Last week, dedicated historical reenactors threw a massive tea party all over the country, and apparently I wasn’t invited! From what I’ve gathered, Americans nationwide decided it would be great fun to hold a sort of semi-bicentennial celebration of the Boston Tea Party, that great act of defiance perpetrated by our ancestors in the colony of Massachusetts so long ago.
These modern-day history buffs even went so far as to purchase huge amounts of tea to dump into local rivers, ports or whatever body of water was close at hand. From the look of things, everyone had a grand old time.
However, a lot of these people seemed confused. There were some at every rally, carrying signs saying things like “Welcome to the second American Revolution” and “We came unarmed … THIS time!” Maybe they were just getting into character, but many seemed to feel a genuine revolution in the making.
There was talk of standing up to a tyrannical regime that no longer listened to its people. There was the shouting of “no taxation without representation.” That got me confused. We have representation; it’s called Congress. We elect those representatives each year the current one’s term expires, and we choose them based on how well we think they represent our opinions and beliefs. And tyranny? We just had an election and more than 60 million voters chose the office-holder. This talk would have fit a lot better in 1773, when the American colonies were held under the rule of a monarch who was jacking up taxes on colonists who actually didn’t have representation; it must be that this was just people getting swept up in the moment, like the people who pile on the ham at Civil War reenactments.
It must have been embarrassing for FOX News, though. The network obsessively covered all of the biggest events and totally fell for the pranksters who claimed to be “revolutionaries.” Sean Hannity even went so far as to host his show from the Atlanta party on Wednesday, and all over FOX News there was talk of a huge “grassroots movement” that was going to “sweep the nation.” I suppose the Boston Tea Party was what you could call a “grassroots movement,” but I don’t think they used that term back in 1773.
I’m all for FOX News finally finding appreciation for a dissenting voice, but strangely, they never mentioned protests this favorably when many more people came out against things such as the Bush administration’s illegal war and torture, or Proposition 8.
No matter what people were really doing there, the whole event has already been blown way out of proportion. So to all of you reenactors: I hope you had fun. To FOX News, don’t feel bad, everyone gets fooled sometimes. But really, you didn’t actually think the protesters were likening themselves to the Sons of Liberty, did you? Those protesters demonstrated their anger with a monarch’s tax hikes and had to wear disguises so they wouldn’t be arrested and hung for flouting the crown. Equating their ordeal under a brutal tyranny with life today would be ridiculous – almost a spit in the face to the bravery those Americans exhibited more than 300 years ago.
And to whoever forgot to invite me to this little shindig: No hard feelings. I don’t even like tea all that much.
[email protected]