Teabonics

Teabonics is a Flickr set of "signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests (that) feature 'creative' spelling or grammar." (Thanks, Jody Radzik!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Tdawwg

These signs need to be read seriously, interpretively, poetically: cf. Barthes’s Mythologies. Surely it’s occurred to everyone that bad spelling and bad fashion have their own poetics, not least in the political sphere? ‘Baggers don’t care how their signs are spelled, yet they still speak vehemently about their beliefs: the signs are as proudly awful as mullets and gimme hats. Discuss, analyze, interpret: ridicule is so easy.

Coming soon: Notes toward a Teabagger Mythology. Watch for it!
Anonymous

“TEABONICS”: Linguists are calling this New English Language Vernacular a Phenomenon that is Sweeping Across America.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/28/851690/-TEABONICS
scriptedfate

Funny, yes… until you realize that these people are a part of the United States as much as the erudite and well-spoken orators.

This is something to pay attention to. This has meaning. This is a part of you.

(I say ‘you’ because I’m a Canadian wrestling with our own rednecks and issues. Just because loud, uneducated, bigoted, myopic, ninnyhammers are way over there doesn’t mean that they’re any less Canadian… and though it’s unpleasant to think about it, it’s a part of me. My country is just that big.)
- Tdawwg
  
  “We have me the enemy, and he is us.” Pogo
lewis stoole

as people age, their spelling, grammar, and proofreading seem to go downhill if it is not frequently kept in practice, not to mention that there is a sense of urgency to get on with other, more important matters. i see there/their and loose/lose frequently misplaced, and i have done it as well, in fact i just did it–good thing i caught it. that being said, as soon as i hear the term “liberal elite” i think “uneducated bafoon” [sic]
CastanhasDoPara

While I understand that there are idiots in every movement not just the ones I don’t like, I must say that this is some damn funny shit. And some of these are just down right tragic. In conclusion, this only furthers the point that the US has been investing in the wrong things for far too long. How about focusing on education instead of invasion. Now there’s a novel concept.

On a side note, Raj77, I’m not sure that I agree with “US gov’t strongly objects” to Israel’s continued and flagrant human rights abuses. If they did then why is Israel still one of the largest recipients of US aid (the majority of which is military aid)? And why does the US continually sabotage the “peace process” or tacitly allow the Israeli gov’t to sabotage the “peace process”? Incidentally, Israel is the only country that attacked a United States Ship (remember the USS Liberty)in international waters and was not invaded, occupied or otherwise made to submit. Ho-hum, sorry for the rant.
thequickbrownfox

It’s the unintended pathos that grabs you, the impoverished pride of the immiserated hillbilly nation.
greengestalt

Do you know what makes me mad about these people?

That, in abstract I’d almost be with them for the “Concern about corruption in government” and America’s problems. I don’t know what a “Borror” is but the “Borrower” is indeed the ‘slave’ of the lender and America is in debt heavily thanks to corrupt policies and lobbyists.

BUT, they are blatantly a sock puppet fake movement of corporate interests. IMO, if a “Republican” gets in office, they won’t hassle them, even if it’s Palin and she’s signing away more $ than Dubya and Obama combined and declaring war on new countries by praying and throwing darts on the map.

I think this “Fake” movement is beyond harassing Obama to hinder any progressive works on his part to “Discredit” the “Grass roots movement” phenomenon so it doesn’t really hurt the Corporate Elite later.
- Steaming Pile
  
  Thank you! While it is true that the whole thing started with a post at Free Republic (or something like that), it would not have gotten as big as it is were it not for the rich and powerful fanning the flames. The result is about three or four blades of real grass on the warning track amid an entire ballfield of astroturf.
angelsvsanimals

Somehow I missed the note that liberals are incapable of making mistakes, and that anyone who disagrees with their point of view is a hillbilly. Interesting.
- Steaming Pile
  
  Did you, uh, I don’t know, actually look at any of the pictures? Most of these people really are hillbillies.
Anonymous

Oh how I wish we could go back to the halcyon days of Bush = Hitler. Those signs were just oh so much classier!
zikzak

This kind of snobbery just encourages them. Be respectful, take their concerns seriously without agreeing, and they’ll run out of steam. Act derisive, mocking and superior, and you just reinforce the “simple honest common man vs. decadent elitist snob” narrative they’ve built for themselves.
Geek_Pyre

If these people were better educated, which would mean improved spelling, grammar, and comprehension, could they be in the Tea Party? Would they?
Anonymous

For a whole bunch of teabonics and hilarious ridiculousness, check out this site: http://www.teapartylol.com
Saint Fnordius

I wonder how many of these spelling errors were made on purpose? At Bush pep rallies, his staff would distribute hand-lettered signs painstakingly misspelled to give them a more “homey” feel, to make them seem as if the person they gave the sign to made it himself.

Granted, when hand-lettering signs with a marker, spelling mistakes often sneak in. One little brain fart, and you forget a letter. I suspect a few of these people knew that they made mistakes, but (like the Bush handlers) thought that the spelling errors would just make them look more like plain folks. Others probably didn’t want to waste the poster board and decided the spelling error wasn’t important.

Still, I suspect that at least half of the people carrying those never noticed the mistake in the spelling.
Anonymous

The TEABAG Movement sweeping across America has forged a new English language vernacular. A phenomenon that linguists are calling TEABONICS.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/28/851690/-TEABONICS
theosays

Either way, Tea Party protesters are unequivocally and universally racist, nothing more than a modern, defanged incarnation of the KKK.
Donald Petersen

The whole thing gets me to wondering if there might actually be some kind of connection between politics and spelling skill. Speaking completely anecdotally, most of the college-educated people I know lean liberal, whereas most of the conservatives I know are not particularly well-educated. The exceptions are interesting: I’m about as liberal as anyone I know, and I have a high school education (plus a couple years of community college as a Theatre Arts major, but well short of an AA degree). However, I’m just a spellin’ fool. Came in 2nd at the Scripps-Howard regional bee in San Diego back in ’84 (came thisclose to going to the national!), and my occasional typos cause me more humiliation than perhaps is warranted. Meanwhile, a college-educated TV producer I know who’s been a registered Republican for nearly 30 years is absolutely the worst speller I’ve ever met in my professional life. Swell guy, hell of a producer, excellent people skills, but dictates all his memos for a very good reason.

Though Norton Juster once wrote, “A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect,” I do believe he was mostly kidding. (The character who says this line is an actual, literal Humbug, after all.) But although these signs are probably more indicative of a nationwide decline in spelling standards across the political spectrum than they are indicative of out-and-out ignorance on the part of the average tea-partier (many of the properly-spelled signs reflect positions that are equally ill-informed, or just downright stupid), I still have to wonder if there’s a connection.
Anonymous

Pinata at 12 o’clock.
Anonymous

We all did end up reading the signs, which makes them effective signs, job done.
jenjen

Sooo… are we to believe that this Pargon person took all these pictures and put them up on Flickr? There are a lot of sites with photos like these – nowhere do the original photographers get any credit, but everyone inline linking them sure gets a lot of clicks. At least s/he didn’t tag them all rights reserved since clearly s/he doesn’t have those rights to reserve.
coldspell

No wonder these people are pissed at the gub’mint: the gub’mint schools failed to teach them basic English!
coldspell

How many teabaggers at these events are actually liberal provocateurs making the teabaggers look (even) stupider? Sounds like the opportunity for some fun flash mobs.
UncaScrooge

All I’d like to say to these people is:

“Welcome to public protest. You’re very late, so please get in line. During the time that you were silent, the media became fantastically adept at making all public protests look idiotic. In fact, the only logical reason left to march in a public protest is so that you can feel, for an hour or two, like you’re not alone in your opinion. Keep in mind that the Iraq War was the most publicly protested government policy decision ever. Look how that turned out. Shortly, you will be completely ignored, so try not to block traffic because the people who wholehearted agree with you hate being late. Like you are. Thank you.”
Anonymous

I’ve been flying the Gadsden flag for over 15 years, every fourth of July, and it peeves me that it’s becoming identified with the teabaggers. Now I understand how Balderdash must have felt when racist dickweeds started wearing Thor’s hammers.

On an unrelated note, one of those signs was from “Joe the Plummer” and I fail to see why we should discriminate against aficionados of prunus prunus. Why, I’m fond of stone-fruit myself!
billstewart

Regular angry folks being bad spellers or not noticing hand-drawn typos or trying to do puns/wordplay on signs that just doesn’t work? Fine, and it’s not like I don’t see that occasionally from my liberal friends as well. (Even I’ve misspelled something, though it was just once, 20 years ago, not on a sign, and caught before distribution :-)

But when the English-only goons can’t speak or write proper English? They deserve all the ridicule and derision that’s available – especially if they come from states that need to rename themselves “Flowery” or “Red” before passing other English-only laws, and need to translate most of their laws from obfuscatory bureaucratese into Plain English as well.
Steve

@37 – that’s a bit… bigoted?
Teller

Well, at least there’s no more need for a “Dril baby Dril” sign.
bcsizemo

I know the forums typically lean to the left, but most of these comments make me scratch my head just as much as the photos do.

Obviously the can’t spell=hillbilly crowd has never ventured outside their urban habitat… Before you so quickly label these people as slow and stupid you should actually understand where they come from and how they view America. But then again that isn’t exactly a political way of thinking.

I recently took a road trip that landed me in the northern tip of West Virgina (the Ohio Valley area). Most of the people there looked like they could be in these pictures, but most of these people seemed fairly composed and intelligent. They probably couldn’t explain how nuclear fission worked, but they probably could rebuild the engine in an 88 Ford F150. And they certainly could carry on a conversation with you.

One of America’s biggest problems is the asshatery of being blinded by your position (be it political, religious, ect..). I’d bet almost everyone in America shares similar views on many things that are blown way out of proportion by the media and extremist groups. The thing we differ on is how to achieve the end goals. Create a group built on that focus and you’d have a pretty solid basis to create a new political party or movement.
- robulus
  
  bcsizemo said “I recently took a road trip that landed me in the northern tip of West Virgina (the Ohio Valley area). Most of the people there looked like they could be in these pictures, but most of these people seemed fairly composed and intelligent. They probably couldn’t explain how nuclear fission worked, but they probably could rebuild the engine in an 88 Ford F150. And they certainly could carry on a conversation with you.”
  
  Sorry, are you saying it’s bad to mock these folk? Your message is getting a little hazy when you get to “they certainly could carry on a conversation with you”.
holtt

Back to the idea of humor… the pictures are just too funny.
SamSam

Unfortunately, at least one of these is photoshopped.

As funny as “One Hugh Mistake America” is (I snarfed all over my keyboard), Error Level Analysis shows that the sign was clearly photoshopped.

Most of the rest of them are clearly real, however.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  As funny as “One Hugh Mistake America” is (I snarfed all over my keyboard), Error Level Analysis shows that the sign was clearly photoshopped.
  
  Hugh for huge is probably the most common mistake that I see in comments, after its/it’s/your/you’re/their/there/they’re. Having said that, it’s one thing to make a mistake while typing quickly and quite another to do it while laboriously carving your letters into a piece of railroad board with a giant sharpie. It betrays sloppy thinking and failure to check facts before opening the pie hole, which are pretty valid criticisms of the Teahole movement.
TJIC

Fun game!

What are the rules?

I read some right wing blogs that have had pictures of pro-Obama folks with misspelled signs. I’ve seen pictures of teachers’ unions marching with misspelled signs. Are those both game?

But you title this “Teabonics”, referencing “Ebonics”.

Would video or audio clips of African Americans speaking in mangled syntax also be appropriate?
- TomXP411
  
  Techers arent aloud to have mis pelled picket signs. If they do, they should be fired imedately. :)
  
  Actually, teachers are some of the worst spellers out there, but there’s a legitimate reason for that: We learn to spell by reading, not so much by writing. Think of all the badly written term papers the average 9′th grade English teacher has to grade… now imagine how all the bad grammar and spelling has pushed his college education right out of his head. It’s a very real phenomenon. :)
  - Artimus Mangilord
    
    So bad spelling is being taught to teachers by their students? Who’s paying who?
- Anonymous
  
  As if to exclaim: “For shame! Picking on illiterate, fearful, panicked white folks! Have you no decency, sir?” Not at all. These folks are a self-mockery. It’s doubly unfortunate in that they are the whole creation of manipulative white right-wingers.
Anonymous

“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.” – Andrew Jackson (probably apocryphal)
blueelm

I agree with the third poster. I hate Amens.
Isoko

Of course, this flickr user has EXIF and camera data turned off on the account, so the only way to determine Photoshop activity is the ability to perform some sort of error level analysis. Wouldn’t be surprised if more were also photoshopped, in fact.
Xenu

Notice how every single person in these photos is white?
- Anonymous
  
  Yes. So is that billboard in the center photo. Bastards!
TomXP411

Makes me wonder what’s worse: ignorant people who wouldn’t pass a 5′th grade spelling test, or self-righteous pricks who sit around with nothing better to do than make fun of them all day. (And I don’t mean you, David; I’m referring to some of the scathing comments on those pics.)

What really disturbs me is humanities ability to dehumanize those we don’t agree with. “He’s different, so he’s not really human.” I think that’s the only way we’re capable of treating others with such disdain.

Don’t get me wrong: I think the people holding some of these badly spelled signs are on the stupid side, but I’ll take stupid over arrogant and self-righteous any day. (Of course, it’s likely that the people in these people are both self-righteous AND stupid… in which case, there’s no hope.)
- bibulb
  
  I will always remember the following exchange in a discussion on anime translation :
  
  “I just love when the majority makes fun of the minority while destroying them. It’s so like people.”
  “Yeah, well, they ain’t like us so they deserve it.”
- scionofgrace
  
  Seconded! What would we rather do, insult these people, or convince them to change their minds? Insulting is fun, but it only makes things worse.
- Anonymous
  
  Humanities? Try humanity’s!
  
  Oops!
- Anonymous
  
  The point of all the criticism of these people is that they don’t care to know any better. They actually make a point of making fun of smarter people like its a bad thing to learn something. In a day in age with spell check, by the way, there is absolutely no reason to miss-spell anything.
kleer001

#2, however the Amen Break is BOSS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac
TheCrawNotTheCraw

At least it doesn’t say:

English is our language

No excretions

Learn it
ab3a

Thr s lts f glr stff sd by bth prts. f y’r gng t shw pctrs f stpd lk ths, why nt tk lk t sm f ths:

http://zmbtm.cm/sf_nt-wr_rlly_3-20-2010/

Thnks fr plyng.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  ab3a,
  
  You’re trolling. Again. Contact me if you want your account reinstated.
- akbar56
  
  At least (as far as I could see) those guys know how to spell.
- Raj77
  
  What exactly do you find ‘ugly’ about the signs in the article you posted? 9/11 Truthers are wrong, yes, but where’s the ‘ugly’?
  
  Most of the people in the article are being hammered for being Marxists. I realise that’s a stigmatized political belief in the USA, but why should we accept prima facie its characterization as ‘ugly’?
  
  Some of the people supporting Palestinian causes are probably, at some level, anti-Semitic. However, it’s equally reasonable to assume that the majority of them choose not to selectively ignore the human rights abuses being perpetrated by Israel (something, incidentally, to which the US government also strongly objects.) The UK for one has an influential organisation of Jewish luminaries who campaign against those abuses.
  - middleclass
    
    Well there’s the LaRouche people with the Obama-as-hitler poster (which I don’t find all that offensive but a lot of people apparently do) and then there’s the “spay and neuter filthy jews” sign which is about as ugly as one can get.
    - randomcat
      
      Well there’s the LaRouche people with the Obama-as-hitler poster (which I don’t find all that offensive but a lot of people apparently do)
      
      Oh it’s offensive, for sure. I just can’t muster up any real anger because I’m laughing too hard at how completely ridiculous it is. I suppose I should take this sort of thing more seriously, given how many people seem to be buying into it lately.
    - Raj77
      
      My bad- I missed that one. Anti-Semitism transcends economic politics. As for the rest, I believe that my point stands. LaRouche cultists notwithstanding.
- firstbakingbook
  
  Don’t you think equating these two is a remarkable stretch? The groups represented in your link have effectively zero political influence. You won’t find popular left-leaning media sources promoting, for example, the communist political parties that were present at that rally. You won’t find influential politicians, party leaders, or media figures that promote them, either. These groups are wholly irrelevant.
  
  In contrast, the tea-partiers are representative of the American Right. They enjoy very broad support from the media, politicians, party leaders, and etc.
- allen
  
  you know… looking over your link, I don’t think you really have a valid basis for comparison. Teabonics is a series of photos documenting poor literacy in protests, often in ironic ways “English is our language- no excetions”.
  
  Your site, I guess is supposed to be ugly because we all fear “anti-americanism” and communist sympathies? The one misspelled sign I saw asked to fund “scools not war” – and, it’s a sign that justifies itself, innit?
  
  I don’t doubt that there are well-documented examples of liberal idiocy- I’m just not sure that you have proffered a valid counter-example yet.
  
  That said, I’m not sure teabonics really accurately reflects the average tea party member- who has been shown via polling (google it for sources) to be typically elderly, white, educated, and wealthy. Who are afraid of socialism, but also want more government involvement in job creation.
  - Anonymous
    
    “That said, I’m not sure teabonics really accurately reflects the average tea party member- who has been shown via polling (google it for sources) to be typically elderly, white, educated, and wealthy.”
    
    Rasmussen, I assume?
- Anonymous
  
  I don’t see your point with that link. I see a whole bunch of photos of people protesting with some fairly hateful conservative commentary, compared to photos of protesters with funny misspelled signs. Is that your idea of balance?
  
  Or is it that conservatives really don’t have any sense of humour at all?
Isoko

A lot of fakes, if you ask me. Not that I care.

http://errorlevelanalysis.com/permalink/4c0832b/

(thanks SamSam)
- grimc
  
  Not necessarily.
  
  It is worth noting that edges and areas red in colour are often depicted as brighter in the ELA tests.
  
  The one SamSam linked I can buy as faked, just by eyeballing it. The one you linked I suspect is a case of the edge/red rule.
Gilbert Wham

Right, quiet from the peanut gallery please!

OK, now who here among you has made a sign or banner in the past? Most of you, right? Who has been concentrating so much that you’ve missed out a letter in the middle of the goddamn word, ‘cos you’re not used to writing that big? That’s right, don’t lie; most of you.

Chill the fuck out, people.
(Although I do reserve the right to point and laugh, make no mistake)
middleclass

Behold the glory of US government schools!
- Anonymous
  
  @TJIC
  
  mangled syntax? Perhaps you might want to verse yourself with a linguistics textbook and look into AAVE or some pidgin… both have their own syntactic rules
  - Phlip
    
    > “mangled syntax”
    
    At least they ain’t elitist.
    
    C-:
    
    But seriously – who’s paying for all those bus rides??
- Anonymous
  
  Yes. People were so much more literate back in the days before public schools.
- Anonymous
  
  You mean underfunded, decentralized schools under the control of local petty-bureaucrats with not expertise in the field they assign curricula for? Yes, just look at that.
  - middleclass
    
    “You mean underfunded, decentralized schools under the control of local petty-bureaucrats with not expertise in the field they assign curricula for? Yes, just look at that.”
    
    Well, yes, those are indeed the government schools I was referring to. Thanks for explaining why schools should not be run by politicians.
Anonymous

“Thank You Fox News for keeping us infromed! For the Win!!!
nutbastard

You don’t need a formal education to have reasoned moral, ethical, and political stances.

I suppose all the illiterates in 3rd world nations ought to be ridiculed for their wanting an honest government as well.

Besides, no amount of proper grammar will convince me that the Obama Koolaiders or the Rush Limbaugh crazies have anything intelligent to espouse.

It’s a little funny, and I don’t really identify with teabaggers anyways, it just seems totally fucked out. Pictures of misspelled things on the internet – now with logically fallible bias!
Anonymous

Behold the glory of homeschooling.
Kimzajc

I find it rather ironic that a flickr group intended to make fun of racist white folks with misspelled signs should itself have a racist name. “Teabonics” derives its humor from the root of “Ebonics,” basically equating Black vernacular English with ignorant, misspelled hate speech. That’s no good.
- snakedart
  
  Ebonics was ignorant white people being clueless about black vernacular language.
  
  Teabonics is ignorant white people being clueless about their own language.
  - Kimzajc
    
    No, actually.
    
    Dr. Robert Williams, an African-American social psychologist, coined the term Ebonics in 1973.
Phil Usher

There’s always the classic:
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/f/f/get_a_brain_morans.jpg
Teapunk

Watched from far away (an ocean and several timezones), this is really funny.
Until you think about it.
Then it gets scary.
aldasin

Nobody went into these people’s homes and photographed notes on their refrigerator or opened their mail to check the spelling. These are people holding up signs in public, in an attempt to influence public opinion and create a wave of enthusiasm for their vision of how things should be.
This is how they present their ideas, and for doing it with such ineptitude they deserve to be ridiculed.
Want me to follow you and learn more about your cause?
Then you better have something to say that I find inspiring. What’s wrong with that?
- holtt
  
  QFT
  
  Aldasin says…
  
  Nobody went into these people’s homes and photographed notes on their refrigerator or opened their mail to check the spelling. These are people holding up signs in public, in an attempt to influence public opinion and create a wave of enthusiasm for their vision of how things should be.
  This is how they present their ideas, and for doing it with such ineptitude they deserve to be ridiculed.
  Want me to follow you and learn more about your cause?
  Then you better have something to say that I find inspiring. What’s wrong with that?
mn_camera

These teabaggers are somewhere between amusing and pathetic. The “America” they want would make Mississippi look enlightened by comparison.
teapot

Anyone who wants to defend these sign-holding skinbags needs a reality check. If you are going to express yourself publicly – be prepared for ridicule. If you are, in the process of expressing yourself publicly, going to provide instantaneous fodder for your enemies and immediate reasons for people who are neutral to think that your ideas are not well considered – be prepared to be completely sidelined and ignored as insignificant.

You can’t get better than the words of the 16th president of the US, Abraham Lincoln to explain this idea:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

To a non-American, These clowns seriously make US politics look like a circus.
- OP_TIMUS
  
  As a non-American, US politicians do a good job of making US politics look like a circus.
  - cymk
    
    As an American, I can tell you US politics is a circus. There is a “show” we(americans) all go to every election season; everyone plays their roles both on and off stage and when the show is over we have a new actor in office. He makes the same public commitments that previous leaders have, and breaks them just the same; as though the very act of leading this country requires them to lie and cheat the public.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      As an American, I can tell you US politics is a circus.
      
      For most of the world, politics are gladiatorial games.
rastronomicals

Floating the balloon that only Tea-Partiers have difficulties using the language is rather hypocritical, I think.

Take a look around: grammar and spelling have become strictly optional on all but the most stratified boards and blogs. Even as standards of impartiality waver, local and even national newsgathering agencies–once a bastion of proper usage–fail on their websites to correct mistakes of grammar and spelling that formerly would never have gotten past the first draft.

Everyone’s got a fucking opinion but no-one knows how to express it.
No Imagination

Many of the worst spellers out there, including (but not just) teachers, program managers, salesmen, scientists, and lots of others considered otherwise well educated, learned to read by the “whole word” method. No “sounding out,” no rules of pronunciation, no phonetics, nuttin’. As a result, they can only spell or read (with confidence) the words they memorized. The exceptions are the individuals who took it upon themselves to figure out some ad hoc rules of pronunciation and spelling. It was an educational experiment that failed catastrophically. I don’t know if any school systems are still using it, but I really really hope not.
- firstbakingbook
  
  No Imagination: Your history of reading methodologies is substantially false. It is false that good readers read phonetically. This is an experimental result. People who read well operate above the level of phonics. People who spell well do it visually, not phonetically. It’s also false that there was some grand experiment in reading, which failed. This is a fairy tale told by far-right-wingers who were upset by curriculum standards that expected students to be proficient at reading comprehension: discussions of meaning threaten, for example, Biblical literalists. The American right believed that reading instruction should stop at decoding. Understanding is not required.
  
  And finally, you’ll be sorry to hear that the methods you are defaming are, in fact, still widely used, because they are more effective than phonics. However, because of the political backlash created by phony histories like the one you’re repeating, they’ve largely been re-branded under different names.
Hawke

Those using error level analysis to say that these are photoshopped: From the errorlevelanalysis site: â€œIt is worth noting that edges and areas red in colour are often depicted as brighter in the ELA tests. This due to the way the photos are saved by various programs. It is not proof that image was manipulated.â€

Both of the examples given in comments above are red and have very well-defined edges.
- SamSam
  
  After having gone back to that image, I think I was too quick to say that it was photoshopped. There were some comments in the Flickr thread noting the different color of “Hugh,” and so when I saw a big error-level difference in the sign area, I immediately dismissed it as ‘shopped without to much thought.
  
  Looking back on it, I think that the high differences are to do with the red lettering, sharp edges, and the way that jpegs save expanses of solid colors (the white of the sign). There is no evidence that there is any more error around “Hugh” than anything else on the sign. Also, see the near-by American flag with identical errors.
  
  I recant my earlier statement. I see no evidence than anything was photoshopped.
Anonymous

Either way, this kind of shit is indeed scary shit, whether it is shit or not shit. My bet though is that this is the level of much of the world. Mostly halfwit followers. No matter what the issue.

keep watching, there is no honest government
kosmonautbruce

I have no problem with people making equivalencies to left wing protesters with misspelled signs. Goose… gander… etc.

But it is just amusing to me that people would go to the trouble of making a sign, and then not checking their spelling. It’s funny, period.
Mormon Santa

The Dems would be smart to run someone named Ronald Raygun during the next Presidential election.
C.B.

It’s kind of disheartening to read some of the comments present here. Discounting or labeling a large, diverse group based on the actions of a few and the quality of their protest signs seems a bit condescending. Shit guys, I’m graduating in May with a B.A. in Music Composition and I identify with a lot of what the Tea Party represents (sans Sarah Palin, et al.).

Please tell me what is truly horrible about advocating a non-interventionist foreign policy (trade with all, war with none), sound money and transparency in our markets?
- Anonymous
  
  Nothing, as long as you don’t mind getting Herbert Hoover for your president. That didn’t work out too well for the world last time.
- Neon Tooth
  
  And the Tea Parties represent that………..how?
  Eh, they don’t. As you well know. Rabid anti intellectualism + nasty nationalism with a nice dose of good old racist support for the white power structure that dominates this country is what lurks behind the curtain of this “movement”. Basically, WASP domination is fading (a little) and we can’t deal.
  - C.B.
    
    @Neon Tooth: Eh, they do. If you follow your Tea Party history, this whole movement began with the individuals still involved with the Ron Paul presidential campaign. This means at its core, the TP movement is a libertarian movement. Fox and Mainstream Republicans have attempted to co-opt the movement and as such, the message has gotten confusing and watered down by people such as Sarah Palin. This has nothing to do with race, though some people have used the platform to promote racism.
    
    @Anon: Herbert Hoover was a horrible president and was replaced by an even more horrible president. Yes, I went there. FDR expanded the Federal Government to unprecedented levels. Oh and just to clarify, Ronald Reagan makes me barf too. In fact, almost all of the U.S. presidents were horrible.
    
    @Lewis: I once called myself a liberal socialist but after reading a lot of von Mises, Hayek, and Hoppe, I consider myself more an anarcho-capitalist now. Also, those people *were* there who opposed all foreign aggression by the United States. They were ignored, however. I disliked Bush and I dislike Obama – they are the same variation of the big government theme.
- lewis stoole
  
  >Please tell me what is truly horrible about advocating a non-interventionist foreign policy (trade with all, war with none), sound money and transparency in our markets?<
  
  sounds great, and mighty liberal minded! where was this 9 years ago? or even 5 years ago? and i know what they were doing 12 years ago.