THE PLANK DECEMBER 3, 2009
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Tea Party: The Documentary Film, chronicling the movement from Bush’s bailouts to 9/12, probably won’t be coming to any theaters near you. It “premiered” last night in Washington’s Reagan Center, with Astroturf instead of a red carpet and tuxedoed anti-tax types instead of shining starlets. The producers haven’t secured a distribution agreement, and are relying on word of mouth and their website to promote the DVD (a perfect Christmas gift, at only $19.95). That’s fitting, certainly, for a movement that bills itself as the ultimate people-powered phenomenon: Who needs official channels, when you’ve got a couple wealthy, impassioned supporters?
“This whole thing was financed by American Express,” the Atlanta ad man Luke Livingston told me after the screening, patting his pocket. “My American Express card.”
Back in April, Livingston says, he knew that the tax day tea parties popping up all around the country would eventually lead to some sort of protest in Washington. So the financier—whose clients range from Chick-fil-A to Bob’s Carpet Mart—teamed up with local talk radio host Joel Foster, and found six activists to track as they worked their way up from smaller events to the big March on Washington in September. Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks promoted the release at watch parties around the country, conservative luminaries including Jim DeMint and Joe Wilson headlined the D.C. rollout last night, and the movie landed on Rachel Maddow—the kind of buzz many studios couldn’t pay to get.
The 77-minute film, like Glenn Beck’s video trailer for the 9/12 Project, opens with an apocalyptic vision of storm clouds in Washington, as Democrats and Republicans sign checks to keep big companies from going under. Frighteningly high numbers for stimulus line items scrolls across the screen, as drums boom and writing on parchment goes up in flames. After that opener, though, the tension lifts: This is a hopeful story, after all.
The film’s protagonists are representations of the archetypal tea party activist. Dr. Fred, a primary care physician, just wants to take out kidney stones without interference from the government. Jenny Beth, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, went bankrupt and started up a cleaning business to support her family. Jack, a health insurance agent, “risks losing his job” under proposed health care reforms and is finally taking a stand. The camera lingers around their dinner tables and foreclosed houses, with low-angle shots dramatizing their somber, heroic faces.
The movie has a certain defensiveness, stemming from the sense of persecution that has become part of tea party mythology. Andrew Breitbart riffs on how the mainstream media maligned and ignored the tea partiers, and the main characters talk incessantly about the small donations that funded their signs, web sites, and buses to Washington—not, God forbid, the corporate underwriters that Maddow et al harp on as the movement’s real drivers. Tea Party patron saint Glenn Beck is nowhere to be found, perhaps as much out of an inability to secure the rights to network footage as the desire to identify the movement with Real Americans rather than TV talking heads (just today, Livingston told me, CNBC gave them permission to use a clip of Rick Santelli’s anti-bailout rant, which may make it into a future cut).
The greatest defensive tic in the movie, though, centers around race. One of the featured characters is a black Detroit native named Nate, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 “from an upbringing that taught him to mistrust America because of the color of his skin,” but who has since seen the light. The camera follows him as he tells a rapper named Bonz about how the government is stealing money from his pocket. He then tries to explain black psychology. “If they can’t make it, they might as well let the government take care of them,” Nate says, as if to answer the question of why he’s virtually the only person of color marching in a sea of white faces on the Mall. Then there’s William, a Revolutionary War reenactor who also happens to be the pastor of a black church and takes umbrage at allegations of racism. “It shows they do not really have an argument, when they accuse people of racism,” he says.
In the end, the film is not so much a documentary as a tribute: the tea party movement as it would like to be remembered. The premiere, attended by maybe 150 supporters, felt like a fond reminiscence of their finest hour, leaving the question: Is this movement going any further? In the last few months, there has been tension in the tea party ranks, and each protest grows crazier and more concentrated.
I asked one of the movie’s characters, a “20-something young professional” named Dave, whether he had stayed involved in conservative activism after the 9/12 march. “As far as my daily life and routine goes, no,” he said. “It was something I did in my free time.” After finishing his degree in political science, Dave plans to go into the Marines, and then law school. He’s looking to the G.I. Bill to pay for it.
11 comments
nice little posting, except for the last sentence: After finishing his degree in political science, Dave plans to go into the Marines, and then law school. He’s looking to the G.I. Bill to pay for it. Is that some kind of dig that he is looking for the GI bill to pay for it? If so, it is pretty offensive. I don't know of any Republican who wants to get rid of the GI bill, that money is rightly earned for putting ones life on the line for our country. Look, these people are nutjob enough without needlessly being defamatory. This guy Dave, whatever his politics, is planning to serve his country, don't mock him.
- blackton
December 3, 2009 at 10:49am
Blackton - I hardly think she meant to mock his service. It's perfectly reasonable to mock someone looking to the gummint to pay for college while simultaneously screaming that raising taxes to Clinton-era levels means the shredding of the Constitution and universal enslavement. Or would you object to mocking the senior citizens screaming for government to keep its hands off their medicare? Some of them were probably vets, too, but it doesn't make their positions any less laughable.
- janus
December 3, 2009 at 12:04pm
janus, I don't think it is reasonable to mock someone who as a result of serving the country in a time of war is offered tangible rewards by the people through the government. This is very different from senior citizens screaming for government to keep its hands off their medicare. For one, I am sure this guy is well aware that military service is a function of the government (and if he ever said keep the government out of the military mock away). The vast majority of the tea baggers and even the most libertarian of people acknowledges one of the main function of government is to provide for our defense, and I don't know a single person who suggests soldiers don't deserve to be paid (and the GI bill is a form of deferred compensation). I think tea baggers are insane enough without having to mischaracterize them and implying that the using the GI bill is a form of hypocrisy by them is simply not true. I mean, here I am defending them and I hate them, which has to show she went overboard.
- blackton
December 3, 2009 at 12:34pm
Your defense of those you hate is a fair point, but I am obliged to point out that it is nonetheless possible you could be wrong. (I say this with a smile on my face, but TNR is enough of a serious place that I'd feel peculiar using emoticons.)
- janus
December 3, 2009 at 12:45pm
janus, me wrong? Impossible. I realize your point that perhaps that was not what was intended, but it is not always what is intended but what can be perceived to be intended (by reasonable people), how many times to people get in hot water because enough people perceive your intent differently (like John Kerry on numerous occasions)?
- blackton
December 3, 2009 at 1:22pm
Point to janus. The mockery is very gentle -- indeed unstated -- and entirely fair. I'm related to farmers who are mortally opposed to "welfare." The massive farm subsidies that keep them (barely) solvent, though, that's not welfare or government handouts. That's critical to maintaining American security and independence. The inconsistency of such views and practice deserves a little gentle mocking. As do we all on some matters! Besides, if one really believes the rhetoric of the Teabaggers, the appropriate response is not to join the Marines; it is to join your local citizen militia and prepare to fight against the Marines when Commissar Obama inevitably declares martial law.
- rhubarbs
December 3, 2009 at 1:33pm
Also, fighting for your country was seen, once upon a time, as a duty and not a pathway to special treatment or an extra scoop of validity for your opinions. Lots of people of all political persuasions join the military and their opinions are not sanctified thereby. Dave is therefore indeed a volunteer signing up to put his life on the line for his country, but one who also has a few weird and almost wacky opinions, some of which seem to run into a contradiction or two.
- ironyroad
December 3, 2009 at 2:51pm
Also, Dave "plans" to go into the Marines. He also describes himself as a "young professional" and talks about his plans for after he gets his BA. We've all known Dave. (Hell, we've all probably at some point been Dave in one way or another.) Dave will not be going to boot camp anytime soon. If we want to sanctify people who serve in the military, and I'm all for that, let's at least wait until they actually, you know, serve in the military, rather than when they express a vague intention to serve at some more convenient future date.
- rhubarbs
December 3, 2009 at 4:20pm
I gotta agree with janus, irony and rhubarbs on this one, too. Even though I almost always agree with the very astute analysis of blackton. The way I read it, the author was not mocking Dave's planned service, she was mocking his logical inconsistency. Besides, planning to serve is definitely not the same thing as actually serving. This is the same kind of idiotic double-standard philosophy that we've endured far too much of from the NeoCons since RayGun Ronnie's time in office.
- desertdog
December 3, 2009 at 4:35pm
where is butchie or Bob Powell when I need them?
- blackton
December 3, 2009 at 6:10pm
Blackton, the point isn't that there's anything wrong with the GI bill. The point is the dull stupidity of people who claim to be against the government while lapping up its benefits -- benefits that are legitimate and good, which is why their anti-government pretensions are such a sure sign of braindeath. If you don't get that, join the teapartiers.
- bwkling
December 6, 2009 at 4:54pm