Tag Archives: Tea Party

Wanted: Beowulf Strength vs. Extremism

By Robin Bates | Published: November 5, 2012

“Beowulf” teaches us that rewarding extremism encourages rather than moderates it. The GOP should not therefore be rewarded with the presidency.

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Will GOP Base Play the Sap Yet Again?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 24, 2012

Is the Republican establishment simply exploiting its base, like Tom (in “Mill on the Floss”) exploits Maggie and as Brigid O’Shaughnessy (in “The Maltese Falcon”) tries to exploit Sam Spade?

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Rightwing Rewrites Reality

By Robin Bates | Published: July 7, 2011

Today’s Republican right are practitioners of the Humpty Dumpty approach to communication: “I said it very loud and clear. I went and shouted in his ear.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty, they also believe that they can make reality, as Humpty makes words, mean whatever they want it to mean.

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Rebelling against Big Nurse’s Nanny State

By Robin Bates | Published: April 19, 2011

If Hillary Clinton were currently our president, I have no doubt in the world that rightwing pundits and politicians would be comparing her to a lead character in the work I am writing about today. She would be Nurse Ratched from Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

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It’s Been a Mad Tea Party

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2010

Tuesday’s election gave us a chance to assess the effectiveness of the American Tea Party movement, which has fascinated not only the American media but people around the globe. For liberals like me, at times Tea Partiers have seemed to resemble less the American colonialists dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and more Lewis Carroll’s […]

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Lit and Our Impoverished Political Culture

By Robin Bates | Published: September 14, 2010

I’ve been thinking about how shallow and dishonest political speech has become in recent years. Then again, maybe it’s always been like this and I’m just noticing it more. When politics enter the picture, it appears that people start becoming stupid. Outlandish claims and ridiculous reasoning are either (1) accepted as factual or (2) seen […]

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The Tea Partiers Who Would Be Senators

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2010

I was rereading Rudyard Kipling’s entertaining story The Man Who Would Be King the other day, and it got me thinking about some of the Tea Party candidates for Senate, like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky.  Allow me to explain. Kipling’s 1888 work is about two enterprising good-for-nothings, Dravot and Carnehan, […]

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Uncomfortable Books that Help Us Grow

By Robin Bates | Published: April 22, 2010

Streep and Kline in Sophie’s Choice  A recent survey of the Tea Party movement has revealed that the movement is overwhelmingly white, educated, middle class and conservative, and people are now studying what it all means.  I love this post Ta-Tehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. As occurs in the world of the […]

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How to Respond to Tea Party Rage

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2010

Leslie Marmon Silko  This week we celebrate both Passover and Easter, and the world, as it was during the original Passover meal and then again when Jesus celebrated it under Roman rule, is still filled with rage. The weekend newspapers were filled with stories of Tea Party anger, which is being directed at the recent […]

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