When Satire Becomes Reality

Dave Weigel's article on the Herman Cain tea party event reads like an Onion article. That is not the fault of Weigel's prose. The tea party activists are buffoonish.

Weigel points out the absurdity of a Republican presidential candidate driven out of the race by a sex scandal and still holding rallies. Imagine progressives flocking to hear John Edwards speak in 2012. It isn't going to happen. In defense of Cain supporters, they are really fucking stupid. Check out their cheer if you don't believe me.

Chris Burgdon, Cain's cowboy-hatted videographer, boards another one of the six chariots and tells its occupants to get revved up.

"Gimme a 9-9-9!"

9-9-9

"Now say, we're not stupid!"

We're not stupid!

If the biggest PR goal of your movement is proving that you are not stupid than chances are no one in your group is going to discover the cure for cancer anytime in the near future.

Then there is William Temple. He is to the tea party movement what overweight 40 year-old guys that dress in green spandex Riddler costumes are to Comic Con. Temple has several different militia outfits he wears to tea party events. This moment Temple had with Weigel is surreal.

A waiter walks by, cradling a tray of crabcakes, each approximately the size of a gummy eraser.

"Ah, yes," says Temple, affecting his revolutionary-era accent. (Think of an extra from the John Adams mini-series.) "I'll have a full regiment."

Yes, there was nothing that George Washington's troops loved more at Valley Forge than mini-sized crabcakes.

You will not be shocked to learn that there were many empty seats at Cain's Renaissance Hotel event. As lame as this movement is, former DNC chair Tim Kaine lost the midterm elections to the tea party and RNC chair Michael Steele. The tea party may be a joke. Kaine is a bigger joke.