Cheer Up, Emo-Patriot! — Texas Conservatives To Sulk At ‘Tea Parties’ Wednesday

BURLESON, Texas Thousands and thousands of conservative Texans are fixing to sulk this Tax Day, April 15.

And to make matters worse, they aim to sulk in public like teenage emo shoe-gazers at a My Chemical Romance concert.

Their hang-ups? Check their diary entries.

First, there’s the federal government protecting creditors (Wall Street banks) and debtors (mortgage holders).

Then, there’s President Barack Obama’s proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.

Next, there’s the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-majority in Congress.

And finally, there’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for just being a douche.

This grassroot anger and frustration was stoked by various right-wing media pundits, most notably Rick Santelli. This past February, the on-air business editor advocated for a Chicago-style “tea party” during a five-minute diatribe on the financial cable news outlet CNBC.

“All you capitalists who want to show up at Lake Michigan, I’m going to start organizing,” Santelli screeched on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

What was he thinking about dumping in the lake? asked a CNBC anchor.

“I think we’re going to be dumping some derivitive securities,” he quipped to whistles and cheers. “What do you think about that?”

Well, apparently, CNBC thought so much of the idea that the cable news network reportedly refused to sponsor any of the so-called “tea parties” this week; in the same CNBC statement, Santelli said he wouldn’t be attending any rallies either.

Instead, various groups affiliated with the Republican Party, including Fox News, hijacked the movement with their very own silver-plated pitchforks, made-in-Taiwan torches, and Luzianne tea bags.

To the academic elite in their Ivory Towers on the East Coast, the organizers of the Tea Party USA movement were behaving rather oddly during their first round of parties.

In fact, Mary Segers, a political scientist at Rutgers University, told the Christian Science Monitor that today’s emo-patriots are generally wimpier than their French counterparts.

“The most interesting thing about the American people is that we are generally compliant in paying taxes, and tax revolts that seem surprising here are fairly common in a country like France where those farmers, if they get upset, they simply don’t pay,” she said.

Nevermind that the emo-patriots don’t know their American history. The organizers of the original “tea party” the Boston Tea Party never asked for permission to stage their direct action in 1773. Instead, without warning, they threw 90,000 pounds of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of the British-backed monopoly on the tea trade.

Stranger still is the whining that took place last week when an organizer in Burleson, Texas, heard that her request to hold a “tea party” there was denied by the city’s special events committee over “safety concerns.”

“To sit here and tell us they’re not going to have it because of safety concerns or because of due to the public interest, that’s just absurd,” said organizer Angela Cox to the Fort Wor