Vogel's article is what I call a "wedge piece" -- one that purports to be objective (and which can often even appear sympathetic) but which actually is intended to drive a wedge of some kind between people or within and among a group, in this case the TEA Party movement, and thus weaken a position, a person or a group by suggesting that a weakness already exists -- sort of a "self-fulfilling prophecy" meme.
 
Vogel's first subtle attempt at "disparate delegitimization" is:

 "...the movement, which — depending on who's doing the telling — took its name either as an homage to the 1773 Boston tax revolt that played a major role in sparking the American Revolution or from an acronym standing for 'Taxed Enough Already.'”

My response:

It's not an either/or choice and to suggest so is proceeding from a false premise, whether intentionally or due to ignorance. First, TEA Parties originally took their name from the acronym for Taxed Enough Already, i.e., TEA, which is the reason, by the way, that it should always be presented that way -- "TEA Parties," and not merely "tea parties." Besides, if it were always correctly presented as the acronym TEA, it would make it at least more cumbersome for critics to use the gay sexual slur of "teabaggers" to describe and deride TEA Party participants.

TEA as an acronym captured the main points of that to which TEA Partiers originally objected, to wit, too big government bent on too much spending and therefore too much taxing, as exemplified first by the Bush/Obama $700 billion TARP bailouts and then exacerbated by the Obama $787 billion so-called stimulus plan. Just from October 2008 to February 2009, a mere four months, Americans had seen our national debt increased by a breathtaking $1.49 TRILLION. And we already had all indications (which have since proven all too true) that the new president, with his handmaiden Democratic Congress, was just getting started. And all and almost every one of them (the president et al.) were doing all this without listening to objections from We the People to slow down, have more debate and at least read the bills which they were pushing at breakneck speed through the Congress. So, we also had all this sudden debt increase, and therefore projected tax, without feeling we were even being heard, much less adequately represented, as well.

I attended a TEA Party organizing meeting this past week.

By the way, I write TEA Party, instead of just tea party, because TEA is an acronym standing for the core idea of "Taxed Enough Already," whereas a tea party is presumably where tea may be served. That is, unless you're talking about "teabagging" and that kind of "tea party." [You see, snide comments in April by some cable news, and other, TV network nitwits and nincompoops labeling TEA Party protesters as "teabaggers" (snigger, snigger, snork, snork, coffee out through your nose, tee-hee, simper, simper, sigh, sigh) "educated" me about some in the gay community practicing what's called "teabagging."] So, since I'm all about being "Taxed Enough Already" (TEA) and do occasionally enjoy a cup of hot tea or a glass of iced tea but am definitely not into "teabagging," I use TEA Party, just to be grammatically correct, accurate and clear.

Anyway, this organizing meeting was voluntarily "organized" by a couple of guys who had voluntarily collected email addresses from those of us who had voluntarily attended a local 4th of July TEA Party and wanted to be kept informed of other, similar upcoming events which we could voluntarily attend and/or otherwise support. I wasn't paid to attend, nor was I coerced into attending. Heck, they didn't even serve refreshments, not even tea.

This organizing meeting was held in the mid-sized meeting room of a local library. They expected about 20 to 30 people to show up. There were over 100 of us there ..... Republicans, Federalists, Independents, Libertarians and moderate Democrats ..... some from the distance of several counties away ..... on a Wednesday midweek work night ..... from 8-10PM ..... when we could all have been relaxing, spending time with our families or watching our favorite TV shows. And many lingered after the meeting to further exchange ideas and contact information.

This is the kind of concerned citizen, genuine grassroots movement which Obama, his White House henchmen and the Congressional Democrats all want to ignore and deplore, deny and decry, demonize and denigrate, claiming the protests and meetings are organized by the GOP or some other Obama-unapproved organization, funded by this or that nefarious special interest group, and that we participants are "organized" and "enticed" to attend (please refer back to my third paragraph, above).

Besides, it's too late. Already too big and still growing, one might say by leaps and bounds. I'm hearing of more and more local TEA Party events which are having to be moved to larger venues at the last minute because of turnout exceeding planners' projections. Each one seems to be bigger and better attended than the last.

Democrats and other liberals may hold sway in Washington for now and you may ridicule us if you like (some of us know ridicule is a standard Marxist Saul Alinsky tactic anyway), but we won't be relegated to the sidelines any longer. Ignore, deplore, deny, decry, demonize, denigrate, ridicule and relegate us at your own risk. The more of that you do, instead of really listening to what your constituents are upset about, and the more you are aided and abetted in that by the liberal lamestream media's unrepresentative and unbalanced coverage (or selective lack thereof), the more anxious and angry, the more denied and disenfranchised, the more frustrated and furious we will feel and the more persistent and powerful we shall become.

Watch out, Dems and other liberals! A growing giant is finally awake now, and watching everything you do. Try to ridicule and relegate us now if you dare, but a reckoning is coming.

In a blurb entitled "Janeane Garofalo’s Lefty Mindset," Left Coast Report's James Hirsen recently noted that Joel Surnow may rue the day Janeane Garofalo got a role on “24.” Garofalo’s recent public denouncements of the TEA Party protests may have lots of conservatives turning the hit TV series off.

Hirsen also points out that the politically outspoken comedian, actress and failed liberal TV talk show host does, however, provide a look through the lens with which liberals view any criticisms of President Obama. The left sees Obama solely within the historical context of being the first black president and, as such, his success in all of the micro and macro machinations of governing apparently has to be defended, perhaps even beyond the point of rationality. To the liberals, criticism of any issue, statement or policy of his must take a back seat to the historic achievement of his black presidency. Well, except perhaps for one of the truer (and less offensive) things comedian Wanda Sykes, who is black, said at the recent White House Correspondents Dinner when she talked about knowing that Obama is biracial but she just liked saying "The first black president" - that is, unless he messes up, at which time she said it would change to "Hey, what's up with the half-white dude?"

You may recall, however, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that candidate Obama himself told a fundraiser crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, “We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?”  His "reverse psychology" yet deliberate playing of the race card caused many political pundits (I call them pol-dits) to wonder if any future negative comments about Obama’s words or actions would be dismissed as racist. Well, pol-dits, wonder no more.

This is exactly what Garofalo attempted to do on MSNBC's Countdown program with Keith Olbermann by insisting at some length and with a fair degree of vitriol that those who attended the recent anti-tax, anti-big government, anti-big spending rallies were “a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” She described attendees as being motivated by bigotry, adding “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism, straight up.” I don't recall any actual proof of that offered by Ms. Garofalo, then or since, but of course she is entitled to her opinion - however erroneous and unsubstantiated it may be.

However, when pressed about it in a recent ambush interview by Fox News, she did mention one sign she saw displayed at one of the protest sites. I guess that's enough "proof" for her to paint almost three-quarter of a million protesters at about 40,000 different sites all across the country with the same broad brush of blame. Hey, please put her on my jury if I'm the plaintiff but not if I'm the defendant. She gives a whole new meaning to the legal term "scintilla of proof."

Her liberal "open-mindedness" and "tolerance" were also fully displayed at the idea of conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh making a vist to the “24” set. As she told the Village Voice, “When Rush Limbaugh visited the set, and when Lynne Cheney visited the set, I refused to have my picture taken with them or meet them or anything.” Well, for one thing, Rush recently indicated that he had never visited the set while Garofalo was a member of the cast of “24.”  And, for another thing, it begs the question about what makes Garofalo think Rush Limbaugh or Lynne Cheney would actually want to meet her anyway? Get over yourself, Janeane.

Hundreds of thousands of "ordinary Americans" rallied across the country for lower taxes and more limited government during the April 15 tax day tea parties, organized by conservative grassroots activists, mainly through the Internet and by email campaigns, with little or no funding. Still, Americans for Tax Reform estimated that over 360,000 attended, despite bad weather across the East Coast and the fact that it's harder to get conservatives to a protest than it is to get liberals to turn out, perhaps because conservatives often have jobs to work rather than just protests to attend.

The protests elicited widespread criticism in the mainstream media, with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow labeling tea party protesters "tea baggers." Since MSNBC stands for Mostly Snarky, Namby Brained Commentary to me, I didn't think that much about the term one way or the other at the time. I had just been watching the Tea Party coverage on Fox News and decided to see what MSNBC coverage was like, so I switched over and there she was, Rachel Maddow, about whom I had only been told that she is a self-professed lesbian and supposedly a sharp and savvy, even witty, commentator. After showing a couple of shots of some of the Tea Party protesters, Ms. Maddow's so-called "wit" amounted to no more than saying "Wow" a few times with a bemused look, one might even say smirk, on her face. She then launched into a series of fake "statistical comparisons" intended to show how unpopular the apparently pretty popular Tea Party protests were. I say "fake" because they were not relevant comparisons; they only appeared to be. They were like comparing the Tea Party protests to the Million Man March on Washington, which was more centrally organized, funded and had bunches of buses delivering people to the National Mall and which, by the way, never totaled even close to a million men. Or like comparing the Tea Party protesters to the turnout for Candidate Obama when he spoke in Germany, a highly staged, centrally organized and controlled event at which the German Polizei originally estimated the crowd at between 100,000 to 200,000 but which got "rounded up" by the MSM to 250,000 and without much, if any, reporting of the facts that the Germans attending were also promised free beer, free food and some free rock band performances if they would show up and also listen to Obama.

But soon, it was obvious that the terms tea baggers and teabagging were being used not only to describe but to also deride the Tea Party protesters (you could tell by the accompanying high school-ish, sopho-moronic snickering) all over the MSM, especially at NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Being unfamiliar with the term teabagging, I had to look it up on Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary before realizing why Ms. Maddow, perhaps as a lesbian having had the term previously explained to her, apparently thought its use and application to the Tea Party protesters was so wickedly witty. Like I said, Mostly Snarky, Namby Brained Commentary. Snarky is as snarky does. 

On the other hand, David Axelrod, door-to-door-salesman-looking top adviser to President Obama, merely called the protests "bewildering." However, Mr. Axelrod, it seems none of the 360,000-plus attendees reported any cases of bewilderment. In fact, David, it's only "bewildering" to those of you who are so out of touch, not with the "ordinary Americans" which you only TALK about and refer to in your class warfare rhetoric but with the REAL "ordinary Americans" who were protesting you and your boss trying to take this country so far to the left so fast and spending scads of money we don't have to do it. They were just angry and fed up with the government spending all of their, their children's and their grandchildren's money on things they didn't vote for. And they - Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike - peacefully protested by the hundreds of thousands to say so. What's so "bewildering" about that? If you're bewildered now, wait until the Tea Party protest movement grows. Wait until July 4th. Wait until 2010. Then, maybe you will overcome your bewilderment and begin to understand. But, by then, it will be too late and whether you "understand" or not won't matter.