That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom: Team Obama’s Assault on Tea-Party, Talk-Radio Americans
by Michael Graham
Regnery Publishers, Inc.
March 2010
259 pages
ISBN 978-1-59698-619-0
Hardcover: $27.95 or $16.81 at Amazon.com

There’s a point where blind arrogance becomes comic, and we passed the punch line long ago.

Sometimes things get so bad that humor must serve as a release for pent-up frustrations. Radio talk show host Michael Graham believes the current administration’s attitudes and policies are so egregious that they warrant not only apprehension but also derisive contempt, and he copiously delivers the latter.

But he’s not alone. A lot of people feel the same way—and thus was born the Tea Party movement. Graham’s mother was there practically from the beginning and can attest that the Tea Parties are not the result of Republican Party astro-turfing (although the Repubs are still trying to co-opt them and unfortunately might one day succeed).

In chapter after chapter, Graham skewers the utopian ideologies that inform the present government’s decision making in public policy, and you don’t have to be a Tea Partier to see how lunatic all of these schemes really are. As he notes at one point, the scruffy, idealistic radicals we used to dismiss in college a few decades ago are now running things—and they’re running them, all right, straight into the ground.

My only quibbles: No separate source notes (I’m one of those geeks who actually read the bibliographic info in the back of the book); and how, like Glenn Beck, Graham completely misrepresents the case the so-called “Birthers” are trying to make.

Otherwise, That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom is a pleasurable read. Somewhere in just about every chapter, you’ll either laugh out loud or be provoked to a rueful smile at the excesses the current government’s myrmidons think are just business as usual.

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1. My Mother, the Terrorist
But one thing’s for sure: the politicians who govern us right now have almost nothing in common with their people. All of those kooky ideas you used to snicker at in college, all those campus nuts who wouldn’t shut up about how smart they were, but who knew nothing about the real world—they’re the ones in charge.
2. Right-Wing Terrorist A-Holes of America, Unite!
For normal folks like my mom, and for typical conservatives like my listeners, turning to violence contradicts their fundamental instincts. They debate politics, they care about this country deeply, but they don’t view politics as an all-encompassing struggle. They don’t need “the fight” to give meaning to their existence—they already have a life.
3. America, He’s Just Not That Into You
Among the many historic “firsts” accomplished the day Barack Obama was elected president, the most significant, I believe, is this: he’s the first American president who doesn’t actually like Americans.
4. Honk If I’m Paying Your Mortgage
The “spread the wealth” philosophy is an open declaration that some people are going to be declared winners (getting bailouts) and others losers (paying bailouts). Interestingly, the likelihood of being declared a winner in the new Bailout Nation is directly correlated to the likelihood that you’re a loser in real life. Did you make irresponsible and irrational decisions? Blow off your house payments? Drop out of school? Make risky investments with other people’s money? Ruin your company by loaning lots of cash to deadbeats with no income? Congratulations, you WIN!
5. Paging Dr. House
In the arena of politics and public policy, Team Obama is the worst possible combination of arrogance and error. Its leaders have the insufferable attitude of Dr. House, but the intellectual credibility of Sonya Fitzpatrick, Animal Psychic. Their “smartest guy in the room” attitude is bad enough, but coming from people who’ve been wrong about nearly everything, it’s utterly unbearable.
6. You’re Wrong Because You’re Right
[When Edmunds.com, representing the automotive industry, reported that the Cash for Clunkers program cost American taxpayers $24,000 per car while unintentionally sending hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars to Tokyo and Seoul], the White House went so far as to attack Edmunds.com for reporting [it], accusing the publication of “faulty analysis” and claiming that the White House knows more about auto sales than the folks at Edmunds. That’s like a politician picking a fight over military strategy with Jane’s Defence Weekly, or lecturing the girls at BunnyRanch.net on how to get their groove on.
7. You Don’t Have to Be an Insane, Anti-American, 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist to Support President Obama. (But It Helps.)
And one must have the faith of a child (and the brains of a cardboard box) to trust the estimated future costs of ObamaCare. Even if the O-bots’ math were right today (and it’s not), who is naive enough to believe this trillion-dollar government program will come in on budget? I know people who believe in leprechauns and the Tooth Fairy who aren’t that gullible.
8. Watching the Wrong Cable News
[When the ClimateGate scandal broke] e-mails were leaked showing premiere scientists in the movement for global-warming alarmism had tried to exclude opposing views from peer-researched journals, colluded to hide their own raw data, and threatened the destruction of information to avoid legal disclosure requirements. Another liberal scandal, well-covered by the Internet and FOX News—and totally ignored by the New York Times for weeks.
9. Barack Obama: As Smart as Sarah Palin?
I don’t know whether or not liberal elitists believe in God, but I’m absolutely sure they believe in the Devil. And they call her Sarah Palin.
10. We Are All Racists Now
It’s hardly a surprise that the race-obsessed Left would assume that everyone else embraces identity politics, too. They simply can’t imagine Americans who don’t see the world through the prism of race. And the Left is so arrogant they simply can’t imagine any legitimate reason why anyone would vote against them.
11. The Government Is Made for Porn
[Concerning the prospect of government-run health care] All it took was typical Americans thinking about what it will be like when the lady screwing up your car registration at the end of a four-hour line becomes the lady screwing up your medical records at the end of an even longer line. No, not all government workers are incompetent. But all government workers work for the government; that is, they’re in an environment where mediocrity is considered good enough, and where there are no consequences for being lousy at your job.
12. Don’t Spread My Wealth, Spread My Work Ethic!
There’s no way around it. The Tea Party movement is based on the acknowledgement that there’s no such thing as a free lunch … and Chef Obama just added lobster and caviar to next year’s menu.
13. “It’s the People’s Seat”: The Scott Brown Story
“In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.” — Keith Olbermann
Conclusion: The Party of “For”
We’re not showing up at townhall meetings just to oppose liberal policies and to mock the Left’s heavy-handed, big-government ineptitude. We’re there fighting for freedom, because we believe free men are better men, and that free people, free minds, and free markets make the best, most prosperous America.

—Mike Gray