Joseph O. Patton: Crashing the Tea Party

  I’m always down for creating a stink. As a teenager I crashed a George H. W. Bush rally, and playing off his broken promise, “Read my lips: No new taxes,” I donned a cute yellow hat with a red feather and a Pinnochio nose. In college I took on the governor of Alabama concerning his proposed cuts to higher education to the point where he threatened to shut down the college newspaper which employed me.

  But there’s a definitive difference between the rabble-rousing I engaged in back in the day and the current groundswell of venom emanating from the “tea parties.” We believed in something. We advocated issues. Sadly the tea-baggers just want to hurl threats and insults, belittle the president of the United States and essentially slash and burn every politician, effort and idea they encounter. It’s the Attilla the Hun approach to politics, and it serves no purpose other than to vent misguided, uninformed anger.