{"id":4720,"date":"2011-08-17T20:17:12","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T03:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4720"},"modified":"2011-08-17T21:27:32","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T04:27:32","slug":"tea-party-sweet-potatoes-are-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/08\/17\/tea-party-sweet-potatoes-are-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea Party? Sweet Potatoes are better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some heartening signs.<\/p>\n<p>First:<\/p>\n<p>Read the Salon.com article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/politics\/war_room\/2011\/08\/17\/tea_party_poll\">Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups<\/a> (subtitled: <strong><em>They may want &#8220;their country&#8221; back, but their country doesn&#8217;t really want them<\/em><\/strong>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This tiny band of fanatics is largely distrusted and despised by regular Americans, but a terrified media coddles them and pretends they&#8217;re harmless. I am speaking, of course, of the Tea Parties, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/17\/opinion\/crashing-the-tea-party.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">a group now officially less popular among Americans than Muslims.<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Listening to the mainstream media, it&#8217;s easy to think the Tea Partiers set the tone, &#8230;and yet (among <em><strong>real people<\/strong><\/em>) they&#8217;re &#8220;officially less popular among Americans than Muslims&#8221;? What the hell?<\/p>\n<p>Did I miss something about Muslims trending in popularity in America&#8230;?? No? Didn&#8217;t think so. Apparently, atheists are hated, too&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But look on the bright side: we Americans despise the moronic Tea Party bigots!<\/p>\n<p>Next:<\/p>\n<p>On Monday August 15, Jon Stewart aired this zinger segment: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailyshow.com\/watch\/mon-august-15-2011\/indecision-2012---corn-polled-edition---ron-paul---the-top-tier\">Indecision 2012 &#8211; Corn Polled Edition &#8211; Ron Paul &amp; the Top Tier<\/a> (subtitled: <strong><em>Even when the media does remember Ron Paul, it&#8217;s only to reassure themselves that there&#8217;s no need to remember Ron Paul<\/em><\/strong>). Stewart really rips the mainstream media, which has ignored Ron Paul even though he placed second in Iowa&#8217;s straw poll.<\/p>\n<p>You have to wonder what the hell is going on. <em><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Daniel Ratigan has some ideas &#8211; see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dylanratigan.com\/2011\/08\/09\/dylan-ratigan-mad-as-hell-his-epic-network-moment\/\">Dylan Ratigan, Mad as Hell: His Epic \u201cNetwork\u201d Moment<\/a>. I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;m steeped deeply enough in the issues to assess his theories. But, for what it&#8217;s worth, his main point is an attack on the financial institutions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We\u2019ve got a real problem\u2026this is a mathematical fact. Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren\u2019t doing it, republicans aren\u2019t doing it, an entire integrated system, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dylanratigan.com\/2011\/08\/05\/jobs-wanted-ending-rigged-banking-jobs\/\">banking<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dylanratigan.com\/2011\/08\/03\/job-wanted-jobs-ending-rigged-trade\/\">trade<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dylanratigan.com\/2011\/08\/04\/jobs-wanted-ending-rigged-tax-code-jobs\/\">taxation<\/a>, created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But best of all is a segment I heard on NPR this afternoon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/08\/17\/139721276\/a-look-at-life-in-a-n-c-restaurant\">Amid D.C. Squabbles, A Look At Life At A Restaurant<\/a>. Do yourself a favor and <a href=\"NPR.Player.openPlayer(139721276,%20139721682,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')\">listen to this 4+ minute segment<\/a> about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sweetpotatoes.ws\/index.html\">Sweet Potatoes<\/a>, a Winston-Salem, NC restaurant, and its very smart and articulate owners, Stephanie Tyson and Vivian Joiner.<\/p>\n<p>When Vivian Joiner called out the financial system, DC, and public &#8220;servants&#8221; (whom do they serve?, not the people, not the people) in <a href=\"NPR.Player.openPlayer(139721276,%20139721682,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')\">this NPR segment<\/a>, I found myself yelling, <em>Tell it, sister<\/em>. She is soooooo right. Why don&#8217;t we have people like her running the country? Why do assholes like Perry or Romney or Bachmann or Palin or even puppet Democrats (like&#8230; fill-in-the-blanks?) get all the coverage and <strong><em>all the money<\/em><\/strong>? Why?<\/p>\n<p>More like this, please.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 267px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sweetpotatoes.ws\/index.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" style=\"border: 6px solid white\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sweetpotatoes.ws\/index_files\/stacks_image_7_1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"257\" height=\"270\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Stephanie Tyson (r) and her partner Vivian Joiner (l), the dedicated (and smart!) owners of Sweet Potatoes in Winston-Salem, NC<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some heartening signs. First: Read the Salon.com article, Tea Party people less popular than many other hated minority groups (subtitled: They may want &#8220;their country&#8221; back, but their country doesn&#8217;t really want them): This tiny band of fanatics is largely distrusted and despised by regular Americans, but a terrified media coddles them and pretends they&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1114,96],"tags":[3032,31172,31173],"class_list":["post-4720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-politics","tag-republicans","tag-tea_party","tag-us_politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4720"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4720\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}