The Clarion

Issue date: 4/29/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: KAITLYN LYNCH / CLARION A tax protester holds a sign at the "Tea Party" on Madison's Capitol Square.

This past April 15, demonstrators gathered at the Capitol Square and other various locations throughout the nation in an attempt to call attention to government spending and to protest America's current tax structure. The following Thursday, actor/comedienne/social activist Janeane Garofalo appeared on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and described the demonstrations thusly:

"Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks - and there is - and there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right-wingers anything and they'll believe it except the truth."

I found it interesting that Garofalo was able to make such a broad generalization about the thousands of protesters gathered across the nation.

As it happens, I was present at the Madison rally (for the record, Ms. Garofalo, I DO know what the Boston Tea Party was about), and although I did encounter people who were questioning Obama's fiscal policies, I did not hear any comments that could even remotely be considered racist. Indeed, much of the criticism I heard at the rally was directed at Governor Doyle, and not Obama.

The rally I attended was rather peaceful, with a variety of individuals from a myriad of political backgrounds. Though the majority of people present were indeed Republicans, I also spoke with a fair amount of Democrats and Libertarians - I even had a long, healthy discussion with a Socialist about the merits and flaws of the free market. I came away from the demonstration with much food for thought, and, although I had hoped that more of the speakers would have addressed some of the reasons that government spending is out of control (our bloated military spending and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for examples), I found the experience to be a positive one.

In light of this, I found Garafolo's further analysis of the demonstrators to be particularly asinine:

"The limbic brain inside a right-winger or a Republican or a conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their, in their head space than in a reasonable person and it's pushing against the frontal lobe, so their synapses are misfiring - it is, it is a neurological problem that we're dealing with."

Continued...

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