DON'TCHA DON'TCHA DO IT, NO NO NO NO

An Oregon middle school teacher named Jason Levin has gleaned notoriety from his professed agenda. It is one that we should oppose firmly.


Levin heads an organization called Crash the Tea Party, and he wants its members to infiltrate teabagger rallies and make them look even more toxic and lunatic than they already do. He says that when a bagger tells the media that Obama wasn't born in this country, he wants one of his plants to add that the president is from Mars. It's plain that he means to "crash the party" in the sense of causing it to crash.


I can understand how someone would be tempted to take such measures. But they emphatically should not, for three weighty reasons:


(1) While the right has made it clear that it has no intention of being fair in the fight it is waging, liberals have always been for fairness. This is no time to repudiate that. And it is never good to let the opposition's behavior dictate your tactics. Let's leave the dirty tricks to the neo-Nixonians in our midst. And we on the left should want always to set an example that will cause people to turn to us when they want plain dealing and plain decency.


(2) From now on, whenever some teabagger displays racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, paranoia, or some other unAmerican characteristic, the other baggers will be able to claim that that was one of Jason Levin's crew out to embarrass them and that their own hands (or mouths) are clean. Levin is actually whitewashing them while trying to tar them. That's self-defeating.


(3) Teabaggers have not distinguished themselves by restraint and nobility. If you set them an evil example, some of them will take it up. Look for pseudo-liberals to emerge now and endorse legalized rape, the triumph of terrorism, armed ghetto invasions of the suburbs, etc. Thanks a heap, Mr. Levin!


As a teacher of young people, what kind of example is Levin setting for his students? If they are encouraged to act out, and if masquerading and sabotage become what American politics is about, what kind of a future are we going to have? Leave the destructiveness to the right. Someone has to build, not tear down.

Levin and his fellow conspirators should renounce their enterprise, disband their organization, and disavow all impersonation. They should do so at once and without equivocation.


Speaking of the teabaggers, here is a headline from a Fox News story of April 15, 2010: "Tea Party Supporters Richer, More Educated Than Most, Poll Finds." That was for sure my impression. In other words, they are the very people who should know better than to do what they are doing to this country.


That NYT/CBS poll also says that 57% of the tea party members polled are for same-sex marriage or civil unions. This is consistent with being anti-government. It seems to portend a clash with the other major Republicult component, the Religious Right.


The poll also shows that teabaggers aren't against broad-based assistance programs like Social Security and Medicare - and that they think too much is being done for the poor. In other words, they are for whatever "socialism" directly benefits them but want to leave the less prosperous in the gutter.

They and Jason Levin should get together and have a symposium on social ethics!