Image by Heliotrop3, used under CC license
Something I’ve noticed about the hard-right contingent: they really hate being ignored. They’re fine with being called crazy, fanatical, even fascist. But call them irrelevant or, even worse, fail to mention them at all, and they go apeshit.
For example, I always felt Ann Coulter’s increasingly bizarre pronouncements last year were her way of railing against her decline into obscurity, the equivalent of a dog peeing on the carpet to reclaim her owner’s attention. But that attention was stolen away by a new, more wholesome-looking puppy from Alaska, and poor Ann has been left to stew in her own… juices.
Witness the grandiose Tea Party plan to storm the Capitol and presumably frighten our elected representatives into killing health care reform. Teabaggers got some attention last August by going around yelling at people at town hall meetings, but that didn’t prove to be a successful way of derailing health care reform. Since then they’ve been out of the spotlight. But now, thanks to the New Sarah Palin, they’re coming back to grab fifteen more minutes of fame. I’m sure they’ll get it too, much like Balloon Boy.
The thing is, that’s their whole plan: get attention. The have no real agenda other than earning media coverage. They hope that will translate into a popular uprising against the Democrats, but they don’t really know how. It’s a bit like appearing on a reality TV show in hopes of winning an Oscar. It sort of seems possible, but the actual sequence of events necessary to make it happen is blurry.
Never mind! Take a whizz on the floor and the rest will follow!
