For the last few days we've been hearing that today, tax day, there'd be "teabagging" events going on around the country. T.E.A. stands for "Taxed Enough Already," and the anti-tax events involve ripping open teabags, or dumping them unripped, into bodies of water. The object is obviously to recall the Boston Tea Party, and to send a message that taxes are too high. The interesting dimension of this idea to me is where it's coming from. Conservative commentators are saying it's rising from the people, it's a grassroots revolt. But I doubt that. For one thing, it was news fast; but when you watched the footage about the first of these events, a few days back, there were only maybe three shots, endlessly repeated. In other words, there was a lot of noise about this stuff before there was much stuff. For another thing, the word "teabagging" was already in slang use with a WAY different, X-rated meaning. Conservatives and libertarians aren't by definition Luddites. Someone, or many more than one, would have put on the brakes and called the phenomenon by a different name early on if this were a grass-roots movement. No, it looks more like it was dreamed up by the Republican establishment, a spark they hoped would catch on with people and become a roaring fire. To mix my metaphors. And the best thing is, the media folks already have a term for something like this, a phony grass-roots movement.

Astroturf.

I love it.