Grand Forks Tea Party: A Primer for the Coastal Elite - The Awl
Those who watched and mocked the national Tea Parties back in April would find a different bunch of tea partiers today. The truly lunatic fringe of opportunists is now largely gone. But owing to the froth kicked up months ago, the movement’s name, “Tea Party,” still has currency and momentum, so why not use it? It’s a branding conundrum the United Negro College Fund surely appreciates. A day after one of North Dakota’s largest-ever tea parties, at the courthouse in Grand Forks, the only thing I can say with certainty about the movement is that it’s mostly about making funny signs and producing lots of unintentional irony. And anger. Plentiful, seething, soul-rooted and only vaguely-focused anger. And maybe racism. But not really that much racism!