August 13, 2004
The “bl(A)ck tea society,” or
The “bl(A)ck tea society,” or Say Wh(A)t?
In a recent post, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” lauded the correspondents from our Boston (MA) office, who have been filling our mailboxes with all sorts of information. Frankly, our folks in Beantown make the rest of our correspondents—national and international—look like a bunch of slackers: When’s the last time you heard a peep from our Helsinki office? We can’t remember that far back—and we have what Carl Jung would call a pretty good collective memory.And there seems to be no end to the Bostonians’ munificence. A few days ago, one of the employees from our mailroom—let’s just call him “Chip”—relayed to us a flyer found hanging in a Boston area retail establishment.
This odd little flyer begins as follows:
bl(A)ck tea society
The bl(A)ck tea society is an ad-hoc coalition of anti-authoritarians organizing in the Boston area and beyond to resist the Democratic National Convention.
(The DNC will be held July 26-29 in Boston.)
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” know exactly what you are thinking: How can we become members of the society? After all, we dislike authoritarians as much as the next Stalinists. Further, we are comforted by the fact that the “bl(A)ck tea society” is merely “an ad-hoc coalition”; it doesn’t plan to resist authoritarianism forever, but has set its sites on one goal alone. That seems reasonable enough.
Still, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are genuinely puzzled about this organization. First, we wondered how this group, if it is truly “ad hoc” and bent on exposing the Democratic Convention as a bastion of fascism, could be organizing “in the Boston area and beyond.” What does “beyond” mean? Lexington (MA)? Lexington (KY)? Lexington (NE)? We hope that the “bl(A)ck tea society” doesn’t get too wrapped up in Kentucky politics; we aren’t experts on the subject, but we’d say that Democratic authoritarians in Kentucky are a whole different breed from their counterparts on the East coast.
In addition, we are left mystified about the name of this organization. The “bl(A)ck tea society”? What the h(E)ck is that? Don’t the ad-hoc anti-authoritarians who run this high-powered cabal realize how parentheses are used in the English language? Never mind the odd capitalization of the letter A inside “bl(A)ck.” Even if you let this go, the title still makes no sense: Without the A, it reads “blck tea society.” We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” admit that we aren’t much for hot potables, but we’ve never even heard of “blck tea” in our lives. Earl Grey?: Yes. English Breakfast?: You bet. But “blck tea”?: Nope.
After perusing the “bl(A)ck tea society” “website,” we concluded that this decent organization is made up of characters who buy the whole Ralph Nader argument: There’s nary a difference between Republicans and Democrats. They’re all a bunch of, well, authoritarians.
To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” respond: True, very true. In fact, now that the Democratic National Convention went off without a hitch, perhaps the American people require an anti-authoritarian coalition that isn’t so, in a word, ad hoc?
