All the media seems to be aiming for the tobacco-chewing, redneck demographic?

[kentuck]

We'll know for sure when Brian Williams or Tom Brokaw comes on the air in over-alls and Caterpillar baseball hat.

Then they will interview a few of these "common folks" to get their opinions on the important domestic and foreign issues of the day.

"Yeah, Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle are not like the average politicians...they are just like us". Then they will turn their heads to the side and spit out their big chew of Red Man.

Then the reporter will tell us how popular these new "tea-baggers" are with "average" Americans.

Is it any wonder??

[arbusto_baboso]

1. It's approrpiate, since their dumbed-down coverage for the last few decades has TURNED many

Americans into that very same tobacco-chewing redneck demographic.

[HillbillyBob]

2. They can call them selves anythign they want

BUT THEY are still fascists.

[HopeHoops]

3. Red State Update has been on to this for a LOOOOONNNGGG time.

[spanone]

4. i definitely do not want folks 'just like them' making policy decisions

[bemildred]

5. Dumb people are most easily influenced.

Same reason they like them for juries.

[RufusTFirefly]

6. The best worker is an incurious worker. The best consumer is a suggestible one

Ignorance and conformism make the cash registers ring merrily.

[county worker]

7. I was talking to a right wing leaning woman yesterday.

It seemed to me that what motivates her is to be part of the herd. I mean it's like being "in" to be a tea bagger. She can't say, in any original way, why she believes what she does. She only repeats talking points that she's heard. After she says the talking point her head is up and she stares into my face looking for a reaction. Her friends would smile and agree and they would all feel great yet they never give the talking point a critical analysis.

I told her if she votes for the repub she is voting against her own best interests. Now it takes some effort to understand that so it really has no effect on her.

[FSogol]

8. From Blazing Saddles: "You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers...

"These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."

[necso]

9. I chew tobacco.

(But not that expensive stuff*, just bits of my pipe tobacco.)

And I've been called a redneck (hick, etc) so often that, whenever I hear the words, I look up. (The red-neck, in my experience, comes from long hours in the sun, almost completely covered up (against insects, cuts, etc) or shaded by the hat except for the area between the haircut and the shirt. Throw in "tanning" around the hands (gloves just don't work for some jobs... and they can be hot), and you've got the so-called "farmer's tan". Nothing to be ashamed of.)

Not to be offensive or critical or suchlike, but maybe you could phrase your points in more-descriptive and less-broad-brush terms.

*: A matter of necessary economy, not taste (or lack thereof perhaps).

Now, I don't mean to disquiet, so here:

One of the first times I drove my ex-wife somewhere (not quite a date yet), I was (discreetly) chewing tobacco and spitting in a soda-can. And she asked me if she could have a sip of my soda (no ac).

So I had to explain to her what was in the can, and how she probably didn't want to be drinking it.

You should have seen the look on her face.

Still, she married me...

I should've known something was wrong.