Palin And Teabaggers Bomb In Boston

If one were to read my own hometown newspaper, the Amarillo Globe News, one might think Sarah Palin's appearance in Boston with the Tea Party Express was a rousing success. According to the AGN:

"A festive mood filled the air. A band played patriotic music, and hawkers sold yellow Gadsden flags emblazoned with the words 'Don't Tread on Me' and the image of a rattlesnake."

But then the AGN is not a real newspaper with an unbiased view of the news in America. For years now, it has been little more than a propaganda vehicle for right-wingers and Republicans. Instead of a rousing appearance in the home of the real historical "tea party", the Boston round of appearances for Palin and the teabaggers has to be a disappointment. The less-than-rousing event had been scheduled to last at least three hours, but it sort of fizzled out after less than half that time.

A little clearer picture of the event can be found at Truthout, where William Rivers Pitt attended the event and wrote about it. Pitt arrived at the event at it's 10:00am starting time, and was struck by the incongruity between the signs and the spoken views. He said:

"All these people are carrying pro-Constitution signs, but I keep hearing anti-Census and anti-Federal government comments. It begs the question: since the Census is clearly delineated in the Constitution, and since the Constitution itself established federal governance to begin with, what document are these people actually reading?"

Palin herself took the stage at about 11:00am for a short speech marred by a microphone that keep cutting off and on. There were about 2,000 teabagger sympathizers there, but a good protion were out-of-staters who came with the Tea Party Express. There were at least three times that number of anti-teabagger protesters. By 11:15am, many teabaggers gave up and began to wander off. Pitt says:

"The rhetorical blue balls felt by the crowd is palpable. Everyone came to hear Palin, but unless you were standing next to her, she was utterly inaudible. The crowd is dispersing in every direction, but there's still a guy on stage screeching about protesting on YouTube. This thing was supposed to last until 1pm, but it appears the show is over."

By 11:25am, the event was over with an especially ridiculous faux pas. Here's how Pitt describes the end:

"OK, this is Boston, right? You'd assume someone told the 'Bagger organizers where they were, right? Wrong. They just closed the show with someone singing "New York, New York" by Sinatra, but with anti-Obama lyrics...except that's the song the Yankees play at the end of every home game, and the crowd of Red Sox fans here knows that full well. People reacted to the song like scalded cats, and in seconds, the singer had the Common almost completely to himself."

But perhaps the most embarrassing thing for Palin and the teabaggers was the complete lack of any Massachusetts Republican elected officials. They avoided the gathering as if Palin and the teabaggers had a combination of swine flu, ebola and the black plague. And that might not be far from the truth in that liberal state. Those officials have to run for re-election, and they simply cannot afford to be perceived as being aligned with the teabaggers (who are viewed unfavorably by 75% of the population).

Even Senator Scott Brown, whom the teabaggers like to claim they were responsible for putting into office, made sure he had something else to do far away from the Boston gathering. He has to run for re-election in 2012, and knows he will lose if he doesn't position himself much closer to the middle as a moderate.

The right-wing and their propaganda organs can try as they will to put a good face on this event, but the truth is it was a big flop.