Pictures from the Tea Party

When I woke up on the morning of April 14th, I began to feel, with an increasingly strong conviction, that I should go attend the Tea Party Rally that was scheduled to be held in the Boston Commons that morning.  So, after dropping off my daughter and rearranging some of my morning plans, I made the trip.  What kind of self-respecting writer for a website on religion would avoid a Tea Party rally?  The Tea Party was being discussed in many places, in media secular and religious, and this would be my one opportunity to witness it with my own eyes.  I grabbed my camera, parked as near as I could to Harvard Square, and took the Red Line downtown.

Now, a little warning.  I am about to publish an article in which I consider the Tea Party a little more carefully and seriously.  In this post, I’m just having fun.  So please don’t get your feathers all ruffled.

But the frightening truth is that I had not been there more than a moment or two before I had identified some pretty extreme racist terrorist thugs, wearing clothing or badges that obviously threatened violence against me:

Some of the signs, from protesters and counter-protesters alike, were pretty clever:

and some of the people did not look clever at all.  These were the ones who got interviews.

One thing I learned: you start to get a headache when you spend so much time staring into the eyes of Evil Itself:

By this point my head was pounding:

Which made it such a relief to see saner, kinder people:

With messages of love…

…and peace…

…and understanding.

All of which made it hard to turn back to those knuckle-dragging, hateful bigots waving those rags of imperialistic aggression:

Their stupidity was obvious from their misspelled signs.  This midget woman obviously believes that you put a heart-sign at the top of an exclamation mark.  What a maroon!: