I Infiltrate Angry Anti-Obama Healthcare Protestors

We’ve all seen those screaming idiots on the news who go to our nation’s Town Hall meetings with their Obama=Hitler signs in order to shout down our elected officials. Is it all just media hype or are these rightwing nutbags crazier than a bucket of frogs?

It’s time to find out. So I decided to infiltrate the big national anti-Obama Healthcare Protest. Put on by the Tea Party Patriots. this ragtag grassroots bunch really, really (I’m not kidding you), really believe if the president’s healthcare plan passed we all will be living in a government-run gulag where Obama wipes his ass daily with the American flag.

Yes, I’m ready to face the Fox News-fueled minion of the Bay Area Tea Party Patriots who fear not only “death panels,” but also the oncoming socialist invasion on these shores.

BRING ON THE PATRIOTS

On the Tea Party Patriots’ website a women named Sally gives a pre-rally pep talk to all her fellow teabaggers. Apparently, she still sour about the French:

“I’m not a big Shakespeare nut, but my daughter is. Henry V says, I believe, on the eve of battle w/ France (not hard to think of the Obama Admin as France, is it?)”

“I want my America back!” I scream on arrival at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco where roughly a few hundred Tea Party Patriots have assembled. To help further fit in, I’ve strapped my camera bag around my leg so it can easily be mistaken for a gun holster.

Surprise! The crowd is 90% white, mostly elderly (soon to face Obama’s “death panels!”). Adorned in matching red Tea Party Patriot T-shirts, some wear Uncle Sam hats. Others have constructed clothing (shirts, pants, etc) out of American flags.

Two Tea Party women work the crowd, trying to get everyone to chant, “Repeal! Repeal!” No one joins in, but I file in behind them: “Repeal! Repeal!” Another woman hands me a petition to save the 1st Amendment (so more asinine and unproductive screaming can be done at Town Hall meetings.)

A portly Tea Bag woman cracks up at my Obama=Charlie Chaplin sign. In a display of right-wing show-and-tell camaraderie, she shares her sign: Obama’s face made to look like the Batman’s Joker.

“Is this like the best ever?” the portly Tea Bag woman boosts

“Yeah,” I exclaim, then clarify the joke: “It’s like taking Obama’s face and the Joker’s face and making one new face with the two of them!” A shared cackle.

The woman makes an unhappy face. Things turn serious: “This is our leader right. Here he is.” (Slightly racist.) “We’ve been taken over by ‘this.’”

“Yeah,” I reply, sympathetic. ‘People like these have moved into my neighborhood.” I make an unhappy face too.

Like Halloween, Tea Partiers are proud to show off their “clever” anti-Obama signs.

Signs More Unintentionally Idiotic Than Mine:

-Somewhere In Kenya There’s a Village Without An Idiot!

-We’re Taking America Back From The Communist.

-Freedom Not Socialism

-Which Are You Drinking? (Picture of two tea bags: one with a symbol of capitalism and the other with a Soviet hammer and sickle.)

The Winner: 6 Months To Pick A Puppy, 3 Weeks To Change Our Healthcare!

“Welcome to the official 2nd Annual San Francisco Tea Party.” Announces Sally—the head tea bagger—adorned in an Uncle Sam Hat. (Cheers.) “We invited our representatives but they didn’t show up.”

(Chants.) “Vote Pelosi out! Vote Pelosi out!”

“Kill her! Kill her!” I scream taking a page from the Palin-rally playbook.

“Aren’t you insulted to hear we are manufactured!?” sarcastically the Tea Party leader remarks at our presence.

“I’m NOT manufactured!”

A man strongly backs her by waving, “This Sign Is Not Manufactured.”

“CNN SHOW THIS!”

“I’m not manufactured either!” I scream.

More sarcasm: “They say we’re all fueled by big money and the insurance companies. Well, where’s my limo?” (Cheers.) Mission statement: “We agree our healthcare system is second to none. (Huh?)

It’s nothing like what’s coming down the parkway.”

“Read the bill! Read the Bill!’

“It sounds to me like……….. (Crowd repeats in unison) Obama’s chickens have come home to roost.” Then: They are scared cuz the people have turned out. Oh baby the honeymoon is over!” (Without irony.) “This is our American and we wont be afraid to fight for our principals and our leaders can’t silence us.”

After a few Ronald Reagan quotes are thrown in for good measure, Sally exclaims, “LET’S TEA PARTY ON!”

MEET THE OPPOSITION

“Take your hat of! Hat off!’ a gruff old guy tells all hat-wearers in an intense manner. The Tea Party Patriots are about to take part in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (without irony what-so-ever.) The gruff geezer taps a man on the shoulder who is wearing a circa 1773 Boston Tea Party hat. “Take your hat off!” Then, after the Pledge:

“USA! USA! USA!” (Again chanted without irony.)

I thought San Franfreako was a radical town—but there’s barely an angry liberal opposition to be found. Herded over by a group of tea baggers, who adore my Obama/Charlie Chaplin sign, we conduct a hearty conversation on why our healthcare system is the best in the world.

“You have the choice on whether you want to be poor or not,” explains a woman with poodle hair.

“Yeah,” I contribute. “Stupid poor people choosing to be poor!”

Suddenly, we’re confronted by a sole hippy chick who pans the crowd with a sign reading: WHO COULD JESUS INSURE?

Good question. Standing up for my tea bagger peers, I sarcastically yell. “So tell us, who would Jesus insure?”

The hippie chick turns her sign. It reads: EVERYONE.

“I’m surprising they are not shutting her down?” remark an elderly patriot man.

“Yeah, this is our time!”

“They’ll end up kicking her out,” the patriot man confirms.

“Remember, we’re in enemy territory.” I clarify, “And besides, Jesus didn’t work in the insurance business; he was a carpenter by trade.”

COMEDY SKITS

Here comes anti-Obama comedy skits: “Remember I’m only an actor……….just like our president,” explains a woman on stage dressed in a patriotic nurse outfit. “Under Obamacare your able to choose your healthcare.”

“Read the bill! Read the bill! Read the bill!” she prompts people to chant.

“Under Obamacare you will determine your end of life care.”

“Read the bill! Read the bill!”

“I hope this is convincing you of the benefits of Obamacare.”

“Kill the bill! Kill the bill!”

Is this for fucking real? They’re losing me with the comedy skits. This is becoming more retarded than baby Trig. It’s like a children’s pantomime show. They’ve gathered hundreds of fellow tea bag patriots together so they can perform bad children’s pantomime and have them chant things in unison.

“I’m all for this, but the chanting is making me feel really ridiculous,” I confess to a woman holding two garbage can lids emblazed with, NO MORE SOCIALISM GARBAGE. “How about you?” I ask.

“I know, I know,” she replies with a sigh.

“Kill the bill! Kill the bill!”

“I want to say you are great patriots cuz this is the face of America,” the Tea Party leader exclaims between skits to the pretty fucking old and pretty fucking white face of America.

BLUE TAPE OVER MOUTHS TO MAKE A POWERFUL STATEMENT

A powerful statement is about to be made. Blue pieces of tape are handed out to the crowd comprised mostly of elderly adults.

“I want you to put that blue tape on your mouth. We’re going to have 5 minutes of silence,” commands the Tea Party Patriot leader. Tape is applied. Sally looks out at the sea of red-shirt-clad, blue-taped-mouthed patriots. She remarks, “Why this is really powerful!”

The silence begins. I guess this is to show they won’t be silenced by somehow silencing themselves for 5 minutes. As Justin Herman Plaza becomes quiet: “Who Would Jesus Insure! Who Would Jesus Insure!” mercilessly heckles the hippy chick. “Who Would Jesus Insure? Who Would Jesus Insure?”

Those without blue tape scream back:

“Go Home Commie!”

“She’s trying to get us mad!”

“Ignore her.”

“Can’t someone shut her up?” I add.

A pair of East Bay suburban soccer moms sneer, “Get a job!”

The hippy chick replies “What’s to say I don’t have a job?’

“Then why are you here?”

The other soccer mom smugly retorts, “You don’t look employable!”

Shoulder-to-shoulder (there’s strength in numbers) I contribute,

“Yeah! You don’t deserve a job….or healthcare.” Turning to my compadres, I add, “If Obama weren’t in office we’d be able to shut her up a lot faster.”

When the 5-minutes of silence concludes and things take a turn for the surreal. The Tea Party Patriot leader tries to lead everyone in song to the tune of John Lennon’s anti-war anthem Give Peace A Chance:

All we are saying/Is give us a chance/To speak to our leaders/And tell them our stance.

Everyone gives a feeble attempt, but the words are too unclear. Surely John Lennon must be back-flipping in his grave, being this is the worst use of his music since Revolution was used in a Nike commercial.

THEN IT’S OLD WAR VET AFTER OLD WAR VET

A line on stage forms. I lumber over.

“We’ll take 15-20 minutes for people on the Astroturf to speak their peace,” Sally announces. The Astroturf is supposed to mock those who mocked their grassroots movement.

What follows is a combination of:

-The untenth war vet telling the crowd how people who fought in wars are turning over in their graves, or how they are taking away our freedoms! (“Our soldiers died for freedom. We don’t want to live under socialism.”)

-Claims that Obama is trying to silence talk radio, and how talk radio is the only place to hear “The Truth!” (“Talk radio is watching out for America cuz Democrats in the White House want to shut down our voice.”)

-More statements–to rousing cheers–that America already has the best healthcare system in the world. (“With Obamacare we are out of here.”) Further un-ironic chants of “USA! USA! USA!” follows.

Yet another old guy wanders to the mic: “We grow up with these freedoms and took it for granted. Unfortunately we let people in like rats in our basement. (Is that racist?) Obama and Pelosi. We’ve seen what 6 months of this has resulted in! America’s changed and I want it back!”

When the old man departs, the Tea Party leader states, “This is the type of people Obama is trying to get rid of!”

A woman from Poland tells how corrupt socialized medicine is. More Reagan quotes. More shout-outs to Fox News. Cheers for Rush Limbaugh. Cheers for Sarah Palin. Warnings on how our government is becoming like Mussolini’s or Hitler’s—and it has to be stopped!

It’s my turn at the mic. I go with the crowd pleasing: “6 months to buy a puppy and 3 weeks to figure out healthcare! THINK ABOUT IT! Then: I WANT MY AMERICA BACK!” I wave my Obama/Charlie Chaplin sign. Big cheers.

After I get off stage, I have a voice message from Walgreen’s to pick a prescription that will cost me $40 even with though I fork over hundreds of dollars of month for health insurance—if I didn’t I would have to go without.

Ah, irony—she is my lady.

Harmon Leon is Freedomhaters.org