I attended the Marin GroupaPalooza, and did a tongue in cheek blog post here, imagining how a Progressive would have perceived the event.  John Yoo has just published his take on the event, which is straightforward and clear — and nicely rebuts Obama’s (and the rest of the Left’s) paranoid fantasies about the event.  I think you’ll find Yoo’s post interesting.

A couple more related points:

First, on the subject of denigrating the Tea Partiers, Stanley Fish, writing at the NYT, urges liberals not to make the mistake of doing so.  After eight paragraphs of compelling arguments urging that the Tea Partiers be treated with dignity even as the Left opposes them, Fish wraps up his article with some rousing paragraphs that . . . yes, you know where this is going . . . insult the Tea Partiers.  Honest to God, they just can’t help themselves.

Second, did I tell you what happened when I saw my liberal friend, the same one who castigated me for attending Tea Party gatherings because they are nothing more than Koch-funded, racist orgies (conducted in code, of course)?

Well, when I saw him, he asked, “How was it?”

I have to admit here that I’m not a very nice person, because I could not resist the impulse to yank his chain.  In breathless tones, therefore, I replied, “It was awful.  It was a bloodbath.”

“What happened?!”

“Well, when Ward Connerly got up to speak, people started pelting him with eggs and hollering the N word.  It was really ugly.”

My friend couldn’t help himself:  “They didn’t!”

To his credit, he framed that last one as a negative, meaning that even he couldn’t believe what I told him — yet he must have believed it just a little bit, or he would have realized instantly that I was pulling his leg, making his horrified exclamation unnecessary.  It says something that he could even entertain the possibility that I might be saying that Ward Connerly, a conservative invited to speak at a conservative gathering, would be subject to that kind of treatment.

A little imp made me tell my Progressive friend that I would be attending the Bay Area Patriots‘ GroupaPalooza, which is, essentially, a convention for the small but robust number of conservatives in the Bay Area.  I’ve mentioned this friend before.  He’s the one who assured me that the Tea Party is a direct descendant of the John Birch society, and that it is using dupes like me to advance its evil racist agenda.  When I challenged him to give one example of a racist word or act emanating from the Tea Party, he earnestly assured me that the racism was all in code, with the initiated understanding the anti-black and antisemitic invective animating every Tea Party statement.

My friend brought out the same guns today, in a rear guard effort to steer me away from the GroupaPalooza.  Indeed, he added something new to the arsenal.  This Tea Party organization, he told me in portentous tones, was so evil it was funded by (insert Psycho music here) the Koch brothers.  I was suitably unimpressed.

As I drove home from the event, I amused myself by imagining how my friend would report on the Bay Area Patriots’ GroupaPalooza if he had attended.  So, for your reading entertainment, I hereby present “The Bay Area Patriots’ GroupaPalooza — from the Progressive perspective”:

Good evening, Progressive Womyn and Myn.  This is Soul-Talks-to-Trees Chang-Guitierrez-Goldberg, with a special report about the secret gathering of a bizarre conservative organization, located right here, in the heart of Marin. Who would have guessed that the Mill Valley Recreation Center, a destination spot for Marin’s children, would be the selected forum for these extremist political rituals?  (And not to complain or anything, but I think it’s grossly unfair that I got sent to this gig, instead of to the Folsom Street Fair.  This is a clear case of discrimination against a junior reporter.  It’s like the opposite of age discrimination, you know?)

On this sunny Sunday in Marin, hundreds of people, all a strange whiter shade of pale, streamed into recreation center.  Their entry was so uneventful — so lacking in protest signs, litter and nudity — this reporter could only conclude that they had been given mind-altering drugs in advance.  This would, of course, serve the dual purpose of disguising their racist and antisemitic agenda from the surrounding community (by making them look “normal”), and of preparing their psyches for the drumbeat of racial invective that rained down on them all afternoon.  Several of the women entering the building carried large handbags, which this reporter thinks could well have contained KKK hoods.

Once inside, I saw that myriad groups had set up tables and were handling out literature.  No matter where I wandered, I was assaulted by information from the Marin County Republican Party, the Republican Party of Sonoma County, the San Francisco Republican Party, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the NRA, and many other known racist and antisemitic groups.  All of them, of course, were careful to keep their cover intact, so the only information they provided to the GroupaPalooza’s attendees had to do with lower taxes, smaller government, freedom and liberty.  Naturally, I’ll have more to say about those code words and phrases later in this report.

Also present were representatives for those Republican political candidates who have the temerity to try to take away the state and federal seats rightfully belonging to Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Lynn Woosley, Jared Huffman, and Tom Ammiano.  In some cases, the actual candidates were there themselves!  In the interests of full fairness and disclosure (because I am nothing if not fair), I can tell you that these weasely challengers included John Dennis, Carly Fiorina (who had appeared in the same venue two weeks ago, so she did not show up today), Jim Judd, Bob Stephens, and Laura Peter. There may have been other challengers there, but I was already so overwhelmed by the racist vibes in the room that it was hard to keep track.

Although no one manning these various tables was overtly hostile, I could feel them look me over, just as if they actually knew that I have a black friend.  Or I had a black friend.  Well, to be perfectly honest (because I am nothing if not honest), my mail carrier is black and I always say “hello” to him.  I’m also very close to my Hispanic housekeeper, Rosa.  (Or is it Flora?  I always forget because, to tell the truth — and I always tell the truth — I try to stay away when she cleans ’cause it’s kind of uncomfortable to have to stop and talk to someone who scrubs your toilet, you know?)

Shortly after I arrived, five vertically challenged adults disguised as young girls gave a five-part harmony rendition of the United States’ warmongering national anthem (complete with references to bombs and rockets and, believe it or not, in a later verse, “God”).  Then, with the crowd pacified by music (and, as I said, possible sedative drugs) the speakers began their indoctrination.

Thanks to the Tea Party Code Book that this news station provided (I am told that it was “liberated” from the Koch Brothers’ secret headquarters), I was readily able to translate what was really going on.  Since there was a certain amount of repetition to the whole thing, the better to brainwash the attendees, I won’t repeat for you every speaker’s words, but will instead focus on the events’ main speakers and the gist of what they purported to say and what they actually said.

Thomas Lifson, who publishes American Thinker, a site I’ve never actually visited but have been told is racist and antisemitic, actually praised the attendees for their very existence.  He likened them to the bacteria that live in the heart of the volcano, sturdy life forms that cannot be destroyed.  He seemed to think that, somehow, there’s a virtue in standing up against our Dear Leader . . . um, sorry, I’ve been told not to say that.  He seemed to think that, somehow, there’s a virtue in making a stand against Barack Obama, divine leader of the American people.  What’s that?  I’m not allowed to say that either?  Well what can I say?  He was challenging The One!  Who does he think he is?

Consistent with the war mongering that permeated the atmosphere (they had American flags all over the place!), Lifson announced that American Thinker would soon launch a spin-off dedicated to the military.  This site is intended to humanize those same troops who air-raid villages and kill civilians.  As if!  I mean, Lifson has all sorts of plans for the site, such as letting family members write about what it means to have someone in the military, or have troops review the accommodations made available to them at various airports.  The crowd actually applauded this jack-booted claptrap.  I shuddered, and clutched my fingers tightly around the peace sign I wear on my neck, and thought longingly of my car, with it’s cool “Coexist” sticker on the bumper, made up of all those religious symbols some people believe in.

Lifson also seemed to think that Hillary Clinton might challenge President Obama, and I kind of just seized up.  ‘Cause you know, she’s a woman — uh, pardon, womyn, and I really want a womyn in the White House, ’cause then we can call it the Pink House.  But our Dear Leader, I mean, Obama, is black, and it would be racist to give a black president only one term.  So really, the only challenger I can think of is a black womyn like, maybe, Maxine Waters.  You know?  Or maybe Beyonce.  She’d be cool.

After Lifson, there was this dude from the Pacific Justice Institute named Brad Dacus, who just droned on and on and on about all these lawsuits his organization has filed just because some church or synagogue or something like that got all tweaked when the government said “Hey, you can’t have a church there because, 50 years ago, we gave permission for a hardware store to be there.”  This group also works really hard to force public school kids to say things like the Pledge of Allegiance (and, like, how totalitarian is that?) or to keep that old phrase “In God We Trust” around.  I mean, I may have all those religious symbols on my coexist bumper sticker, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe in God, right?

Worst of all, Dacus and the Pacific Justice Institute actually think that parents shouldn’t have to worry about the government stepping in when they spank their kids.  I mean, I was never spanked, and look how well I turned out.  He kept throwing around words like “freedom” and “liberty,” so I knew, from my Tea Party Code Book, that he was talking about lynching black people and concentration camps.  I mean, it was so obvious.

The next person to talk was John Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley who wants to torture all of us, every one of us, all the time.  I was actually really shocked that he was one of them.  You know, he’s Asian so he should understand how he’s been victimized by the man.  I mean, just because you’ve been to Harvard and Yale, or because you’ve clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, doesn’t meant you’re not a victim.

But Yoo didn’t understand that.  Instead, he kept talking about the Constitution as if it applies to all citizens.  He totally didn’t seem to get that the Constitution is meant to be used as an instrument of social justice by The One.  Oh, sorry!  Did I slip up again?  “By Barack Obama” is what I meant to say.  Anyway, he was going on and on about the fact that Barack Obama seems to have this weird backwards view of the Constitution.

According to Yoo — and what does he know, really, with his Yale Law education, his Supreme Court clerkship, and his job at Boalt Law School in Berkeley? — the president, is supposed to have a fairly small role domestically, one that consists primarily of reining in an extreme Congress; and a large role overseas, one that requires him to protect American interests abroad and national security at home.  Yoo seemed to think that it was wrong for our beloved President to push Congress even further Left than it wants to go, or to weaken America’s interests abroad.  As I said, Yoo just doesn’t get it, which must mean that he’s a racist.

Things only got worse after Yoo.  Brian Sussman, a media figure at the fascist station KSFO, gave this talk where he told all sorts of sob stories about some of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.  He actually told the crowd that those men probably got their wives to agree to let them sign a document that would result in their being hunted down and killed by the British.  That was a laugh.  Like, can you really imagine those old white men actually caring what a woman said?

It was weird, though, that the crowd actually seemed moved by stories of these signers being imprisoned, of their losing their families and their homes, and of their living like animals, only to die, heart-broken, in the wilderness, all because they wanted to sign onto the Declaration of Independence.  Sussman also kept on talking about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which my Tea Party Code Book explains means “lynch blacks” and “Jews own Wall Street.”  No wonder the audience cheered and applauded so wildly when he finished speaking.  They knew what he really meant.

The scariest speaker, though, by far, was Ward Connerly.  You know why he’s so bad?  Because he’s so well-disguised.  There he stands, a slightly rotund, open-faced, neatly dressed older man, who speaks in clear, measured tones.  He tells his life story, which he interlineates with little jokes.

These sneaky techniques got the audience all wee-weed up as they heard how his father left him when he was two, and his mother died when he was four, so that he was raised by his aunt and her husband.  Now that everyone was on his side, Connerly kept going on and on and on about how his uncle worked really hard, and how his uncle loved America, and how his uncle had this incredible dignity despite the indignity of Jim Crow laws, and how his uncle was truly color-blind when it came to people’s race.

From all this, Connerly somehow concluded — and, like, I don’t know how he did it — that, just as it was bad for America to draw racial lines with blacks on the bottom and whites on the top, it’s equally damaging to the American psyche to draw racial lines with whites on the bottom and everyone else on the top.  Connerly actually thinks we can have a post-racial society, that sees people judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their characters.  I mean, how stupid is that?  Whoever came up with that idea?

It’s clear that Connerly has never attended a diversity training class, which could really help him, you know?  If he attended a class the way he should, he’d understand, just as I do, that the government’s primary purpose is to decide at any given time which race deserves government spoils, and which deserves government discrimination.   Fortunately, I learned from Connerly that ObamaCare, the Stimulus and the new banking laws all carry out this clear government mandate — “we also these truths to be self-evident, that the government decides which people are more equal” — by including provisions that specifically grant preferences to people other than white men.  That just goes to show that people like Connerly can’t push the government around.

I was pretty tired of the hostile atmosphere by this time, so I headed home.  As I drove away, mulling this report over in my mind, I could only shake my head in disbelief that this kind of treasonous activity is allowed to take place in our communities.  It was a relief to know that, if we can just keep our current Congress and administration for a few more years, we won’t have to worry about these racist and antisemitic malcontents any more.  They’ll all be financially equalized with their more victimized fellow citizens (thank you, redistribution!) and properly reeducated.

UPDATE:  A couple of things.  First, I forgot to mention Nick Adams, an Australian who believes that America’s unending commitment to liberty and her generosity make her the greatest nation in the world.  He gave an impassioned speech to that effect, reminding us that, sometimes, it’s the outsider who sees thing most clearly.  His website is here.  Check it out.  It will make you happy.

Also, I’ve been perusing the comments left at the Marin IJ and the SF Chron about this gathering and discovered that the only problem with my post is that I didn’t get the tone quite right — I was too polite.  But you can see there the tropes I mentioned — racist, war mongering, greedy, racist — plus one I forgot:  GeorgeNaziHitlerBush.