patriot...
4. ‘Fair Tax’ seen as wedge issue to push split between Republicans, Tea Party By Russell Berman, thehill.com, 4/21/2010 Democrats are eyeing the “fair...
5. The Democratic Party is No Longer the Pro-Israel Party by yidwithlid, Saturday, February 27, 2010 Ever since President Obama...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.