Anonymous Playboy confessional: Breitbart is the real tea party leader, not Palin

Written by Karl Frisch

Published

Media Matters' partner organization Political Correction and Huffington Post's Sam Stein flagged an "anonymous confessional" titled Rogues of K Street: Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant from this month's Playboy magazine. Among the claims made by the anonymous writer is the gem that it isn't Sarah Palin serving as the titular head of the tea party movement but instead BigGovernment's Andrew Breitbart. Stein writes:

Among the author's various claims are the following:

  • Tea Party strategists have “quietly acquired Service Employees International Union shirts to wear at Tea Party rallies,” which he or she describes as the equivalent of “handing out TSA uniforms in Kabul.”
  • Sarah Palin isn't the leader of the movement. Big Government's Andrew Breitbart is. “Breitbart is one of them, except smarter, better connected and angrier; compared with him, Palin is Las Vegas dinner theater. That's why he is loved by Tea Partyers in a way Palin can never hope to be loved.”
  • Actual elected officials are bowing down to the Tea Party throng in ever-growing numbers. Describing a meeting he held with his finance team at the Richard Nixon suite at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. the consultant writes that members of Congress came in and asked for a list of what to do. “The second meeting drew 10 congressmen,” the consultant writes. “There we sat, inside the Capitol Hill Club (which shares the building that houses the Republican National Committee), sharing ideas on how we can work together. The third meeting drew 17 congressmen.”
  • Strategists deliberately try to stir up rage among average Americans, calculating that it's much easier to push a political movement if it's deeply frightened than if it's entirely hopeful. “We're playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives,” the consultant writes. “In other words, I talk to the same part of your brain that causes road rage.”
  • Along these lines, the strategists behind the Tea Party movement are using variable-print technology to send out thank-you notes “from an imaginary Wall Street executive to working-class taxpayers.”
  • The Tea Party is distrusting if not disdainful of the conspiracy theorists with which they are often associated. The consultant writes that during one candidate-interview process, two simple questions are asked. "(1) Are you a birther? (2) Are you a truther? If the answer is anything but “no” or “hell no,” the conversation ends right there. If the candidate answers correctly, the conversation continues."

It is important to remember that the story was written by an anonymous author so, as Stein says, “the piece has to be read with a measure of skepticism,” adding, "[t]hat said, much of what is written seems grounded in reality. The Tea Party movement described by the consultant doesn't come off as inherently outlandish. In fact, there is a sense of admiration in the prose."

That being said, I'm really looking forward to a grudge match between Breitbart's Retracto, the Correction Alpaca and Playboy's Bunny.