Categorical Aperitif

Eric Boehlert has a "memo to the media" on the recent examples of fascistic thuggery by Tea Partiers:

Please tell me that reporters and pundits realize that it’s not a coincidence that it’s been high-profile Tea Party candidates like Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell who have famously shunned the press and refused to answer reporters’ questions on behalf of voters. Please tell me Beltway media elites aren’t oblivious to the fact that undermining the free press in this country remains a central, unshakable tenet of the Tea Party movement.

I don’t know how many times that painfully obvious declaration has to be delivered before political journalists get the message and begin to understand the extraordinary political push that’s afoot to completely delegitimize what they do in this country. Incredibly, I think lots of pundits and reporters are still brushing off the open, anti-media warfare that’s been raging as just more of the same. Y’know, it’s just conservative activists complaining about press coverage in hopes of getting friendly treatment in the future.

Sorry folks, but we left the working-the-refs realm a long, long time ago. The Tea Party movement, and the press-hating frenzy that’s helping to fuel the uprising, doesn’t want better political coverage. It wants no political press coverage. It wants the Fourth Estate destroyed. And it wants its movement leaders not to be held accountable.

By anyone.

Would that the media would listen. These people may blather a lot about "freedom" and "God" and "morals," but by their fruits shall ye know them—and a lot of 'em are pretty clearly just vicious little oligarchists who see themselves as above the law and who long to make America a place where their dreams of unaccountable privilege can become reality.