I’ve been mostly ignoring the teabagger convention, but now I feel outraged on the teabaggers’ behalf:
The convention, to be held in Nashville in early February, made a splash by attracting big-name politicians. (Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech.) But some groups have criticized the cost — $549 per ticket and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare — as out of reach for the average tea partier. And they have balked at Ms. Palin’s speaking fee, which news reports have put at $100,000, a figure that organizers will not confirm or deny.
To put that in terms you limousine liberals can understand, that $9.95 fee is like the $20 supplement for foie gras on a $160 prix fixe menu.
How could the organizers not know that $550 plus a $10 fee would piss even the most gullible ‘baggers off?
In a strange way, I think this answers that question.
Dennis G.
I hit the post button at the same time as you. I guess this will give the overnight crew plenty to chat about.
Cheers
darryl
A whole bunch of fools gather, and many people arrive to part them from their money? I am shocked, shocked that this is going on.
I actually am a bit surprised that the fee was this high. I used to run a tutoring business, in the rural South, and thought home schoolers were my perfect clients–free all day, parents who know jack-shit about anything. What I discovered was that while that was true, they were also incredibly tight-fisted and placed no value whatsoever on education, so profit opportunities were few and far between. Basically it was just a horde of selfish christians who didn’t want their kids bein’ told no libral shit like they came from no monkeys, or the Earff wasn’t personally designed on a CAD workstation by Jesus 6,000 years ago, for the personal benefit of white christian americans like Jesus was.
DougJ
I hit the post button at the same time as you. I guess this will give the overnight crew plenty to chat about.
That’s the idea.
I didn’t get a chance to say this earlier today, but, in the immortal words of William F. Buckley, welcome aboard!
DougJ
I actually am a bit surprised that the fee was this high.
Me too. I go to a lot of professional conferences as well as Yearly Kos and they’re usually less than half that.
Dennis G.
Thanks Dougj.
I have not figured out how to use WP to leave a comment to another comment yet (with that @ sign). I am certain the the simplicity of WP is escaping me.
Cheers
bago
I believe I have to include <a href=”http://wonkette.com/412025/teabaggers-will-attempt-to-rip-apart-1990-page-bill”>the time I made the front page of wonkette in this discussion.
Dennis G.
FYWP, as it were. It looks like I said it twice.
Will
In the wake of the quite appropriate criticism of her grifting, isn’t Sarah claiming that she is now doing the keynote speech for free? Or she’s donating the money? Something like that?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does it come with wine pairings? and how much are the white truffle shavings?
Didn’t the Wassilla Grifta get backed into pledging her fee to charity?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dennis G.: just click on the arrow next to the time-stamp of the post.
MaximusNYC
It’ll be interesting to see if Palin bails on this. She’s bailed on so many things, it wouldn’t surprise me. And it would be tactically smart for her to bail and claim she’s doing so because she’s outraged by how the lil’ folks are being ripped off — gotta keep that faux-populist star shiny.
If, on the other hand, she follows thru with the gig in order to collect the fat paycheck, it may permanently damage her image with much of Teabag Nation. That’s actually what I hope happens.
DougJ
I believe I have to include the time I made the front page of wonkette in this discussion.
You’re Randy C?
darryl
She’s claimed, now, IIRC, that she’s donating her fee to political groups, but it’s probably just a straight up lie.
I’m guessing that, because if I were Sarah Palin, I would straight up lie to their faces. Because those people are fuckin’ dumb.
calling all toasters
This is ridiculous: all teabaggers make more than $250,000 a year, so they can easily afford it. How do I know this? Because they all swear Obama raised their taxes.
Dennis G.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That was simple enough. Thanks for holding my hand through it.
Cheers
bago
@DougJ: Yup! Of fleeting internet fame. I’m also back in Seattle now. It was very illuminating.
calling all toasters
@darryl: This is a beautiful sentiment.
darryl
Where I live, in southern georgia, there’s a hot new bumper sticker. It says
“Stand up for america!
Be an American!!!!!!!!!!!!1111”
I’ve looked online and I can’t find this thing. Kinda wondering where it came from. I suppose one of the local churches is distributing it.
Yutsano
Is it bad that after reading that article all I can feel is pure Schadenfreude?
Morbo
A fool and his money…
darryl
@calling all toasters: Well, I mean, you might call me a jerk, but if I could make Glenn Beck money pretending to cry and presenting segments explaining how Barack Obama is a the gay love child of Joseph Stalin and Satan, I probably would. I’m a fairly ethical person, but I also wouldn’t mind making some scratch off the people who are turning my homeland into a third-world goddam country.
Little Dreamer
I can’t wait to watch this fiasco unfold. ;)
MikeBoyScout
Do you think they’ll be able to score any Arugula & Pear Salad for their $558.95?
Dennis G.
@darryl:
Quitting is the new doing in Sarah’s world.
It is resume through imagination.
Good times.
And great news for John McCain regardless what she does.
Little Dreamer
@Yutsano:
No, not at all, why would you get that idea?
Watching teabagger trainwrecks while smiling is the most truly patriotic action one can take, I believe (well, in the absence of a ballot box anyway)!
Lev
It’s not just the teabaggers. The entire conservative movement is cynical to the core–it’s got to be. They’re fundamentally lying to their supporters about what they want to do and what is possible, and said supporters don’t want to hear that “big government” is never, ever going to disappear. It’s a veritable two-way street of bullshit, held together by increasingly desperate culture war nonsense and LOTS. OF. SHOUTING. ABOUT. THE COUNTRY. BEING TAKEN. AWAY FROM US!
P.S. This is neither here nor there, but I was perusing new books at a B&N in Sacramento, CA, and I discovered that the security chief from Babylon 5 is evidently a right-wing radio host with a book. No wonder Andrea Thompson moved on before too long.
darryl
The problematic conflict is, the dumber and more republican they are, the more selfish and less likely to hand over cash they are. That’s why I started giving short shrift to male callers. If a woman called me about her kid having trouble in school, i had about a 50% chance of converting them into a tutoring client. In my 5 years of tutoring, I don’t think I ever converted a single male caller into a client. While I made $35/hr in Raleigh NC as a tutor, I don’t think I ever got a callback from a dad if I quoted $20 or more.
(And, not to toot my own horn, but if you pay me $35 an hour to tutor your kid in math, the downstream effects are a hundredfold return on your money. People think guys are better at math than girls, but they’re wrong, and also, extremely short-sighted.)
Little Dreamer
@calling all toasters:
Good point!
KCinDC
@darryl, if you were doing the Glenn Beck thing you wouldn’t be a bystander, you’d be one of the people turning the US into a third-world country. Making money by ruining your nation is not what I’d call “fairly ethical”.
Anne Laurie
@Dennis G.:
Hit the little grey arrow at the end of the line with your name (name – date – time – ‘edit’ – arrow). Or, if you’re old & a slow typist like me, copy the bit of the comment you want to refer to, hit the arrow (which was a grey box on IE6), paste in the quote, highlight it & click the b-quote “tab” above the Comments virtual-index-card. If you’ve block-quoted more than one paragraph, go back & add two underscores between each paragraph. Then you can type in your own comments, if you still remember what you wanted to say.
(Sorry if this is too literal. I wish someone had given me these tips to avoid the FYWP head-on-keyboard reaction when I first came aboard myself.)
Mnemosyne
It seems about in line for a hobbyist convention — I paid $575 to go to Stitches West (knitting conference) last year, which included four days of classes (21 hours total), a luncheon, a dinner, and an awards banquet, and that didn’t include my flight or hotel.
Of course, I got actual knowledge and some finished items out of my conference. Not everyone would be as interested as I was to hear Lucy Neatby talk about intarsia, but I guarantee you it was more entertaining and educational than listening to Sarah Palin’s yammerings.
Wile E. Quixote
@Yutsano:
Are you kidding? Revel in it! Hell get all naked and roll around in it because serious, high-quality Schadenfreude doesn’t come around too often.
jenniebee
@darryl: BristolPAC is a political group.
Just sayin’
Anne Laurie
@darryl:
I’d guess more like the political groups “Independent Real Americans(tm) for Palin 2012” or “Heartland Values for Freedom(tm) 2012”, both of which will list Bristol Palin’s public relations consulting firm as their major expense for tax purposes. Why lie, when the business code allows you to be just as dishonest while staying legal?
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
The lowest price for the upcoming TCM Classic Movies Festival is $499.
IOW — they’re charging fan prices, not professional gathering prices. Heh.
Anne Laurie
@darryl:
Is that 1111 related to that texting stuff that you goshdarned younguns are all about these days?
Notorious P.A.T.
F**k ’em.
jenniebee
Geez, who would have guessed we’d get a grass-roots conservative movement to make Democrats look unified and organized by comparison?
Heresiarch
Here is the world’s smallest violin:
http://www.milkmanthefilm.com/akirawing/img/Worlds%20Smallest%20Violin.jpg
and right now it is playing a sad, sad song for the teabaggers.
Yutsano
So we can still stand outside the convention center and point and laugh right? Right?
bago
@Anne Laurie: It’s if you hold shift to do an exclamation point with the caps lock on. Riffed on ENDLESSLY111!!eleventyone!
Anne Laurie
@bago: I know the eleventy-one riff (and have used it) but it doesn’t seem to make sense in this context, i.e., as a “positive” bumpersticker from a conservative (church?) group. Being old, I know nothing about texting except that tv people implore me to “text” 4 digits to give money to Haitian relief or vote for my choice of American Idol. Just wondered if texting 1-1-1-1 would give my money to some wingnut group, or register a (meaningless) vote for this week’s conservatard darling.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Wile E. Quixote:
Yeah… but the double-wet suit/dildo guy was that Once Every Thousand Years On The Mayan Calendar Moment™, wun’he?
Calming Influence
Wait a sec. – tea-baggers AREN’T wealthy, they’re getting screwed by their banks, their health insurance companies, and their “leaders” – they’re obviously the enemy!
Jane Hamsher must die!
bago
@Anne Laurie: Use this link to reverse lookup the short code entry.
Keith
How can you top that quote?
nitpicker
Sorry, bitches, but when your whole political philosophy can be summed up with YEA CAPITALISM! AYN RAND ROCKS! then you don’t get to whine when someone makes money off the crazy.
OriGuy
Somehow they will manage to blame liberals for this outrage.
Until then, how about having some of John Scalzi’s Schadenfreude Pie?
Wile E. Quixote
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I know, I felt privileged to be alive at such a time.
PurpleGirl
@nitpicker:
Yes, this is true. Let the buyer beware should be their guiding principle.
Mark S.
@Lev:
Yeah, that’s Jerry Doyle. I’ve never seen Babylon 5, but Doyle mentions he was on it every five minutes on his show. If you absolutely have to listen to a right wing blowhard on the radio (or, more commonly, there’s nothing else on), I guess he’s not bad.
Prospero
@Lev:
Well, he was brainwashed in season 4.
Barry
Dougj: “How could the organizers not know that $550 plus a $10 fee would piss even the most gullible ‘baggers off?”
Seconding, thirding and fourthing here – why not separate the fools from their money? If con artists can get a bunch of middle class and working class people to protest on behalf of Big Insurance, they’ll certainly shoot for getting them to *pay* for that privilege.
And it’s been clear for several months now that Palin’s reaction to her new-found fame was ‘how much $$$$$$$$$$$$$?’.
dmsilev
@MikeBoyScout: My mom has made that salad a few times for dinner parties and the like. It’s really tasty. Good recipe.
-dms
WereBear
It’s not just that. Isn’t it a sacred Republican principle to make money on everything, every single thing that can possibly change hands has a monetary value that must be paid?
They should tell the teabaggers how much profit is being made from them, bright and early every morning.
MikeBoyScout
@dmsilev:
sshhh. Eating food that tastes good and is good for you is liberal and shows signs of intelligence. Better to serve pork rinds. ;-)
Lisa K.
I have no sympathy for them. Teabaggers have been conned by big business to believe that they must demonstrate to protect the CEO and company from the high taxes that they themselves are paying in abundance, and the right have every dollar scammed out of them by any means possible through ongoing deregulation.
So they are priced out of their own convention-so what? They probably like it that way.
I will tell you, Republicans are geniuses at this sort of thing. Make (admiitedly stupid) people eat shit and like it.
kay
It seems to me that they just don’t want to pay for anything they use, which is consistent with their whole movement and philosophy.
I don’t know why anyone would pay to hear Sarah Palin, though, so I agree with them there. I have a lot of trouble avoiding hearing her. She’s everywhere.
If I were the owner of the venue I think I’d get the money up front. They’re moving from taxpayer-funded public spaces to for profit private spaces. Might be a rude awakening when they get a bill.
ericblair
@Calming Influence: Wait a sec. – tea-baggers AREN’T wealthy, they’re getting screwed by their banks, their health insurance companies, and their “leaders” – they’re obviously the enemy!
And they’ve been told this. So either they’re a) aggressively ignorant, b) living in a fantasy world, or c) don’t care that the foot is on their head as long as a slightly bigger foot is on someone else’s. Either way, they are part of the problem.
It constantly surprises me how the right cannot stop themselves from grabbing as much cash as they can even if they’re hurting themselves in the process. The bankstas couldn’t resist giving themselves huge bonuses under massive public scrutiny instead of laying low for a year until nobody cared again. The conference organizers charged premium prices that they should have known would piss off a good fraction of the useful idiots who are doing their political work for free. Idjits.
Ash Can
Hey, I wouldn’t have known myself, simply because of the fact that they are so gullible. Methinks the organizers of the event took a guess at quantifying just how gullible those yahoos were — an unknown quantity, since no one’s ever tried to shake them down in a really comprehensive and systemic way before — and guessed too high. To the teabaggers’ credit, it appears, such credit as it may be.
@darryl:
Like jenniebee @#33, I’m thinking it’s probably all going to Bristol’s consulting firm.
New Yorker
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” – H.L. Mencken.
It’s not quite obvious why Palin quit as governor. Why work hard for comparative peanuts while doing boring stuff like proposing a state budget when you can travel the country raking in millions by telling the gullible exactly what they want to hear?
Lisa K.
@ericblair:
“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on”-Sinclair Lewis
Hob
@Calming Influence: I think you’re just having fun fucking with us, “Calming” (ha), but I just figured out why Hamsher’s Norquist-hugging pisses me off so much, and it’s not just because it’s naive and unproductive. (Although it’s that too.) It’s because it condescends in a really ugly way to the people it’s supposedly seeking solidarity with. The working-class non-crazies who fall in with the right wing because they don’t think anyone speaks for them. The people that (if I’m reading your sarcastic sneer right) you think non-Hamsher lefties have nothing but contempt for.
Well I don’t know about everyone here, maybe you have our number and we’re just a bunch of haters. But you know who really for sure has nothing but contempt for those guys? Grover fucking Norquist, Glenn fucking Beck, and Sarah fucking Palin. They’re con artists and demagogues and liars, and they hate and laugh at the people who buy their lies. They laugh all the way to the bank.
Now, say Archie Bunker and Jane Sixpack, basically decent folks who never had any use for hippies, who think “sure Beck is a little nuts and Palin is a little dumb but at least they look out for the little guy”… say they hear about some event put together by Hamsher and Norquist, and they hear about how the Tea Party and the lefties are really talking about the same thing, looking out for the little guy. And they get some activist spirit and they start thinking more about how politicians con us into voting against our interests and divide us with mistrust. In other words, Hamsher’s message works just like it’s supposed to.
Now, unless Archie and Jane are really the bigoted fools that you claim we think they are, at some point they get the same light bulb that our host Mr. Cole did. They think about political con artists and then they listen to one of their wingnut heroes and they think, “Hey, I get why that sounded good… but actually it’s kind of bullshit. They’ve been bullshitting me, and I bought it, and they got rich off it. Fuck you, Sarah. Fuck you, Grover.”
And then they look at their souvenir Firebagger T-shirt with Hamsher and Norquist sharing a revolutionary embrace, and they remember the speeches about how the lefties are on their side after all because they understand their needs, just like Grover and Sarah. And they think, “I didn’t use to know those guys were full of shit, but you were already hippies– you must’ve known.”
“Oh yeah right. Well then fuck ALL y’all.”