The Boston Teabag Party?

The teabag movement is framed by the Boston Tea Party. This is not a frame the media created. This is the frame the teabaggers created. Fair enough. In fact, an excellent idea.

But, to be a reasonably accurate frame, protesters must be decrying taxation without representation. Right? However, unless they live in Minnesota, they have a full compliment of representatives in congress, unlike, of course, the original tea party protesters.

I guess the difference between bales of tea and tea bags is telling.

Here's the problem. If they believe they have no representation, they need to vote out their elected representatives and vote in new. Yet in poll after poll, Americans say they dislike everybody in congress except their own representative. It's everybody else's congressmen they don't like. It's like when my students say the media tells everybody what to think. So, I ask them if the media controls their thoughts. Of course, the answer is a resounding 'no' the media doesn't tell ME what to think... it just tells everybody else what to think.

What's that wonderful blues couplet? "Everybody wants to hear the truth/but everybody wants to tell a lie ... Everybody wants to go to heaven/ but nobody wants to die..."

So, if your representative doesn't represent you, vote him or her out. But, be aware, he might represent me and at the last election there may have been more of me than there were of you at the polling place. Hey, that's how it works.

Which means you do have representation. You just lost.

This seems to be the critical point these well-meaning, fun loving, dead serious, protestors, these modern day Abbie Hoffmans and Jerry Rubins, don't get. And, this is a serious not getting. This not getting is pretty dangerous for the idea of the republic.

Now, if they want to protest this convoluted tax code weighted heavily in favor of the wealthy, I'll walk shoulder to shoulder with them.

--Lofflin