Questioning the Tea Partiers

With the new movement of Tea Partiers gaining national attention, and finding more and more space in various media outlets, I have been left wondering what exactly is behind this group of vocal social and political critics. I have heard numerous interviews with Tea Party supporters, and it strikes me that one of two things must be going on (or maybe both): the people of the Tea Party movement are either deliberately using misinformation in an effort to manipulate public response and support for their supposed cause, or these same people are being deliberately manipulated with misinformation to further the popularity and voice of the movement.

I've heard conflicting reports about the demographics of the Tea Party. For instance, I have heard that they are mainly more educated than the average US citizen, and from another source that this is actually not the case. They may be more affluent than average - or not. Perhaps it's the relative newness of the movement that is contributing to this evolving story about them, but either way it is deeply disturbing that an apparently growing number of (mostly) white people have been hoodwinked by an agenda that so blatantly uses misinformation and outright lies. In fact, some have described the Tea Partiers as outright racists - even Bill Maher calls them out on this possibility - check it out:



It will be curious to see how their influence grows or dissipates in the coming years.