Monday, April 05, 2010

8 Things worth knowing about tea parties and the Tea Party "Movement"


  1. While the “Boston Tea Party” happened earlier, the story of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland has sold more copies than any book concerning the Boston Tea Party ever did. That’s why so many people associate tea parties with lunatics and quaintly out-of-it characters.


  1. The Mad Hatter’s tea party was attended by a trembling lunatic who made hats, a process that in those days involved licking a great deal of mercury-infused felt, which made him “mad as a hatter.” Another attendee was a nutty rabbit who was “mad as a March hare.” (They're mad because they're horny.) A third party-goer was a soused dormouse. Finally there was a lost, bewildered and terrified child. Draw parallels where you will.


  1. The story of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was written by a latent pervert. Although he never married or became a parent, he photographed little girls in the nude and carried pins in his pocket to pin up the dresses of little girls so they could wade across streams with him without getting their frocks wet. Draw parallels where you will.


  1. In the 1960s, a “tea party” was one at which marijuana smoke was inhaled, after which a lot of crazy stuff went on. Where does your own Tea Party stand on this?


  1. While many Republican Tea Party-ites favor waterboarding, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare tried to drown the dormouse in a teapot. Draw parallels where you will.

  1. There is a poem in the tea party from Alice in Wonderland. It begins, “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat/how I wonder where you’re at.” The parallel to this nonsense poem is so obvious that I have to resort to the tired phrase, "You can’t make this stuff up."

Many young children are secretly frightened by Alice In Wonderland. It depicts a little girl stuck in a strange and distorted world she can’t get out of, and symbols of adult authority who are violent and insane. ("Off with her head," threatens one Queen.) Draw parallels where you will.


8. If the Tea Party whackos and their Republican manipulators ever get to repeal Health Care reform, most of these Tea Party whackos and crackpots will be unable to receive psychiatric care for the rest of their lives. Either look before you leap, or pass the milk and sugar.

7 comments:

Flan said...

This is spot on - however, regarding the ability to access psychiatric care for the rest of your life...even with this health care reform bill, hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise qualify for Medicaid are denied long-term care for their mental illness.

It's called the Medicaid Institutes for Mental Diseases (IMD) Exclusion and it is the primary reason that people with chronic, severe, treatment resistant former state hospital patients, like my brother Paul, face homelessness, incarceration and death.

Please read this...What Is NOT In The Health Care Reform Bill For Me...http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/2010/04/8-things-worth-knowing-about-tea.html

The New York Crank said...

Points well taken, Flan. Thanks for posting.

Crankily yours,
The New York Crank

The New York Crank said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
fulton490 said...

I wonder whether you can support your assertion that he photographed girls in the nude. Photography was a new medium, and yes, Dodgson did take up the art form avidly. However, I have never read about this practice on his part, nor seen any photos by him of girls in the nude.

fulton490 said...

I just read the Wikipedia article on Dodgson. Never mind.

The New York Crank said...

Well Fulton 490, you don't have to take my word for it. Here's what The Smithsonian Institution has to say about it:

Of the approximately 3,000 photo­graphs Dodgson made in his life, just over half are of children—30 of whom are depicted nude or semi-nude.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Lewis-Carrolls-Shifting-Reputation.html?c=y&page=2#ixzz0kLvXpBlJ

The article goes on to say that these were considered "innocent" and "art photos" at the time.

Yeah, and I'm the Duke of Glocester.

Yours very, very crankily,
The New York Crank

Laci the Chinese Crested said...

Super points. I'd add you to my blog roll, but wordpress no longer shows it.

Send Fulton490 to my post http://lacithedog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/for-white-rabbit/

Not only do you see a racy picture taken by Dodgson (AKA Carroll), but it's of Alice Liddell: the nymphette who inspired Dodsons paedophilic paens.