Underneath The Tea

I don’t know. There are all kinds of seductive symbolic elements (hammers-and-sickles, U.S. flags, Hitlers, pigs, Uncle Sams, Indians, Alfred E. Nuemans, George Washingtons, cows, underdraws, Don’t Tread On Me flags, tea bags — of course) running through today’s tea party protests. It’s just hard for me to look at it that seriously. …In my mind, it’s like going back and analyzing those Sara Palin election hate-fests rallies (well documented by Chin’s slideshow from Hershey and Shippensburg.)

If one image did draw me in, however, it was this one.

What it captures for me, in this woman’s “crest fallen” version of an anti-tax/anti-Obama/anti-Government/anti-bailout/anti-(fill in the blank) Lady Liberty, is that Americans truly are hurting, angry and depressed … and thus ripe for such cheap exploitation.

(image: Scott Olson/Getty Images. caption: Nancy Thorner, dressed as Lady Liberty, participates in a Tea Party protest at the Federal Building Plaza April 15, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. Tea Party protests calling for an end to corporate bailouts and excess government spending were held in cities nationwide today, the day American citizens must file their annual income taxes with the federal government)