NPR Teabags America

Just in case any conservatives continue to question the endemic condescension, bad faith, and elitism pervasive among political leftists, a cartoon recently published by National Public Radio (NPR) will extinguish all doubt. Entitled “Learn to Speak Teabag,” it seeks to delegitimize grassroots opposition to health care and morph the tea party movement into a coterie of individuals who name themselves after a bizarre sex practice. That regressive activists disguised as journalists — such as Rachel Maddow and Anderson “Cooper Duper” Cooper — were the first to warp “tea party” into “tea bagger” illustrates the extent to which leftist allegations often amount to nothing more than psychological projection. Um, Anderson, we don’t do that sort of thing. As for you … it’s harder to say.

The sparse anime of Mark Fiore, “an American liberal political cartoonist specializing in Flash-animated editorial cartoons,” underwhelms. The film’s plot is both moronic and predictable.

This radical’s work is drenched in the politics of self-congratulation and the same can be said of the triumvirate that now rules our nation. They care, we don’t, and that is why we dare to disagree with them. No other explanation is possible.

The clip’s action opens with a doughy, dense tea party participant who is propelled into action by his palpable stupidity. The narrator announces that “learning a new language [conversational teabag] doesn’t have to be hard.”

You see, it’s not hard, which is why we do it. Our movement can be contrasted with the grandmaster-level skill required to alter “tea party” into “teabag” and to then use ridicule as the primary mechanism for presenting counterarguments.

The narrator pretends that our lack of intellect is the root cause behind our objections. When we hear challenging words like “government public option,” we become confused and prone to shouting, “Socialist, socialist!”

Yet risible are the cartoon’s premises. Government health care never fosters competition; it terminates it. Federal programs destroy businesses en masse because there is no limit to how much they can lose when setting prices.

Corporations either make money or go bankrupt, whereas the government always squanders funds and there is no end to its extravagance. This is obvious but leftists like Fiore are too sophisticated for anything but cursory analysis.

A reductio ad Hitlerum follows … as it invariably does. The yokel main character [read: us] ecstatically shouts, “Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!” due to his lack of comprehension. Ah, that trope again. To modify the famous words of the Duke of Wellington, “They came on in the same old way and now we’ll beat them back in the same old way.”

First off, it was Nancy Pelosi who played the Hitler card last summer. She hallucinated in public, charging the protesters at town hall meetings with carrying “swastikas,” yet I never saw one — at least not displayed by someone on my side — when I attended such gatherings.

Second, the Nazis were leftists, not rightists, and the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican Party is what brims with socialists — although, admittedly, comparing them to Nazis is inappropriate. There is nothing “national” about our leftists. They despise America and hold themselves to be “citizens of the world.”

Third, this Nazi shtick is but more projection. Juvenile name calling is integral to radical strategy. Conservatives don’t do that sort of thing. Logical argument is a hallmark of the right while “ism” flinging is a staple of the left.

A pretense is made that Republican congressional members like John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, and Eric Cantor were bought by the health care industry via campaign contributions, which implies that no other justification for GOP representatives opposing a ginormous increase in the size of the Leviathan is plausible.

This charge answers itself. Had the cartoonist ever listened to one of his foes, he would intuit that, as a rule, every legitimate Republican opposes state expansion. Furthermore, Democratic Senator Max Baucus received “nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008” from health care industry sources, an amount that far exceeds what was obtained by those GOP members cited.

Moreover, the most blatant case of lobbyist manipulation is that of the trial lawyers. Their massive bankrolling of the Democrats ensured that no caps for medical malpractice made their way into either the House or Senate version of the health care bill. Mr. Fiore failed to notice this eventuality.

Accusations of paranoia are then levied. It seems that those of us who fear bureaucrats coming between ourselves and our doctors are disturbed. Not surprisingly, evidence suggests otherwise.

The Oregon Health Plan is a precursor to Obamacare and, in 2008, its functionaries turned down cancer sufferer Barbara Wagner’s request for doctor-prescribed medication which she hoped would save her life.

Their rejection letter stated, “Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan.”

Well, there it is. They did charitably offer to finance her suicide, though, thus revealing the disinterested nature and lack of accountability inherent to your average government bureaucrat. Of course, this sort of thing happens all the time in Europe, so worrying about a statist health care takeover is “logical” as opposed to “paranoid.”

The animation closes with a mock recommendation for speaking “teabag, because other languages are just too hard.” Mr. Fiore sincerely seems to believe that anyone with a different opinion is a barbarian, ignoramus, corporate stooge, and/or agent of the Devil.

Here again, the left fabricates and then assassinates. How ironic it is that individuals diametrically opposed to tolerance would disseminate a motto like “respect diversity.” They respect nothing and disrespect those who refuse to parrot every one of their talking points.

While not officially a linguist, I’ll be happy to teach a little TeaPartyish to our enemies. The following questions are often posed by our members:

Why is it that even when home prices drop property taxes continue to rise? Why should those who don’t want health insurance be fined and jailed as a result? If you wish to “stimulate” an economy, why not give the people their money back so they can spend it themselves? And how can we call ourselves a nation if we refuse to secure our own borders?

Note that these queries contain no whining, isms, or hysteria. Our objections to the recent federal mania are rational, concise, and sensible, which is precisely why NPR and its radical associates wish to bury us with invective.

Without straw man and ad hominem fallacies, the left would have nothing with which to defend the malignant emotion that constitutes its political platform.

James Bowman, writing in this month’s issue of the New Criterion, sums up the left’s tactics exquisitely. They “argue not with the merits or otherwise of one’s opponents’ case but with the claim that the opponents themselves are stupid or insane or corrupt and so can have nothing to say of any interest.”

They also fathom that if independents ever gave conservative ideas a fair hearing, they would be finished.

Of secondary importance here is that the video appeared at NPR. This is problematic. Unlike Fox News, NPR is taxpayer-supported and refuses to acknowledge its political slant. Given how far to the left this cartoon is, one has to wonder why the citizenry continues to donate a single cent to those radicals.

The activist station claims to receive only “one to two percent” of its funding from government largesse, but another source estimates that “the federal government’s portion of NPR’s budget is significantly higher than two percent, and the total government expenditure is higher still.”

The advent of the Obama administration bodes well for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which owns NPR and PBS). Washington, D.C.’s new guardians will preserve their grip over public funding come hell or a Republican Congress.

As the unscrupulousness of NPR elucidates, our Democratic leaders produce even more corruption than carbon dioxide. Now that they are in power, whatever benefits their party is paramount and will be prioritized over the nation’s defense or financial solvency.

Last year featured some episodes of unforgettable fraudulency, such as the charade that is ACORN, the proliferation of White House czars, and Anita Dunn’s Mao fetish, but none was more memorable than the political left’s ongoing refusal to accept that many Americans disapprove of its policies for reasons authentic, serious, and legitimate.