Frances Fox Piven has now told us that the Tea Party is all about sex, and I would like to be the first conservative to rise in an oblique defense of her crazy point. She says that the teapartiers grew up in an America when there was a steeple in every quaint little town, and the man was the man, the woman was the woman, the verites were the verities, and the biscuits were in the oven. Where they belong. Now, with all the gender bending going on, she says that these poor, unsettled white folks — and she says they are all white, referring perhaps to their legs in early spring — have been thrown into a state of consternation by the fact that everything normal seems about ready to float off, like a carnival balloon in the hands of a two-year-old with slippery hands, my image not hers.
Now let us see if any sense can be made of this. Can a case be made? Perhaps. If pressed into service, and made to participate in this debate much against my will, I could possibly say something like this . . .
People who cannot tell whether a billion or a trillion is the larger number are people most likely to support putting cute little funnies like Parent 1 and Parent 2 on passports instead of Father and Mother. People who cannot tell whether or not increasing the deficit will decrease it are the most likely to think that the anus is a sex organ. People who cruise the monetized juice bars in order to find a stimulus are the most likely to think they can cruise the bars and find true love. People who think that it can’t be wrong when it feels so right in the Treasury Department are the most like to think that it can’t be wrong when it feels so right in their bedrooms — or in San Francisco parades, for that matter. Maybe this is all about sex.
But it is far more likely that this kind of folly cannot be hermetically sealed off in one part of your soul. This kind of cancerous folly goes for the lymph nodes, and spreads everywhere from there.