A tea party lady from Up North stopped her speech in mid-stream to address a bearded fellow who had worked his way up front of the speakers platform.
"That guy just gave me the finger," she announced. Looking the troubled fellow in the eye, she asked, to laughter, "Public schools?"
It is a sad commentary on our schools that anti-social conduct is so closely associated with the situational ethics of our public schools and the values-light indoctrination of their me-first, unionized teachers.
But that was what struck me the hardest at Saturday's Tea Party rally in front of the East Wing of the Wisconsin State Capitol. The beardo with the over-inflated sense of entitlement was not an outlier. He is what democracy looks like to the Left.
The several thousand protestors who invited themselves to the Tea Party rally were not content to hoist signs alleging that featured guest Sarah Palin was "a Koch whore," among others. Beardo was only one of several middle digit-insulters. (I've pictured another with this blog.) No, what took their behavior well beyond boorishness and way past ill manners was the non-stop effort to shout down speech with which they disagreed.
The Divine Sarah is pictured with, at right, event organizer Nancy Mistele
Despite a robust sound system, a security force of orange T-shirted volunteers, and a squadron of uniformed Capitol police and State Troopers -- the talented line-up of tea party speakers were hard to hear unless they shouted into the microphone, such was the din of iniquity created by our liberal and progressive acquaintances. (For they ARE our acquaintances.)
Oh, how they loathe the military veteran and now state worker when he took his turn at the mike. How virulent were their cries of anger directed at the man's brother, who related how the AFSCME union tried to blackmail his business in Union Grove.
Oh, how they must fear the speech of the 14-year-old girl who talked bout the rising national debt with the sagacity of a Hoover Institute economist.
UW-Madison law professor and bloggresse Ann Althouse was standing next to one unionista, "There are periodic outbursts from this woman, including 'Koch suckers!' Imagine yelling "Koch suckers" at a 14-year-old girl."
The shouters, many of them obscene, augmented their cacophony with horns, drums, and sundry noise makers. When Governor Palin took the stage, the unionistas reached a crescendo of frenzy that made the Ride of the Valkyries seem but a Brahm's Lullaby. Too dangerous, her message, for Madison's tender sensibilities. Must not be heard, lest troubling questions occur to susceptible minds.
That's not just my impression. Isthmus' liberal advocacy journalist Joe Tarr chronicled the shouters:
The [counter-protesters] mostly came out to shout her down. …Even though they used a sound system, it was hard to hear everything the speakers were saying over the counter-chants.
The Wisconsin State Journal Sunday concurred, "... union supporters crowded tea party activists and tried to drown out their speakers."
So that is what democracy SOUNDS like to our progressive and leftward acquaintances. (For they ARE ...) I have said from Day One, their message is intimidation.
So I can hardly blame Andrew Breitbart (bringer down of ACORN) for responding, in the penultimate speech of the day, "You've been so rude. Go to Hell."
Is there any doubt these noisome would-be commissars would pull the plug on Fox News if they could? Hadn't many of their intellectual cousins tried to ban "incorrect" speech on the UW-Madison campus in the 1990s? Would they police the Internet? (Answer is Yes.) Have the haters over on TheDailyPage Forum been trying to shutter Stately Blaska Manor? Didn't they just vote to emasculate the First Amendment in the Spring election referenda?
And aren't they to this day trying to discredit yet another conservative victory at the polling place by conjuring fantastic conspiracies to explain away the re-election of Justice David Prosser -- the election that was supposed to be a do-over of Governor Scott Walker's victory on November 2?
Now the corollary: does the American Right EVER shout down the Left?
See also:
Sarah Palin Steps Into Wisconsin, Points to Left Field, and Hits a Grand Slam
From my new friend Tony Katz' Pajamas Media.
"We're Here, We're Clear, Get Used To It!" Video of Palin's speech at Media-ite.
Blaska can't help you if you don't believe in him
Yes, Virginia, there is a Blaska. Your liberal friends are wrong. They have been affected by the progressivism of a liberal president. They do not believe except [what] Big Government mandates. They think that nothing is fair unless it is redistributed by little minds with union contracts. Not believe in Blaska! You might as well not believe in Vicki McKenna!
He exists as certainly as the Tea Party, Americans for Prosperity and the Republican Party exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be TheDailyPage if there were no Blaska's Blog.
No Blaska! Thank God (for he exists, too)! Blaska may not blog forever, if Midthun and Lemberg have their way. But a thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Blaska will continue to make joyous the hearts of conservatives through the magic of his collected works, in read-only digital format.
