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The New Republic illustrates a serious piece about the Tea Party movement with a gross photograph that's meant to evoke the pejorative "teabagger."

Here's the article. Quite apart from the childishness of evoking the term "teabagger" and creating a image to convey the term (to those in the know), it's quite an offense to Mark Skoda, whose name appears next to the image. Since there is no caption, it creates the impression that that is a picture of Mark Skoda! I'm surprised TNR isn't more careful about provoking lawsuits. Basically, TNR is flaunting its stupidity here.

Maybe they don't want us to take the serious article seriously.

Ironically, that's a reason to read it.

... I couldn?t help but watch Skoda as he sat in a huge ballroom on the convention?s second night, listening to Joseph Farah, the mustachioed editor of the far-right-wing website WorldNetDaily, work the crowd of 600 into a frenzy. ?If Barack Obama even seeks reelection as president in 2012, he won?t be able to go to any city, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask, ?Where?s the birth certificate??? Farah crowed from the podium.

Mustachioed? Now, we're left wondering if that's Farah in the photograph.

[Skoda] couldn?t have been pleased. Skoda and convention mastermind Judson Phillips have ambitious goals for the Tea Party movement. They aim to build their respective groups (Skoda is founding a Tea Party PAC; Phillips heads an organization called Tea Party Nation) into political players that can influence votes and tug candidates in their direction. But their quandary is as plain as the expression on Skoda?s face during Farah?s paranoid Friday night monologue: How can a movement whose base detests mainstream politics--not to mention, has a few screws loose--possibly build political clout?...

Skoda rationalizes some of the Tea Party?s rough edges as a necessity of movement-building. ?I think it?s always useful to get people excited,? he says. ?Part of this movement is visceral. It?s perfectly okay.? But he is much more interested in practical politics than in bombast....

Political realism, however, isn?t what the Tea Party base wants to hear....

To the sidelined activists, Skoda?s approach and the Nashville convention are the antithesis of what the movement should be about....

Whether the tea partiers will prove too busy fighting among themselves to fight the Republicans, the Democrats, and the system writ large is anyone?s guess. But Skoda is pragmatic enough to know that he can?t cut the non-pragmatists out of the coalition altogether. 

Ironically, the author of this article ? Lydia DePillis ? is a Mark Skoda type, sensible, moderate, and analytical. And whoever put that photograph on the article is a Joseph Farah, stirring up the readers, getting people excited and visceral.

Full post as published by Althouse on March 15, 2010 (boomark / email).