Tea Party?

My sense about the so-called tea-party activists is that they are reacting to the reality that at one time certain white people could be fairly successful, even if they weren't very smart or highly educated: but now, with the withering reality of corporate America hoovering up every last outstanding cent, there isn't the same possibility for what they believe is their right to a comfortable life. You can't make it just by being white--that privilege no longer is as readily available. Now you need a technical education--and some ruthlessness. The world economy doesn't pull along loser whites anymore, and they're feeling it. And they're not happy about it. So they're throwing a tantrum. They see Obama as that technically educated black man who is successful--and they don't like it. Some racism is part of it. Some nostalgia. Some resentment. Some ideological idiocy. Mostly it's incoherence--because they can't admit that they were privileged before (and thus didn't deserve it). The larger question, though, is why the mainstream newsmedia gives them so much attention, the kind of attention it would never give, say, countercultural lunatics.