When It’s Time to Party We Will Party Hard

My friend J.P. Freire, the managing editor of The American Spectator, is the brains behind NewAmericanTeaParty.com. When I saw him today after Grover Norquist’s meeting, he was driven, intense — gripping his MacBook like a life raft in the Arctic Ocean, updating the group’s Facebook page and list of sponsors.

Freire’s site is only one node in a network of grassroots Tea Party sites, which are protesting the mortgage rescue plan and the more general “recent trend of fiscal recklessness in government.” The main Washington event will be a rally in front of the White House on Friday, at noon.

Among the ideas that people pitched while Freire was working:

• An appearance from Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. (He plans on showing up as a reporter for PajamasTV and then commenting on the event on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.)
• A garbage bag that tea partiers will fill with tea bags. Protestors might write the names of programs they don’t like on the tea bags.
• Doing the garbage bag idea, but with cardboard boxes.
• A cover of “Take This Job and Shove It,” with new lyrics that would attack the stimulus package.
• Getting people in Revolutionary War garb to skeet shoot tea bags.