If we tried, we might come up with a number of strategies that might effectively undermine the tea party movement. This is not one of them. Although I suspect the real purpose of the F*ck Tea initiative is to raise some money selling coffee mugs and T-shirts.
Remember the Bigger Asshole Rule: To win the hearts and minds of the American public, your first job is to make your opponents look like bigger assholes than you are. Thus, trying to match your opponents in asshole-ness is counterproductive.
If it was asshole-ish and funny, I could live with it.
But, “f*ck tea”?
What the tea is that about?
How about:
-TEA-tards.
-Simple-TEA-tons.
-sTEApid
Long form:
-Back Tea the Future!
-Man the TEA-pedo’s
Full speed reverse!
-Teabaggers want a
New ConsTEAtution!
I know these suck, but I think they’re better than “f*ck tea”
Memo: Contact some clever people before you go with “f*ck tea”. Not me, but some really clever ones.
I want a bumper sticker that says: JOHN GALT is a fictional character in a really bad novel by a failed “philosopher.” Any more dumb questions?
Although, admittedly, I haven’t seen a “Who is John Galt?” bumper sticker in at least a year. That has to be a good sign.
Sad. I like joan16’s idea, though. Great idea for a T shirt.
This shirt does in the slightest make me think of the tea party. The first time I saw it I thought ” assh*le that likes coffee.” It fails in its messaging.
Some ideas are such complete duds that you know (and hope) they’ll fall off the radar screen within a week or two.
Republicans have been huge assholes since 1994 and they’ve done pretty damn well so far. I think we have to say that rule is wrong.
Nay, the rule is not wrong. It’s purely a matter of perception. Assholes do not perceive themselves as assholes, and assholes packaged by media as saviors of family and American values don’t necessarily come across as assholes to people predisposed to favoring family and American values.
In other words, the test is not whether they are assholes, but whether they are perceived as such by the American public. And, unfortunately, it does no good to simply point out to the American public that certain people are assholes. They have to come to that conclusion themselves. And most of the time the American public isn’t paying nearly as close attention to the assholitude of the teabaggers as we are.
If your opposition is exhibiting asshole behavior in public, the correct strategy is to (a) be sure lots of people see it, and (b) be as un-asshole-like as possible, in contrast. It is not to act like an asshole in retaliation.
It’s true that sometimes it takes a really big club to get people’s attention. It was obvious to me long before the 2000 election that George W. Bush was a pissant little asshole, but it took most of the American public years and Hurricane Katrina to see it for themselves. But while vast mountains of assholiness on the Right can be overlooked and forgiven, the Left is given no slack at all, and we cannot afford to indulge in feel-good asshattery even to sell T-shirts.
“It was obvious to me long before the 2000 election that George W. Bush was a pissant little asshole, but it took most of the American public years and Hurricane Katrina to see it for themselves.”
Maha, all I had to do in 2000 was go to a site (I’ve since forgotten) that had a resume of anyone and everyone who was running for any office in America. GW’s resume was terrible, I wouldn’t have hired him to run a cleaning service. When 9/11 happened, did anyone but me think it was odd that we all knew where GW was, but not where the VP was?
Having personally suffered through Katrina, I saw a lot of stuff going on down here just to discredit our female Democratic governor by the good ol’ boys (??). And that is how an idiot like our current governor came into power.
I think that chetlovesbeer and moonbat are absolutely right, the t-shirt is that lame. We don’t have to do a darn thing to discredit tea bag politicians and the current ‘just say no’ crop of Repubs trying to regain a majority….they are doing such a good job of ‘shooting themselves in the foot’ that we should all sit back and enjoy every bit of it. Still whooping it up in Baton Rouge!!
Gulag, your long forms are great, hard to decide which is my fav…I think I will just have to go with,
“Man the TEA-pedo’s
Full speed reverse!”
I want it on a tee shirt!! Being a WWII submariner’s daughter, this one speaks to me and Pop would have loved it. I’m thinking about doing an illustration to go along with this, any good ideas?
Ugh, Gulag, any copyright problems here?
Kathleen,
Not that I know of.
I sat down outside, smoked a cigarette (yeah, I know…), and come up with the first stupid things that popped in my head. But I can’t vouch for the fact that there’s not another chower-head who didn’t copyright the same things in some drug-induced stupor sometime sooner.
PS: I’d LOVE to see the illustration!
I’m thinking about doing an illustration to go along with this, any good ideas?
How about an original caricature of Glenn Beck in that Nazi uniform he wore on the cover of a book…. Then you have a “Stupid U-Boat Captain” theme and no copyright problems (by not using the actual photo).
I’d buy several of those shirts as Christmas gifts!
Comedy and parody are the way to combat T bagism.
I was stuck in a hotel this week that did not have MSNBC, so I dared to go to FOX.
OH MY ACHING ASS!!!!
Y’all gotta check out Glen Beck; he is like a TOTAL asshole on steroids.”Insane gopher”.
My buddy Monty is always telling me how Beck is right, well yeah, if you sniff enough airplane glue, then slam your head in a car door, he indeed makes sense.
This is what the “other” 25% watches.
A guy at work asked me last week what I thought of Beck, I said watching him would lower your IQ by over ten points, damn, was I wrong.
He and his viewers are stupid beyond fixing.
“Progress is the real American party.” I don’t know what it means.
This is all very depressing.
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