We’re now ahead of… the Tea Party.
Oh gee. A bunch of selfish illiterate racist godbothering wackadoodles who aren’t smart enough to google “teabagging” before they start national campaigns. Good to know we barely have more support from the general public than those guys.
I’m not sure whether I should be hopeful or full of despair.
It’s frustrating, to say the least
It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that everyone in the Tea Party is illiterate and racist. That simply isn’t true. I’m strongly opposed to their politics as well, but slandering them isn’t what one should do.
It beats being less popular than the Tea Party.
Not slander when it’s supported with evidence, from the article you didn’t even read: “So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.”
Was just about to say…
You had me with ‘racist’, but lose me with ‘illiterate.’ That sort of hyperbole is better left in the hands of people like Amanda Marcotte.
Shucks for you, because I’d love to be more like Amanda Marcotte.
Just calling it as we all see it…http://www.flickr.com/photos/p…
I’m waiting for the Onion to report “Atheists Slightly More Trustworthy than Child Molestors, Says National Poll.”But yeah, this is progress. I guess.
Does this mean politicians are going to stop pandering to them, and maybe push for a more secular agenda? Naw, I won’t get my hopes up.
It’s a start!
While I don’t agree with “illiterate”*, I do think “selfish” is a very wrong adjective to use. The issue is how “generous” they are. They want everyone else to not only believe as they do, but also abide by their rules.* Lack of reading comprehension and spelling skills seem to be common, though.
**Sigh**
WRT to feminism, def yes. SHe’s a kick ass feminist. Not wrt politics. She behaves exactly like a teabagger, just one that loves Obama to a fault.
I’m not sure this is a good thing. I mean, yes, at least we’re not behind them (at least aoccrding to this), but they’re so over-the-top that it seems like a backhanded insult to say we’re only slightly less hated then such extremist, psychotic bigots.
Being someone who has actually been to their events, it’s not inaccurate to say that the Tea Party individuals are racist to some degree. Here in Lafayette, IN we had a forum where the Tea Party leader proclaimed that Native Americans should get off their reservations and get jobs because they lost their land and they should get over it. As for the illiteracy…they read, but they’re not exposing themselves to the stuff that disagrees with their ideas. If they are, they’re more or less saying that it’s liberal conspiracy. That’s not very logical, nor is it well founded or appealing to anyone outside of their ranks.
While we are on the topic, I think as a community we need to take notice of what the Tea Party is doing wrong as a movement and not repeat their same mistakes…
Examples?
Well at least we are above the caricature that is the Tea Party. See, a silver lining.
Illiterate is, I think, inaccurate. Speaking of Amanda Marcotte, one of the things she recently pointed out is that despite liberals bending over backwards to pretend the tea party are people who actually have something to complain about and are just striking out at the wrong targets because they’re uneducated and being manipulated by the teratocracy, they’re pretty economically comfortable on average and motivated almost entirely by sheer fucking bigotry and a sense of wounded privilege. Granted they’re pig-fucking, sheet-wearing, inbred Hills-Have-Eyes types at heart, but while they’re virulantly anti-intellectual, they can pretty clearly read.
Spreading burdens to other people is not the same as generosity.
The “Illusion of Control” thread on the front page of Pandagon.ETA: Not the piece itself (which I personally found pretty good), but her behavior in the comments. There was absolutely nothing liberal about that at all. If that would have been a teabaggning troll behaving like that, she’d have banned them.
And how is it you think we’re failing to do this?
I actually think we’re doing quite better than they are, but I think there is always room to take notes and keep these notes in our arsenal for later use.
Aww, I’m kind of jealous…It’s not a good thing to be the most mistrusted group, but let’s face it, most hated sounds way better than second most hated. It’s something we could have said ‘we’re number 1!’ about but now, we get nothin’And it sucks doubly that our displacement from the top spot isn’t because people like us more, it’s because there’s someone else to like less…
I think this is very good news! Baby steps. The most encouraging part was that the American voter is shying away from people who try to mix religion with politics. Bad news for the likes of Bachmann and Perry. ;-)
Thank you Crewisasport for bring this to my attention. This is awesome and hilarious.
Take it for a win!
I’m going to lean toward ‘hopeful’.
maybe “less literate than most” would be accurate?
there is an article on cnn that points out some biblical passages that bachmann and perry seem to be ignoring.http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/…i know this is an atheist blog but i think it’s relevant to point these out in the context of discussing bachmann and perry. (they both scare me and i’m a conservative christian.)
Agreed. That’s why I put “generosity” in quotes. I couldn’t think of a word that means “forces others to accept”.
I’m sorry Jen, but I’m unsure how you can think anything about the Bible is relevant on an atheist blog. I’ve never known any Christian who didn’t ignore some passages of the Bible, and I’m even thankful that they pick and choose the passages in many cases.The parts of the Bible that they ignore doesn’t concern me as much as the extent of their ignorance of reality.
If you’d actually read much of Marcotte’s blog you’d be warier about calling her an Obama cheerleader. She’s not. She’ll defend him because he’s a democrat, and thinks democrats would have been hard pressed to do better, but she has criticisms of him and his policies, too.
I think we need to made a distinction between “illiterate” and “ill-educated.”There’s a LOUD teabagger in the office across the hall from me who, while being a reasonably well-educated engineer, is stunningly ignorant. He’s constantly contradicting himself, but my favorites are always the “I read THIS [on FOXnews.com]” factoids that turn out to be easily proved false.
Bloody hell, given it’s the NYT it’s a big surprise Muslims aren’t top of that list!
I’m gonna go for hopeful on this one. I’ve had a bellyfull of despair.
Next target: The KKK!
I disagree, Berlzebub. I have far more interest in the bible now that I am an atheist than I ever did when I was required to go to church. I’ve always wondered why that “give to Caeser” passage isn’t constantly thrown at the tea party faithful. It is one of the NT’s most famous passages and it flies in the face of the anti-tax, anti-socialism sentiment. So I find it refreshing to see at least a couple of christians willing to point out these contradictory passages to Bachmann & Perry & the tea party.We atheists have a belief that we are more informed about the bible than most christian laypeople. In my opinion that belief is accurate and is one of our greatest assets. Being able to argue about the bible in a intelligent manner is imperative when trying to convey our reasons for disbelief. It isn’t about convincing christians to leave the fold, but rather getting christians to see the passages in their holy book that they routinely ignore because they contradict the party line.I for one appreciate jen bringing that blog to my attention. Any ammunition against the tea party is a good thing.
Agreed!
I know I’m a few days late commenting on this, but I’m worried about the veracity of the claims being made in headlines. To quote what I’ve written elsewhere… in trying to find the data discussed (here: http://www.nytimes.com/interac… i noticed that the headlines are all using multiple studies to come up with the compared resultsthe 40% disapproval rating of the Tea Party is in the above study, but it doesn’t ask anything about other groups, which were discussed in an older study (2008, i think)that study found that 39.6% of americans agree with the statement “This group does not at all agree with my vision of American society…” re: atheistsalso, that 47.6% of americans agree with the statement “I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group….” re: atheistshttp://atheism.about.com/od/at…The questions being asked in various places are totally different measures, and using them against each other seems unwise
There is no evidence in that article, only an assertion. Citing it as evidence doesn’t work unless we all have absolute trust for the Times.I dug a bit though. Googling “tea party lower regard immigrants republican party”, I mostly found cites of that article. I did find one person on salon which linked to an earlier article from the NY times and a Salon article discussing University of Washington study.The Times didn’t give values for their feeling about immigrants or blacks, but did indicate an error margin of 3%. A link on that article, about how the poll was conducted, was broken. The claim that “They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people” is not contained in the actual poll. Therefore, as evidence goes, it’s useless. It does demonstrate a difference between the tea party and the general public on those issues, but not republicans.The Salon article was a response to Cathy Young. The arguments are a little more nuanced, but unless I misread it, they about match republican views according to Young and Joan Walsh didn’t dispute it.