The latest thing: tea parties

Rico says it seems the old is new again, in this opinion article by Lawrence Downes in The New York Times:

Not glowering sky nor mud nor threat of hailstones sufficed to deter about 300 souls from massing on the sodden village green in Northport, New York, that afternoon.
They were a band of like minds bent on dire provocations seldom witnessed in the harborside hamlet on Long Island Sound. It was a day for brandishing signs, shouting imprecations, and donning silly clothing: tricorn hats and breeches, bonnets and petticoats. A few carried pitchforks, the better to jab the message home: We good farm folk are fed up and will be silent no more. Their enemy: a tyrannical government heedless of the people’s will and blind to its manifold injustices. Their tactic: a Boston-style tea party, a symbolic rebellion for times that once again are trying men’s souls.
Tea parties are a recent phenomenon, spawned in the red-meat districts of right-wing talk radio and cable television. It was strange to see the rebels reach Northport, whose antiques-’n’-potpourri Main Street, with a half-dozen empty stores, could use a little federal stimulus.
But down at the park gazebo, the green lawn was rumbling with grass-roots anger. Actually, its grass-rootiness was highly debatable. What were the citizens angry about? The stimulus? Not really, said one organizer. He had problems with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Laws impeding capital formation. Indict Charlie Rangel, said a sign. “Lowlife Obama!” roared a man in the crowd, causing giggles.
Was this about Wall Street? Evil automakers? Greedy lenders who pillaged Long Island with predatory housing loans? No, no, and no. It was not about fixing unbridled free-market capitalism, but ensuring its glorious restoration. Mostly, it was about tax cuts.
The day was dark already, but the atmosphere became foggier and more indistinct with each new speaker. It all seemed to boil down to a battle of good nouns against evil nouns: “Liberty, yes! Tyranny, no!” “Keep your socialistic dance! We don’t want to live in France!”
Before you could say Marquis de Lafayette, it was time to hurl tea. A man with a megaphone gave a warning about littering. Then a bagpiper led the crowd through the harbor town’s loveliest taxpayer-supported amenities, from the municipal gazebo in the municipal park, across the municipal parking lot and down the municipal dock.
The chief of the Northport Fire Department, which like many on Long Island is bristlingly equipped by compliant taxpayers with enough gear to protect small European principalities, kept watch from his official SUV. The Northport Police directed traffic as a search-and-rescue boat idled over by the marina. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, alerted to the possibility of tea dumping without permits, had sent two armed officers.
And at the dock, a 41-foot Coast Guard boat from the Eatons Neck Station, with a five-man crew, kept its engines running in case anybody or anything was attacked, scuttled, dunked, or sunk. Whatever trouble these rebels found themselves in, the federal, state and local governments had it covered.
Waiting at the end of the dock were two costumed American Indians, one with long fake braids, the other with a feathered headdress and tomahawk. After more speeches, they tossed two wooden crates marked “TEA” into the harbor. Cheers rang. A cannon boomed.
“Let’s give ourselves a round of applause,” the megaphone man said. The wind had picked up, and the crates started floating out to Long Island Sound. The retrieval rope snapped. A boatswain’s mate from the Coast Guard boat took out a long hooked pole but did not deploy it: no federal rescue here.
The crowd turned and left the dock. The crates kept floating away. The Coast Guard and police boats motored off. At last, from out of the gloom came a gunmetal kayak. A lone man in a big black hat, the Stars and Stripes waving from his fishing-rod holder, paddled out to snag the boxes. Fighting a stiff wind, he slowly towed them back to shore.
It was a gallant act of individual responsibility. Too bad hardly anyone noticed. The crowd had gone to Skipper’s Pub, which was offering drink specials.