Dale Robertson and the teabagger photo breakdown

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="339" caption="THIS is why we call them “teabaggers”. Never forget this. They started it. We are just happy to oblige their cultural ignorance."][/caption]

Dale Robertson, founder and president of teaparty.org is in the news again after a photo of him has surfaced from a teabagger rally in Houston, back in February of 2009:

Before we get to the obvious problem, let’s take a moment to examine the man himself.  There he is, rotund, hale, and brimming with life and a lifetime of down-home food.  He’s wearing his Texas flag shirt because if it’s one flag the Texans are proud of, it’s their own even before the US flag.  Note how form fitting and svelte the shirt is, the buttons in front holding onto their buttonholes, and the collected paraphernalia Dale has inserted, for dear life.

Note the hat, with a few assorted pins alongside a patch declaring he is a “Man of Faith”.  The cap sits astride his round, bald head, which bears a neatly trimmed goatee.

And now, his sign.  The placard says:

Congress = Slave Owner  Taxpayer = Niggar

Now, aside from the usual anti-tax rhetoric by people who apparently think the military runs on Sunday School prayers, roads are built by unicorn sneezes, and Manifest Destiny was funded on leprechaun coins alone, there is the obvious and disturbing matter of the racism.

However, even the racism is somewhat not unexpected.  After all, let’s examine the demographic:  grumpy, former military, southern, conservative white male with a beer gut.  Didn’t we all more or less suspect he harbored some pretty racist notions?

So while Dale is filling the stereotype of the Angry White Male, there is the matter that he also fills the cliche of being illiterate.  He mis-spelled the very racial slur he meant to cause shock value when he was painstakingly drawing out his sign.

This is becoming a pattern, to the point we need to start including similar illiteracy as a trait of the teabaggers as a whole.  Need more evidence?  Here it is, taken from various teabagger rallies ove the last year or so:





Folks, these aren’t Photoshopped or altered in any way.  These are real, honest to goodness signs and placards from the actual folks.  What’s worse, the sheer number of example defy the space restrictions of this post.

Thus, Mr. Robertson can count himself in good company and we shouldn’t hold his illiteracy against him too harshly.  After all, he’s part of a movement which, by all appearances, considers itself an advocate for the top 1% of taxpayers (which they are not) and which appears to vote against their own interests, even while priding themselves on ignorance.