Black 'Copter Tea Parties?

This is the strangest new meme on the tea parties. Now leftists are arguing that it's all about conspiracies (and "racists"), for example, at Newsweek's, "Black Helicopters Over Nashville," and also at Daily Kos, "Reading 'The Movement'." The latter piece is taking issue with the New Yorker cover story a couple of weeks ago, "The Movement." I actually posted on the New Yorker piece. I thought it was reasonable (which came as a surprise). But Daily Kos takes issue with author Ben McGrath, making thinly-veiled allegations that the tea parties are a "racist" front for the "fanatical neo-fascist right."

Anyway, here's this from the Newsweek article (via Memeorandum):

The tea-party movement has no leader. But it does have a face: William Temple of Brunswick, Ga. For months, the amiable middle-aged activist has been criss-crossing America, appearing at tea-party events dressed in his trademark three-cornered hat and Revolutionary garb. When journalists interview him (which is often—his outfit draws them in like a magnet), he presents himself as a human bridge between the founders' era and our own. "We fought the British over a 3 percent tea tax. We might as well bring the British back," he told NPR during a recent protest outside the Capitol.

It's a charming act, which makes the tea-party movement seem no more unnerving than the people who spend their weekends reenacting the Civil War. But the 18th-century getups mask something disturbing. After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.

Like all populists, tea partiers are suspicious of power and influence, and anyone who wields them. Their villain list includes the big banks; bailed-out corporations; James Cameron, whose Avatar is seen as a veiled denunciation of the U.S. military; Republican Party institutional figures they feel ignored by, such as chairman Michael Steele; colleges and universities (the more prestigious, the more evil); TheWashington Post; Anderson Cooper; and even FOX News pundits, such as Bill O'Reilly, who have heaped scorn on the tea-party movement's more militant oddballs.

One of the most bizarre moments of the recent tea-party convention came when blogger Andrew Breitbart delivered a particularly vicious fulmination against the mainstream media, prompting everyone to get up, turn toward the media section at the back of the conference room, and scream, "USA! USA! USA!" But the tea partiers' well-documented obsession with President Obama has hardly been diffused by their knack for finding new enemies.

That is truly a bizarre description, especially with that smack at Andrew Breitbart. That guy has single-handedly done more to right the ship of journalism than anyone else in recent years. If folks were chanting "USA, USA", then more power to 'em. I wish I could've been there!