The Tea Party Jumps the Shark

The Bucks County Courier Times ^ | June 5, 2014 | Mardi Harrison, Community Blogger

[2ndDivisionVet]

Watching the Tea Party consistently object to everything and anything the Obama administration has proposed over these 5 years has certainly been frustrating to those of us who believe that government can play a positive and valuable part in the lives of the citizenry.

In another column I listed just some of the initiatives that could have had our economy singing, our people employed, and our citizens enjoying the equal treatment guaranteed to them under our constitution and our laws. Instead, we have the most ineffective congress in history, universal, unrelenting obstruction, and our people and economy continue to struggle. And the Tea Party insults our intelligence by bemoaning that the Obama administration doesn’t accomplish anything. Crazy-making!

But for me, the Tea Party has absolutely jumped the shark with their latest attacks on Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative. If there is one universal imperative that everyone should be thrilled to get behind, it’s raising healthier kids. But as I understand the Tea Party argument – “government has no right to tell me what to feed my kids – if I want to feed them poison in the form of fast foods and junk, well, they’re my kids, and that’s my right.” Sarah Palin personified the position a couple of years ago, when she expressed her opposition to the First Lady’s initiative by delivering cupcakes to a local elementary school. About our children, she was metaphorically – and actually -- saying, “let them eat cake!”

This reaction strikes me as infantile. It’s as though the entire Tea Party is throwing itself on the floor and having a tantrum. “No! I WON’T eat my vegetables! I don’t wanna – and you can’t make me!” What kind of a parent chooses not to feed healthy food to his/her child? What kind of a parent is fine with allowing his/her children to become increasingly obese? What kind of parent would deny healthy food to someone else’s kid? Just what is really going on here?

My hope is this -- that a hatred of our President that is so blind and overwhelming that it manifests in a desire to intentionally harm our children will finally rip the blinders from the public’s eyes, and start them thinking about whether other issues that conservatives have opposed were actually objectionable, or were just another in a long line of otherwise worthy positions that were maligned because of who proposed them.

Or is this something more? The real opposition seems to be to new healthy requirements in school lunch programs. Who are the major beneficiaries of those programs? Poor children. For some of those children, their school lunch is the best meal of their day. But conservative hostility to poor people seems to have no bounds, so are they really saying that not only do poor children not have a right to decent, well-funded schools, but they don’t even have a right to healthy food?

Think I’m imagining things? The House of Representatives is currently considering a bill to mandate that white potatoes be included on the list of foods that women can purchase with their WIC dollars. (These are the same folks who rammed through an “expanded definition of vegetables in school food to include the tomato sauce on pizza). There’s nothing wrong with potatoes – I like potatoes, but studies demonstrate that most women and children already consume plenty of potatoes – what they need is incentive to purchase more fruits and vegetables. This is why the nonpartisan, scientific Institute of Medicine, which advises on WIC standards, has cautioned that white potatoes should not be included in the WIC program.

The current standards are making a difference. In 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which set higher nutritional standards for school lunches, and now, 90% of schools report that they are meeting these standards, and guess what? The rate of childhood obesity is declining for the first time ever. I can see why the Tea Party wouldn’t love that – (not!)

Is it just that lazy parents who enjoy junk food themselves don’t want to have to change their own habits? Could they really be so selfish that they’re willing to trash their kids’ health rather than adopt new healthy habits themselves? I think the real answer is much more insidious. Like so many other political issues, you just have to follow the money. There are huge food companies that make a lot of money feeding junk to our kids. It’s a very lucrative income stream that they don’t want to give up. There’s gold in them thar burgers! So, they frame the issue as an infringement on personal freedom, mention that the Obama’s are in favor of healthy food, and a million Tea Party members reflexively hyperventilate and attack the First Lady.

Shouldn’t this be the issue that demonstrates to rational people in this country just how irrational the Tea Party is when they put their ideology of anti-Obamism and obstruction before everything – including their own healthier kids? Won’t this finally be the bridge too far? If not this issue – is there ANY Tea Party position that the citizens of America will decide is too absurd for them to accept?

[who knows what evil?]

A copy of ‘The Law’ should be in everyone’s library...

[MosesKnows]

On a more serious note, has the grassroots Tea Party Patriots Movement ever asked for favors from the public treasury?

The Tea Party Movement asks for nothing more than a constitutional government. A government that functions within the oath every elected member took to uphold the Constitution. Why do some Americans believe that is too much to ask of their elected representative?

A question rarely asked and even more rarely answered, is the proposed legislation constitutional?

[Tupelo]

Spoil Sport.

OK different hairdo and since the 60s are now the 40s, maybe I really didn't miss it too far? maybe? Just a little?

[2ndDivisionVet]

Jesus of Nazareth - Hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD—lHALcm0

[luvie]

*SNORK*