Meet Carl Paladino. Carl, a gubernatorial candidate in New York, fancies himself a member of a politicized "Tea Party," and is the owner of a successful business based in Buffalo, N.Y. He styles himself as the standard-bearer of conservative Christian values in this country and opposes abortion, gay marriage, President Barack Obama's health care legislation, etc. All is well so far, but Carl also likes to send his friends e-mails featuring bestiality, racial slurs and even hardcore pornography. He does this while he is at work, and sends these messages to government e-mail domains. Carl Paladino truly represents the Tea Party on the national stage.
If you can't recall, allow me to refresh the history of the Tea Party movement. It began only last year, when a number of disgruntled conservatives decided that it was time to take to the streets to oppose Obama's policies, gathering an impressive number of people to conduct well-publicized marches in cities across America. Sure, some of the protesters were carrying around guns threatening to shoot anyone who tried to take them away, but every protest has its crazies.
Paladino is among the smattering of politicians or aspirants around the country seeking to exploit opportunistically the successes of this movement. He claims to march under the banner of the "Tea Party" like you might imagine the Democratic or Republican Parties, even though the official Tea Party as a political "party" is registered to a lawyer in Florida with no connection to Paladino or any other politician seeking to use the name.
The lack of any official affiliation notwithstanding, the number of ways in which Paladino fails to even come close to adhering to the values of the idealized Tea Party protester is staggering. First and foremost, he has a child born out of wedlock with one of his employees. With the recent unveiling of his wildly inappropriate e-mails by WNYmedia and his subsequent confession of their authenticity, it would seem that he has actually learned nothing from his past indiscretions. No matter. Paladino sweeps all such criticisms aside with choice quotes such as, "Like all of God's creatures, I've been imperfect in my personal life." Because when I vote for a governor, I don't really care if he or she will be good and ethical, I just care that they do their best.
Paladino's case seems like part of a larger trend amongst people who identify with a political ideal associated with the Tea Party movement. Jacob Batchelor '12 was kind enough to expose latent racism amongst Americans who self-identified as members of the Tea Party in his recent column ("The Color of the Party," May 4). So much for their Christian values and their belief in greater equality. Furthermore, there have been credible allegations of Tea Party leaders being complicit in "astroturfing," where an organization stages a political campaign to make it seem like a grassroots movement. So much for honesty and transparency. As a series of protests, the Tea Party movement seemed vaguely to make sense, but individuals who seek to wield that power for themselves distort the movement's image.
The problem with the Tea Party movement as it has developed today is that it has now just become an outlet for populism, manipulated by those who want a cheap ticket to the political stage. The accuracy of their arguments aside, the entire movement has grown so quickly that no one can claim any unified platform they stand on. Figures like Paladino who do claim the support of one platform are mere demagogues, exploiting general public dissatisfaction for their own personal cravings for attention and glory.
Paladino doesn't even do an adequate job hiding the fact that he is a demagogue; his favorite campaign slogan, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore," is actually a quote from a favorite movie of mine, "Network." In it, a newscaster by the name of Howard Beale becomes wildly popular not for his news reporting, but the violent rants he performs on the air. In one of these psychotic breakdowns, he utters the line that Paladino now parrots today.
In our safe, sheltered collegiate environment, we often scoff at the demagogues of foreign states and even our own history. We cannot ignore or deny the demagogues in our politics or even our local communities; it takes a continued, conscious effort to defeat them. Though he may never come close to achieving his dream of becoming governor, I am unsettled that a man as distasteful as Paladino has gotten as close as he did to the office.
