Wading Through the Tea Party Din

Tea Party, Tea Party, Tea Party. It's all anyone talks about these days. This group of angry, disgruntled, sometimes ugly, sometimes racist political activists. But we shouldn't dismiss them summarily, cautions Arianna Huffington. "Think of the Tea Party movement as a boil alerting us to the infection lurking under the skin of the body politic," she writes.
 
And if you wade through all of the less palatable characteristics of the movement, you are left with the cries of a hurting, even starving, class of people who are angered by the continued high levels of compensation on Wall Street, and frustrated by a plodding, largely ineffective government. Listen to us, they are saying.
 
Huffington writes:
 
Tim Geithner doesn't seem to. There he was again this weekend, on ABC's This Week, assuring us that "the economy is now growing again," and "we're seeing some encouraging signs of healing."
 
At the same time, on NBC's Meet the Press, his predecessor Hank Paulson was equally upbeat: "I have great confidence that we have touched a dynamic private sector in this country that they're eventually going to begin creating jobs." And a little later, he let us know that the deficit is "by far the most serious long-term challenge we, as a nation, face. All these other issues... are minor compared to that."
 
These other issues he was referring to were jobs and the epidemic of foreclosures. Minor, eh?
 
Can you hear them now?
 
Is there anything worse, when you're struggling and mad as hell, than being told to chill out? Geithner's latest tone-deaf pep talk, and Paulson's faith that "ultimately" there will be jobs, certainly aren't going to assuage the anxiety and anger middle-class Americans are feeling.
 
(Photo by dbking; C.C. 2.0)